Rich Rodriguez understands the importance of surrounding himself with a strong coaching staff.
The head coach has a five-year deal with the Mountaineers that will average a base of $3.75 million over the course of the deal. That will start at $3.5 million and includes incentives that could potentially push the deal significantly higher depending on his success over the term.
Rodriguez admitted that he would have signed a lifetime contract if given the opportunity, but there is a strong commitment to bringing the Mountaineers football program back to where it has been in the past.
But in order to get in there it will take one than just one person. That means you can expect an investment in his coaching staff to help the veteran head coach in today’s changing climate.
And the Mountaineers have invested in that with at least a $5,000,000 commitment to the on the field coaching staff each year and at least a $2,500,000 one to support staff.
With all the responsibilities on the plate of a head coach now, it’s more important than ever to have a coaching staff that can take on duties to relieve things in many areas. That takes trust and maturity from the head coach which is something Rodriguez has been able to acquire over his coaching career.
“I’m going to put together a great staff and fortunately we have the means to put together a great staff that can take some of that burden off me in all these aspects,” Rodriguez said.
One of the biggest priorities at first is identifying who the defensive coordinator will be. Rodriguez admittedly has a couple in mind, and while he didn’t indicate the candidates are he said they aren’t the same type of defenses. Now a days, every coordinator runs a little bit of everything so his plan is once he settles on who will run the defense he will build the rest of the coaching staff out from there.
“I’m going to pick the d-coordinator first and I’ll have a really, really good one because I have enough resources to hire a really, really good one,” Rodriguez said.
When it comes to picking a potential candidate, Rodriguez admitted that there’s not one particular scheme that he is married to because he has had different ones across his career but there are some non-negotiables when it comes to that side of the ball.
“Other than I want us to be really, really aggressive and I want to force the issue on the other team,” he said.
On the offensive side things will be simpler in the sense that Rodriguez still plans to call plays, but he will need to assemble a strong staff around him there as well. The West Virginia native understands all too well the importance that the program has to the people of the state and wants his staff to resemble that.
“There are a lot of people that wanted this job, because it’s a great job and I’ve been in these shoes before,” Rodriguez said.
----------
• Talk about it with West Virginia fans on The Blue Lot.
• SUBSCRIBE today to stay up on the latest on Mountaineer sports and recruiting.
• Get all of our WVU videos on YouTube by subscribing to the WVSports.com Channel
• Follow us on Twitter: @WVSportsDotCom, @rivalskeenan, @wesleyshoe
