On the surface, it seems as though a coach coming from a school like Jax State, which competed in Conference USA this past season, would be unfamiliar with the landscape of the Big 12.
For new WVU head coach Rich Rodriguez, that is anything but the case.
"I don’t know from the football standpoint ability wise or schematic wise it’s a whole lot different, it’s just the difference in the location," Rodriguez said of the differences between the Big East and Big 12.
Back during the first term of Rodriguez's tenure at West Virginia, the Mountaineers were in the Big East. Rodriguez says the new iteration of the Big 12 has a lot of similar traits, but the locations of schools are just different.
"Some of those schools in the Big East, most of those schools you’re competing against, you usually compete against them in recruiting and all of that back then because everybody was in the same region. And recruiting was different. Now, everybody is everywhere, but so is recruiting is everywhere because of the transfer portal, so that’s a little bit different," Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez also has somewhat of an advantage due to the time he spent at Arizona as their head coach. With the Big 12 expanding, many former Pac-12 schools are now in the Big 12. These include Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah, from the Pac-12, as well as BYU, which is also on the west coast.
"It was kind of unique when I was talking to Wren about that and looking at the Big 12 I was like, I’m more familiar with these teams than maybe any other league because of my time in the Pac-12. You’re talking about Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, even played BYU a couple times. So, I probably know those programs and know those regions, know how they recruit, at least how they’ve recruited in the past more than any other league," Rodriguez said.
In Rodriguez's six seasons as the head coach of Arizona, he played current Big 12 teams 21 times. In those games, he went a combined 12-9, while he was 4-3 against those teams when they were ranked. His best finish in the Pac-12 was a 7-2 conference record in 2014.
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