Rich Rodriguez has a plan for how he will go about the transfer portal and roster construction.
Rodriguez appeared as a guest on MetroNews Talkline where he was asked about the transfer portal and the ins and outs since he inherited the West Virginia football program.
The veteran head coach said that he has tried to meet with all of the players on the current roster in order to tell them what the program is going to be about and how they’re in great position to help them career wise, football wise, academically and financially.
“But I’m not going to beg them,” he said.
Rodriguez said that if players want to exit the program and chase potential opportunities, that’s fine as he will go into the portal and target another player. It’s not something that he panics about in large part because he has experience doing this at Jacksonville State where they had to replace 60 players last season including nine starters but were able to put together a roster that won the Conference USA Championship.
“I’ll go get another one. I don’t panic about it, I know a lot of folks sometimes panic, this guy entered the portal – there’s a lot of good players out there. I don’t want to lose any of our good players but it’s inevitable and it happens. If they do that, I’ll go find one myself in the portal,” he said.
Rodriguez did acknowledge that it’s disappointing that players get bad advice to go into the transfer portal at times, but his focus will be on replacing those that depart to other places.
In the immediate future, Rodriguez said that he wants to try to get some players on campus this weekend due to the dead period that goes into effect from Dec. 23 until Jan. 1 for transfers that plan to enroll at mid-year. The dead period will be lifted for all players Jan. 6.
He did mention the possibility of there being some players that elect to follow him from Jacksonville State but overall Rodriguez wants to make sure he is doing it right.
“But the biggest thing and this goes back to recruiting is it’s not the players that you don’t get that hurt you, it’s the one that you take that can’t play that kill you. So, we’ve got to make sure we take the right ones, so I don’t want to rush it,” Rodriguez said.
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