The West Virginia Mountaineers are still searching for a new football coach after firing Neal Brown after the regular season wrapped up.
We know that Penn State offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki is staying put in State College, but the other big name would be a potential reunion with Rich Rodriguez, who is currently the head coach at Jacksonville State.
On Tuesday night at the Sports Business Journal’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, West Virginia President Gordon Gee was asked about bringing back Rodriguez, and the WVU President said, per Action Network‘s Brett McMurphy, “I think he would be well received by a large set of our population. He left in a very unruling matter. If he were to come back it would have to be as a prodigial son. Can he come back? I don’t know. I’ve come back twice.”
Rodriguez was the head coach at WVU From 2001 to 2007, winning 32 games his last three seasons, before taking the Michigan job. He was fired after three seasons and a 6-18 record in the Big Ten. That was followed by six seasons of mostly mediocrity with the Arizona Wildcats, which included admitting to an extramarital affair and sexual misconduct allegations in a lawsuit that was eventually dropped.
Rodriguez bounced around in coordinator and analyst roles before taking the Jacksonville State job in November of 2021, where he’s had a resurgence as a head coach. Whether or not that’s enough to get him back to Morgantown remains to be seen.
But as Gee noted about himself, he’s come back twice, so why not Rich Rod?
Most recently, a dark horse name that has appeared in various reports is Army head coach Jeff Monken.
Monken has won everywhere he’s been, including this season at Army where he’s 11-1 (8-0) as they prepare for their annual match up with Navy this weekend before taking on Marshall in the Independence Bowl. Monken led the Black Knights to the American Athletic Conference title with a 35-14 win over Tulane on Friday night.
Monken is in his 11th season with Army after spending four seasons at Georgia Southern, where he went 38-16, including three seasons of double digits wins. At Army, he’s won at least 10 games in three seasons with the Black Knights.
