By: Shanna Rose
MORGANTOWN, W.Va.–Despite being a new addition to the football staff, Rhett Rodriguez is no stranger to the West Virginia football program.
In fact, Rodriguez spent much of his childhood around the Mountaineer football program and the players. From a young age, coaching was ingrained in the head coach’s son and he used to suggest plays from his dad’s playbook to his high school coach.
“I probably drove him crazy with all those things, like, ‘you know, we do this play, can we put that in?’” Rodriguez said. “He was like, ‘Rhett, you’ll get there eventually.’”
And indeed he did.
Head football coach Rich Rodriguez named Rhett to his coaching staff this January as the quarterbacks coach, where he will work beside a familiar face that he grew up with, Pat White.
“It’s awesome to sit in meeting rooms with Pat and have him drop some wisdom here and there,” Rodriguez said. “He’s always got some good things to say. “
Some people may question the move since this is Rhett’s first coaching gig. However, he comes from a football family and has grown up learning his father’s offense.
“I’ve been around our football programs, all the places we’ve been to,” Rhett said. “So sometimes I know what he’s looking for and I’m able to kind of read between the lines of the message he’s trying to share.”
Last season, the Morgantown native served as an offensive analyst for his father at Jacksonville State.
Prior to that, Rhett’s life was much different. He was a quarterback at Louisiana-Monroe, in the Sunbelt Conference, in 2021 and at Arizona, in the Pac-12 Conference, from 2017-20.
After college football, Rhett was a business associate for Northern Trust in Tempe, Arizona. However, that wasn’t fully satisfying for the former quarterback.
With some persuading from his father, Rhett decided it was time for a change.
“Well, I said, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be in this,” Rich Rodriguez said. “But you have one advantage. You’ve kind of got some connections. You have better connections than when I started.”
While business may seem like a completely different world than coaching, Rhett has found his business background to be very beneficial.
“That helped translate over to where having a phone call with an 18-year-old recruit is a lot easier than with someone who has been a financial advisor in a suit for 30 years,” he said.
Rhett still has a lot to learn but he will be doing it alongside his father for the foreseeable future.
“I don’t know if he doesn’t know it better than me, but he’s right there with it,” Rich said.
Photo Credit: WVU Athletics
