2025 Preseason Herbie Awards: Rich Rodriguez named best head coach hire

On Friday, ESPN College GameDay host Kirk Herbstreit unveiled his highly-anticipated preseason Herbie Award winners. During the show, Herbstreit named West Virginia‘s Rich Rodriguez the best head coach hire this offseason.

“We know what Rich Rod is going to do,” Herbstreit said. “He’s going to be a lot of fun. And, boy, they got a huge game in Week 3. They need to beat Ohio early, but Week 3, the Backyard Brawl against Pitt at home — I can only imagine what that scene will be like

“I’m just so just fired up. It would have been easy to pick Bill Belichick, obviously, but I think just throwing some attention to what they did in West Virginia is very, very deserving.”

When West Virginia fired head coach Neal Brown after the 2024 campaign, there was no shortage of directions the program could’ve gone. However, in a move few people saw coming, WVU ultimately decided to look to its past to improve its future.

Rodriguez was West Virginia’s head coach from 2001-07. During his time at the helm of the program, Rodriguez led the Mountaineers to a 60-28 overall record and a 34-14 mark in conference play.

More impressive, West Virginia won four Big East championships during Rodriguez’s tenure. For reference, West Virginia has only won or shared a conference championship 15 times. Thus, Rodriguez accounted for nearly a third of the program’s conference titles in just six seasons.

After the 2007 season, Rich Rodriguez left West Virginia to take over at Michigan. However, he never forgot his time in Morgantown and leapt at the opportunity to take the reins at WVU again when given the opportunity. Now, he’s ready to return his beloved Mountaineers to their former heights.

“Typically in a new job it takes six to 12 months to start to feel comfortable, but for me here, it probably took six minutes,” Rodriguez said. “A lot of the same people are in place. The facilities have definitely been upgraded, but it was an easy transition.

“… We filled in with a bunch of transfers, but we also feel we have a handful of really good high school guys. Next year will probably be more high school guys than transfer guys, but we’re just looking for the best players we can get who fit our culture and fit WVU. I was really pleased with what we were able to get going into our first season.”