College coaches are again adapting to a new world, as the approval of the House Settlement case allows student-athletes, among other things, to receive revenue-sharing payments from their respective universities.
West Virginia director of athletics Wren Baker has said numerous times that WVU plans on providing the maximum rev-share allotment permitted – $20.5 million per year. Mountaineer football will get a lion’s share of that money. Though Baker hasn’t revealed the exact proportions for each spot, football is expected to receive between 70% ($14.35 million) and 80% ($16.4 million) of the $20.5 million total.
On top of rev-share, there will still be NIL opportunities for student-athletes, but that outside money is supposed to reflect “valid business purposes” for that individual’s branding services (endorsements, camps, etc.) and not what has passed for NIL in recent years, where quasi-legal pay-for-play money was funneled to college athletes by boosters through collectives.
Rich Rodriguez, who is in his first season back at WVU as the Mountaineers’ head football coach, says he likes the fact that there are now some rules in terms of payments to student-athletes in comparison to the wild, wild west world that had previously existed, at least since NIL was legalized by the NCAA in 2021.
“A lot better guardrails than a month ago,” stated Rodriguez of the House Settlement, which went into effect on July 1. “I mean, it was a cluster for the last three or four years. All coaches were complaining about it because it was just a mess, and nobody knew how to really solve it right away.
I still think we got it a lot better now with the cap and the rev-share, but there’s still a lot of work to do. I’m giving you my opinion, but until we get some Congressional help from D.C. and get more guardrails on the deal, it’s still going to be a little bit of a cluster. It is a heck of a lot better than it was a month ago, though.
“College athletics and college football is such a great entity,” continued Rodriguez, who also served as West Virginia’s head coach from 2001-07. “It’s kind of hard to screw it up. We did everything we could in the last four or five years to try to do that. But you can’t really screw it up too much because of the passion for college athletics, especially college football. Hopefully, smarter minds than mine will get that together.
“I think they need to give the college athletic directors more input and more say-so in how college athletics are going to be run because these are the guys and the ladies who know what’s best for the schools and what’s best for college athletics. I do think we’re in a better place now than we were a month ago. There’s still some work to be done, but you know, we as coaches could complain, but hell, it’s still a pretty good gig.”
A native of Grant Town, West Virginia, and a 1985 graduate of WVU, Rodriguez is in his 40th year of college coaching. During those four decades, he’s served as the head coach at six different schools – Salem in 1988, Glenville State from 1990-96, WVU from 2001-07, Michigan from 2008-10, Arizona from 2012-17, Jacksonville State from 2022-24 and WVU again in 2025.
Though he turned 62 a couple of months ago, coaching football still is Rodriguez’s passion.
“It’s a lot easier than working in a coal mine or digging a ditch, you know what I mean?” chuckled the 1981 North Marion (W.Va.) High grad. “I’ve always loved coaching. I started off at the Division II level, and you’re not taking those jobs for money or fame or anything like that. You’re taking a job because you love coaching and you love being around athletics.
“I still get in the middle of everything that we do on offense and defense and special teams because I love the game first off, but I also love coaching guys and seeing guys go from what level they’re at right now to another level and watching them grow as players and helping them along the way. That’s still my greatest thrill.
“There’s nothing like a winning locker room in football because there are so many people who did so much in order for you to have success and that winning locker room you see everybody hugging each other and high fiving each other and all that kind of stuff and that that’s kind of the thrill that keeps me going.”
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