Nick Saban on Rich Rodriguez’s return to West Virginia: ‘The right guy’

In an alternate universe, Rich Rodriguez accepted the Alabama head football job in 2006 and Nick Saban never won six national championships in Tuscaloosa. Instead, Rodriguez turned down the Crimson Tide and, after several coaching stops, ended up right back at West Virginia and left Jacksonville State to accept his old job this week.

On Friday, Saban showed up ESPN’s Pat McAfee Showand praises the hiring of his home state’s flagship program.

“I’m glad Rich is back and I think he’s going to do a great job there,” Saban said. “Being a West Virginia person, he grew up about six or seven miles from where I grew up, and I’m glad he came back. And he had a lot of success there in the past. Obviously, coaching good players like (McAfee) helped him do that, but other than that, we’re just excited for him.

Born and raised in West Virginia, Saban grew up in Monongah. He attended Mountaineer games as a youth and worked as an assistant coach at WVU in the 1970s.

The former Alabama head coach, who now works as an analyst for ESPN’s College Gameday, along with McAfee, said he spoke with West Virginia athletic director Wren Baker during the coaching search.

“I just talked to Wren a couple of times about who was the best fit, who was the best fit for West Virginia,” Saban said. “It’s not just about coaching knowledge or what your record was in some other parts of the country, but how do you fit? How do you think? How will you relate to the people? Will you be able to recruit the kind of players you need to compete against the competition and dominate the competition? And I think Rich is the right guy to do that.”

Rodriguez left WVU after the 2007 season to take the Michigan job, but was fired after the 2010 season. He took over in Arizona in 2012 but was fired amid a cloud of scandal following the 2017 campaign.

He took over Jacksonville State in 2021 and helped transition the Gamecocks from the FCS to the FBS. JSU won the Conference USA title this season and will finish the year in the Cure Bowl, without Rodriguez.

Saban praised Rodriguez’s football mind Friday.

“He came to visit us a couple of times at Alabama when I coached there,” Saban said. “Was very helpful and beneficial to our staff. He’s a great mind and he was an innovator in the game. I mean, everybody does zone reads now like it’s nothing, but he invented it.”

The former Alabama coach also offered some press conference advice to Rodriguez as he prepared to be introduced in Morgantown.

“His message has to be that he made a huge mistake when he left and the biggest thing that ever happened to him was to get the opportunity to come back,” Saban said.