Rich Rodriguez: College football is a business now

For better or worse, college football isn’t even pretending anymore that it’s not a major business.

Don’t want to take my word for it? 

Let West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez address the topic when he was asked about season ticket sales and the number being over the 30,000 plateau. 

“I’d like for us to break the record because we’re a business now. Going forward every coach here, every athletic director – we’re now running a business,” Rodriguez said. “We don’t want to go bankrupt running a business.”

That’s not to say it wasn’t a business before but with the approval of the House Settlement paving the way for college programs to share revenue with the players it’s never been more out in the open with coaches and administrators. The word transactional is often thrown around and essentially that is what college sports have become with the changes. 

The Mountaineers are expected to be fully invested in revenue sharing with over $15 million expected to be distributed to the football team alone. 

In some ways the shift in approach could benefit the West Virginia football program as the Mountaineers have the advantage of being the biggest draw in a small state. Also the guard rails of the settlement attempts to put players more on an even playing field. 

“We’re in a good position because we’re kind of the only deal in the whole state,” Rodriguez said.

But with that comes the responsibility of making sound decisions at every turn and running the football program exactly like the big business that it is. That is going to take some adjustments but in some ways major college football has already been operating in that fashion without being so open.

“Make good business decisions, hire the right people, including the right players, make the right decisions and if you make the wrong ones correct it in a hurry,” Rodriguez said. “And we’ll be fine.”

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