West Virginia football is undergoing a complete rebrand with a new coach, players and staff. It won’t look anything like the team from the previous couple of years under Neal Brown.

Most of Brown’s players have left, and Rich Rodriguez has completely rebuilt the roster, adding over 50 new players through the transfer portal, and the big three sportsbooks have noticed.

However, it hasn’t been for the better. Rodriguez was brought in to bring West Virginia back to the top of the college football world, where it was when he left in 2007.

The sportsbooks don’t think highly of Rodriguez and the Mountaineers as May starts up.

DraftKings and FanDuel have West Virginia’s win total line set to 5.5 and are favoring the under. ESPN Bet has the Mountaineers’ win total set at 4.5, but favors the over a little. So, the sportsbooks predict that West Virginia will have five wins after the regular season concludes, which is one of the lowest totals in the Big 12.

Last season, West Virginia won six regular-season games, so five isn’t far off, but the books are expecting the Mountaineers to take a step back. It’s very possible West Virginia doesn’t get six wins this season with the change, but the Mountaineers have a favorable schedule.

There are some tougher teams lined up like last year’s conference winner, Arizona State, and the expensive Texas Tech roster, but there are a lot of winnable games. Along with the favorable out-of-conference games like Robert Morris, Pitt and Ohio, West Virginia faces four Big 12 teams, who finished last year below .500, and who were below the Mountaineers in the standings.

There is a lot of unknown with this year’s team. There are a lot of players who joined the team in the spring, and everyone, except for the Jacksonville State transfers, who played for Rodriguez last year, don’t know the system, effecting the total.

West Virginia’s odds of winning the conference put it above more teams compared to the win totals. DraftKings has the Mountaineers with the second-worst odds to win the conference, and ESPN Bet and FanDuel have them tied for a more improved fifth-last. It’s still not top tier like the favorites Kansas State and Texas Tech, but it’s better than the regular season win totals.

To win the conference, West Virginia would have to have the second-best conference win total, which was 7-2 last year, and then beat the top-seeded team. Although West Virginia is higher up in odds to win the conference, the odds for over 5.5 wins is way less than the +3,000 for them to win the Big 12.

It’ll be more interesting when the season gets closer, the odds for West Virginia’s alternate win totals.

For those curious, in all three books, there are 30-plus teams ahead of the Mountaineers to win the National Championship, and they are tied with a lot of teams in the thirties.

A new coach looks to turn a program around, but it’s hard to do that in the first year. It was done last year with Indiana and Curt Cignetti, but that was rare. Most of the time, the first season is a placeholder to build momentum for the future. It’s clear the sportsbooks expect that to be the case for West Virginia.

There’s a lot of time before the start of the season in August, with more transfers to add and roster moves to make, so the total can shift for the better. After spring ball has concluded, though, the books don’t have the 2025 season looking successful.