West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez on the sidelines during the second half of an NCAA college football game against BYU, Friday, Oct. 3, 2025, in Provo, Utah. (AP Photo/Tyler Tate)

Sunday, the college football was shaken up when West Virginia’s neighboring school, and rival, Penn State announced it fired head coach James Franklin after 12 seasons.

At the start of 2025, Franklin led the Nittany Lions to the College Football Playoff Semifinals, where they were just one play shy of making the National Championship.

A couple of months later, Penn State was ranked No. 2 in the Associated Press Poll to start the preseason, creating a lot of hype around the program. After six games, Penn State went 3-3, losing its last three games, which included winless UCLA and a mediocre Northwestern team at home this past Saturday.

Now, Franklin is a free agent and a top candidate for any head coach opening around the country.

After the news of his firing, the graphics and AI pictures started flying, which included wild takes such as former WVU coach Neal Brown as the next PSU coach. But the interesting one was James Franklin as Rich Rodriguez’s offensive coordinator.

Franklin’s obviously not going to take a massive step down and coach under Rodriguez, but it brought up the fact that WVU doesn’t have an offensive coordinator. Has that been the right decision?

Rodriguez serves as the team’s playcaller and acts as the OC, with the closest staff member to an OC being Travis Trickett, who was one at South Florida and Coastal Carolina. Now, he’s an offensive assistant, and his role is to help Rodriguez with the offense.

Trickett is up in the box during the game as well.

Rodriguez rolling without an OC isn’t something new. Rodriguez started his first tenure at WVU in 2001 without an OC until the late Calvin Magee was promoted from running backs coach to OC in 2005.

From there, Rodriguez had an OC at every stop. Magee traveled with Rodriguez to Michigan. At Arizona, Rodriguez had Rod Smith, who was the co-offensive coordinator. Magee joined that staff in 2012 as a co-offensive coordinator, too. Magee headed with Rodriguez to Jacksonville State until he passed away from a heart attack. Smith was back as the OC and promoted to interim head coach when Rodriguez returned to WVU.

Now, Rodriguez doesn’t have one.

Through six games, the Rodriguez-led offense has been the biggest flaw with this team. The Mountaineers are 15th in the Big 12 in points per game, last in passing, 13th in yards per game, and the worst third-down conversion percentage. WVU is actually 127th in the country in third-down percentage.

There have been injuries. Rodriguez is working without his starting star running back, Jahiem White, WR2 Jaden Bray is out for the year, and his best passer, Nicco Marchiol, doesn’t look to be coming back anytime soon. He’s also working for a make-shift offensive line and injuries there, too.

A lot of schools are dealing with injuries, so it isn’t too much of an excuse. The offense hasn’t executed like it should, especially for an offensive-minded head coach that’s been an OC or an assistant at Clemson, Ole Miss, and Louisiana-Monroe.

It begs the question that maybe Rodriguez should have an OC, taking some of the workload off his plate, so he can entirely focus on bringing back WVU to where he left it in 2007.

If the offense keeps up this trajectory, it could be a move Rodriguez makes in the future to help out, but we’ll have to see. After this year, where there’s so much change, it’s hard to tell if that could be a possibility and if the offensive struggles are just growing pains.