West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez reacts after a touchdown against Pittsburgh during the first half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025, in Morgantown, W.Va. (AP Photo/Kathleen Batten)

West Virginia lost to UCF 45-13 in a winnable game for the Mountaineers. Winnable, because UCF was in a similar situation to WVU. Both had first-year head coaches, who returned to their first home, and had completely new rosters stitched together with transfers. However, UCF looked like it was in a completely different league than the Mountaineers.

Fans began to wonder, ‘Why is UCF so much better than WVU?’ Rich Rodriguez will stop you right there.

“That’s the problem,” Rodriguez said. “It’s like ‘Oh, gosh. They’re struggling. We’re struggling. Their first year. Our first year.’ We played awful. They played better. We got a lot of things to fix, but I’m not going at it in totality and say, “Oh gosh, they’re going to be, we can’t fix our problem, and we’re that far behind them.’ You can think that way. I’m not, and our players aren’t, and our program is not.”

There are many problems involving the Xs and Os, and it could take a while to list them all out, but there’s one overarching problem that hasn’t been solved or established: WVU’s culture.

In the eight months leading up to the start of the season, Rodriguez talked about culture in almost every press conference, and his motto was going to be playing with a “Hard Edge.” The hard edge, which was described by multiple assistant coaches and players, is playing tough no matter what and being physical.

“You won’t have one player loafing, or one player taking a play off, or one player being soft at one time,” Rodriguez said. “He might be a freshman playing for the first time, but by the time he gets into the game, he’ll know that from the other players. ‘Hey, that’s not how we do stuff.’ That’s probably the disappointing thing that we’ve got to get corrected as coaches. How we played in that game, effort-wise and competitiveness-wise.”

WVU is 2-5 on the season and has lost its last four games by an average of 27 points. The team hasn’t looked competitive.

After the losses and lopsided scores, Rodriguez said WVU still has a ways to go when it comes to establishing the culture.

“That’s the part, that you think you have it,” Rodriguez said. “I think you have to play a whole season. But I thought we were further with that. Unfortunately, I haven’t done a good job of getting that to where we want to. I don’t think it’s that it is as far off as maybe it looks.”

There could be a couple of reasons why the culture hasn’t been established. Rodriguez mentioned injuries, bad luck and missed evaluations. The main reason, though, is coaching, and Rodriguez is taking accountability.

“I am evaluating everything and everything to do with our football program,” Rodriguez said. “Starting with myself and the staff, and then the players and everything else that we need to do to have success.”

It’s just crazy because just a little over 40 days ago, Morgantown was on top of the world after beating Pitt. Everyone was excited because Rodriguez was back, and the expectations even got higher for this season. Since WVU’s lost four games, and as Rodriguez called it “the bottom.”

The Pitt game gave the WVU fanbase and coaching staff a false sense that the culture and program were integrated.

“Maybe after the Pitt game, you thought it was there,” Rodriguez said. “It really wasn’t. It was there to some degree, but not ingrained in everything in the program like it needs to be.”

At 2-5, the season might seem lost, especially with TCU up this weekend, who is 5-2. Fans are already thinking twice about the Rodriguez hire, and with another loss? The minority might be a majority. He knows that. Rodriguez is not giving up hope and is still working on implementing the hard edge into his program.

“I’m still convinced we’re going to win big and have great success,” Rodriguez said.

“It may not happen as fast as I want it to, but we’re putting the pieces together. It’s just painfully obvious that it’s taken us a little longer.”