West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez says Alabama’s dynasty might never have happened if he had taken the head coaching job in 2006. Here’s what he revealed.
Current West Virginia Coach Rich Rodriguez Reflects on 2006 Alabama Job Offer
Rich Rodriguez is beginning his second stint in charge of West Virginia, hoping his Mountaineers will be even remotely as successful as they were during his first. In a sit-down interview with CBS Sports’ Josh Pate on Wednesday, Rodriguez revisited his decision not to take over for Alabama in 2006.
“Where’s my trophy in Tuscaloosa? Where’s my statue outside there? Because if I had gone there you probably wouldn’t have those six national championships.”@WVUfootball head coach Rich Rodriguez spoke w/ @JoshPateCFB about being in running for the Alabama job back in 2006 pic.twitter.com/8zaLMCduSR
— CBS Sports College Football 🏈 (@CBSSportsCFB) April 30, 2025
Pate recalled listening to the radio and hearing the news that Rodriguez was close to taking over at Alabama. Pate was impressed with the news, though the partnership fell through when Rodriguez chose to remain in Morgantown.
“I think, ‘Man, Rodriguez has killed it at West Virginia. How did Alabama pull that off?'” Pate said. “And then, a few hours later, ‘Maybe not so fast.’ And then, fast forward, Nick Saban takes the job. Everyone knows how that turns out.”
Saban turned the Crimson Tide into a powerhouse, the standard of the sport for a decade and a half. Rodriguez jokingly takes credit for some of that program’s success.
“Obviously, with Coach Saban’s success, you know, the greatest college football coach ever — not even questioning that — and how that thing kind of went full-circle,” Rodriguez said. “That’s what I tell everybody. I say, ‘Remember, I didn’t go to Alabama the year before.’ It was some of the things that happened then that (kept) me here came up later on, too, one year later.”
“I used to always tell a story, I said, ‘Where’s my trophy in Tuscaloosa? Where’s my statue outside there? Because if I had gone there, you probably wouldn’t have had those six national championships and all that.”
Rodriguez acknowledged the domino effect that such a decision can have on multiple programs. He wound up taking the helm at Michigan from 2008-10, putting up an uninspiring 15-22 mark in Ann Arbor. Before landing back with the Mountaineers, he was also the head coach at Arizona (2012-17) and Jacksonville State (2022-24) and had stops as an assistant at Ole Miss (2019) and Louisiana Monroe (2021).
Before coordinating Louisiana Monroe’s offense for that one go-round, thoughts of the rear-view of his sideline career crept up.
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“I had a month or two before I went there, like, ‘Okay, let’s reflect on what this career has been, where I wanna go forward with it,” Rodriguez said. “I finally just said, ‘You know, let’s not worry about the past. Let’s be as good as we can be today, be better tomorrow, and then see where it takes us. That’s what led me here, I think.”
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