How West Virginia is building its roster under Rich Rodriguez
College football recruiting has changed dramatically over the last several years and at the center of that evolution is the growing importance of the general manager position.
That role has become critical at West Virginia under head coach Rich Rodriguez and general manager Chuck Lillie as the Mountaineers continue reshaping the roster entering the 2026 season.
Lillie recently joined the 3 Guys Before The Game podcast and provided a detailed look into how the Mountaineers are approaching roster construction in today’s college football landscape.
A different approach in Year 2
The biggest key?
Balance.
“I think the way that coach wants to run this, and I agree with this wholeheartedly is, let’s just acquire the best players that we can, wherever we can get them,” Lillie said.
That philosophy applies across every avenue available in modern recruiting, including high school prospects, transfer portal additions and retaining current players already on the roster.
While many programs have leaned heavily into the transfer portal, Lillie made it clear that West Virginia wants to avoid becoming overly dependent on one method of roster building.
“The biggest part of it is making sure that your retention plans are strong,” he said. “There’s a reason those guys are available, good or bad, so making sure you do your homework and understand who it is that you’re bringing into your building.”
That approach is noticeably different from the situation West Virginia faced immediately after Rodriguez returned to Morgantown.
Because the previous recruiting cycle was already far along, the coaching staff had to aggressively attack the portal simply to field a roster.
“We signed something like 28 guys in the next 21 days,” Lillie said. “It was a madhouse.”
The Mountaineers eventually signed roughly 40 portal additions during that initial cycle, creating a roster heavy on seniors and short-term fixes.
“You don’t ever want to be that top-heavy,” Lillie admitted.
Now with a full recruiting cycle completed, West Virginia believes it has a much healthier overall structure entering Year 2 under Rodriguez.
“I think we have a lot more of a well-balanced roster this year,” he said.
Managing a modern college football roster
That balance also extends to the financial side of college football, where programs now essentially operate with salary cap-style roster management due to NIL compensation.
Lillie described one of his primary responsibilities as “salary cap management” while making sure WVU uses its available resources as strategically as possible.
West Virginia’s approach differs from some schools that allocate strict dollar amounts to high school recruiting or the transfer portal.
Instead, the Mountaineers focus on value and fit.
“We need to be true to our evaluation model,” Lillie said. “We kind of have an internal system built out to say, all right, we’re grading this player as X, Y, Z and based on their correlating position, this is what we’ve figured this price range to be.”
The staff also believes transparency has become critical in the current recruiting landscape.
“The more honest, transparent conversations that you can have, the easier it is,” Lillie said.
Those conversations often determine very quickly whether West Virginia realistically fits into a recruitment.
“Sometimes that’ll lead to really good conversations. Sometimes it takes you out of the running for a player,” he said.
More than just money
Despite the growing financial side of recruiting, Lillie believes relationships, development and fit still matter significantly in decisions.
“I think for the most part, it’s still all the nuts and bolts of, okay, what type of locker room am I walking into? Do I like the campus? Do I like my coach? Does this scheme fit me?” he said.
Lillie also pointed to player development and the game-day atmosphere in Morgantown as major selling points for the program.
“We got, I think what our capacity is 60,000, they sell out every time and the fans are going from the opening kick to the end of the game,” he said.
Lillie believes the overall environment gives West Virginia a strong foundation moving forward.
“This will be a place that everybody wants to play at,” he said.
Building for sustained success
The result is a roster-building strategy that blends analytics, evaluation, retention and targeted portal additions while trying to avoid short-term panic moves.
Instead of simply chasing the portal each offseason, the Mountaineers appear focused on building a roster that can sustain success over multiple years.
Now the next step is translating that structure into wins on the field.
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