A huge piece of news dropped yesterday as WVU approved an additional 140 athletic scholarships, bringing the entire department to 400, placing them near the very top of the Big 12 Conference. Of the new scholarships, the football program will receive 16 of them, bringing the overall number to 101.
Friday morning, head coach Rich Rodriguez released a statement, thanking everyone involved in the process.
“The West Virginia football program would like to thank President Benson, the Board of Governors, and Wren Baker for their continued support and confidence by giving our program additional scholarships. If you want to compete at the highest level, you have to make an investment financially. I’m blessed that we’re aligned here and that we have great support.”
With scholarship limits now a thing of the past, it's up to each university as to how many scholarships they want to fund. This is a huge deal for the football program as it gives them a better chance of landing better talent for the so-called "bottom" of the roster, creating quality depth. This also allows the pursuit of over-the-cap NIL deals to be amplified, since they won't be spending nearly as much time trying to help out those who weren't on scholarship.
During a recent appearance on the 3 Guys Before the Game podcast, WVU athletic director Wren Baker discussed his faith in the football team's future.
"We’re still probably going to be looking for a good number of players more than we would like to this upcoming year, but it won’t be 80 players. And you’ll know and have evaluated the players that you retained and that are in your program. I think we’ll be in much better shape. I understand the frustration, but I feel really good that we are laying a foundation that is going to allow us to build something really special, compete at a high level, and that we have the right people in place to do that.”
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Schuyler Callihan is the publisher of West Virginia On SI and has been a trusted source covering the Mountaineers since 2016. He is the host of Between The Eers, The Walk Thru Game Day Show, and In the Gun Podcast. The Wheeling, WV native moved to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2020 to cover the Charlotte Hornets and Carolina Panthers.
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