Rich Rodriguez 'loved' time at Arizona, 'excited about' 2nd stint at West Virginia

FRISCO, Texas — The final session of Big 12 Media Days at Ford Center had several UA connections besides the current Wildcats, including former Arizona offensive coordinator and Mike Stoops-era assistant coach Sonny Dykes, who’s entering his fifth season as TCU’s head coach.

Former Arizona athletics communication staffers Matt Ensor, now the Big 12’s senior director of communications, and Daniel Berk, Kansas’ director of football communications, assisted with media day operations.

The most popular ex-Wildcat was West Virginia head coach and former Arizona boss Rich Rodriguez, who’s back at WVU for a second stint.

Rodriguez went 60-26 in seven seasons at West Virginia from 2001-07 and led the Mountaineers to four Big East championships. Before West Virginia’s win over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl to end the 2007 season, Rodriguez left for the same role at Michigan, where he was 15-22 in three seasons.

Rodriguez replaced Stoops and was hired by Arizona in 2012 and led the Wildcats to five postseason appearances and three bowl victories — and a Pac-12 South championship.

Rodriguez was fired by Arizona following the 2017 season, but quickly returned to the sidelines as an offensive coordinator at Ole Miss and head coach at Louisiana Monroe and Jacksonville State in Alabama.

Following a 27-10 record at Jacksonville State, along with West Virginia firing Neal Brown, the stars aligned for Rodriguez’s return to WVU, his first Power 4 head coaching gig since Arizona.

“I think if I didn’t win at Jacksonville State the last three years, I wouldn’t have had this opportunity,” Rodriguez said. “I think we’re better (coaches) than we were back then.”

This time, West Virginia is in the Big 12, the same conference as Rodriguez’s old stomping grounds, which also produced his son, former Arizona and Catalina Foothills quarterback Rhett Rodriguez, who’s WVU’s quarterbacks coach.

“Probably after a couple weeks on the job and I started looking at our league, I was like, I know at least half the programs in our league from the Pac-12 days, whether it’s Utah, Colorado, Arizona schools — played \ BYU a couple of times,” Rodriguez said. “There’s some familiarity with that. But in this day and age in college athletics, like I said, everything is a little bit different now.”

Over seven years since his firing, Rodriguez has no qualms with Arizona. The Wildcats and Mountaineers don’t face each other this season, but West Virginia will host Arizona in Morgantown in 2026.

“I loved our time in Arizona,” Rodriguez said. “It seems like, at least for myself, and some of our staff, we’ve been on this journey for 15 to 20 years or so. As fate would have it, we’re back in Morgantown.

“I know Arizona’s not on our schedule this year. They will be in the next couple years. I know that’ll be an emotional time as well, but I enjoyed our time there. But we’re back home at West Virginia, so I’m pretty excited about that.”

Big 12 partners with Venmo, PayPal

As the college athletics world evolves around the financial components of revenue sharing and NIL, the Big 12 is taking an initiative to make it an efficient process.

The Big 12 announced its partnership with Venmo and PayPal, globally popular mobile payment services, “to ensure that when we’re moving money, we do it in the most secure, safe way possible,” said Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark.

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“No one better than PayPal (and) Venmo,” said Yormark.

Big 12 athletes will now have the option to receive revenue share and NIL payments through PayPal’s hyper wallet system, which Yormark said was first used by West Virginia on July 1, when revenue share went into effect in the wake of the House vs. NCAA settlement. This year, each FBS school can pay its athletes $20.5 million in revenue share, with NIL payments that exceed $600 getting screened by Deloitte.

PayPal, which was founded in 1998, processes “25% of the global e-commerce market,” PayPal CMO Geoff Seeley said at Big 12 Media Days.

“That is trillions of dollars,” said Seeley. “If there’s one thing that we know how to do, it’s to make payments happen safely and securely. In this new age of college athletics, with the money that’s in the environment right now, it’s critical Brett finds a partner that can facilitate that and the athletes feel comfortable with that. This is a marriage made in heaven on both sides.”

TCU women’s basketball player Olivia Miles — one of three Big 12 athletes to be Venmo brand ambassadors, along with Arizona State quarterback Sam Leavitt and Texas Tech softball star NiJaree Canady — said Venmo “is just a seamless transaction, whether it’s everyday items or bigger transactions.”

“NIL provided a lot more financial stability for me and that’s why I ultimately decided to stay in college and do one more year, just because of the opportunities that it brought,” Miles said.

When Yormark first took over as Big 12 commissioner three years ago, “we wanted to partner with big brands that can make a difference in our ecosystem, support our student-athletes, because at the end of the day, at the core of what we do, is to support our student-athletes,” he said.

“We are a conference of innovation,” Yormark said. “We want to reimagine how business is done in this ecosystem. When (House) settlement was upon us, it was a natural fit to partner with PayPal and Venmo. When you think about PayPal and Venmo and their business, they have over 400 million customers across the globe, both consumers and merchants. They have the first and second most popular payment app in the U.S. ... The question would be, why wouldn’t we partner?”

Numbers game

4: In partnership with the Big 12, WWE will have four “Friday Night SmackDown” events in Big 12 markets the night before games. The first Friday Night SmackDown will be in Dublin, Ireland, on Aug. 22 before the Kansas State-Iowa State matchup — also known as “Farmaggedon” — on Aug. 23. Friday Night SmackDown will also be in Cincinnati (Oct. 3), Tempe (Oct. 24) and Salt Lake City (Oct. 31) this season.

5: Arizona will face the top five Big 12 teams from last season in 2025 — ASU, Iowa State, BYU, Colorado and Baylor; they went a combined 50-17 in ‘24.

7: Between the 2025 and ’26 recruiting classes, the Wildcats have brought in seven high school players from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including freshman quarterback Sawyer Anderson, who holds DFW high school records with 14,674 yards and 158 touchdowns. The Wildcats have four commits from the Dallas area in ‘26.

21: Both Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy and Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham are entering their 21st season at their respective schools.

31: The Big 12 produced 31 NFL Draft picks in April, the most since 2005.

He said it

“They’re not really good at it, just so you guys know. Those of you who play golf, you put the phones down and you swing and drive a cart together and spend hours together. You really have to like the person to do that. There’s this connection and camaraderie and brotherhood and a love shared with each other.

“In the past, you’d do that in the weight room and survive the punishing runs and workouts and that binds you together, but you have to find other ways to bring these guys together. I think it’s going to manifest itself on the field.” — BYU head coach Kalani Sitake, on the Cougars bonding over playing golf in the offseason