Rich Rodriguez and Scott Frost are new to the Big 12 Conference, but not to the schools that have welcomed them back.
Rodriguez at West Virginia and Frost at UCF are the only new coaches in the 16-team Big 12, and now have been through their first spring since getting back to their old schools.
West Virginia has gone through 13 seasons in the Big 12, but were still in the Big East when Rodriguez led the Mountaineers to three consecutive 11-win seasons from 2005-07 before his departure for Michigan.
Frost was the coach for UCF’s undefeated season out of the American Athletic Conference in 2017, when the Knights declared themselves national champions before he left for Nebraska.
Things did feel different for Frost than his first spring with the Knights in 2016, when they were coming off an 0-12 season.
“Our first scrimmage out here in the spring, I was discouraged coming off that field. … We didn’t do anything good, or at least it felt that way,” Frost said, recalling 2016 before turning to this spring. “We’re doing some good things. There’s just a level of speed and precision to execution that has to happen on every single play to make it work, and we’re not there yet.”
The Knights were 10-15 in their first two Big 12 seasons under Gus Malzahn, the former national champion who left UCF after four seasons to become offensive coordinator at Florida State. The back-to-back losing records to open their Big 12 era followed a school-record six winning seasons in a row, which began with the 13-0 season after Frost’s 6-7 debut.
The second stint for Rodriguez at West Virginia comes 18 years after his first one ended. He will have to make wholesale changes in the name, image and likeness era — along with the transfer portal and pending roster limits — if…
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Publish date : 2025-04-29 21:52:00
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