If West Virginia has a strong season in 2025, Rich Rodriguez may point to a lack of TikTok dancing as a reason why.
The Mountaineers coach said Monday that he wasn’t banning his players from using the social media app completely. However, they are not allowed to do certain things while filming themselves for videos to post to the app.
“No — they’re going to be on [social media] so I’m not banning them from it,” Rodriguez said Monday when asked if he had a social media policy. “I’m just banning them from dancing on it. Look, we try to have a hard edge, whatever, and you’re on there in your tights dancing on TikTok it ain’t quite the image of our program that I want.
“But I told the team today, I said, ‘Everything today’s about trying to make everybody individual, it’s all about the individual. It’s all about the individual.’ And I said football is one of the last things that’s got to be more about the team than the individual. And so I just — I banned dancing on TikTok. I guess I did that. But anything that doesn’t look like our program should look like — I think it’s just like come on, really. And I’m allowed to do that I guess. I can have rules.
“Like I said, 20 years from now if they want to be sitting in their pajamas in the basement and eating Cheetos and watching TikTok or whatever the hell they can go at it. Smoking cannabis, whatever. Knock yourself out. But hopefully their focus can be on winning football games. How about let’s win the football game and not win the TikTok.”
Rodriguez is right, he can set whatever rules he wants for his program. But it’s odd that one of the lines he’s drawing is against dancing on TikTok.
The longtime coach is back for his second stint with the Mountaineers after replacing Neal Brown. Rodriguez coached at West Virginia from 2001 through 2007 — long before TikTok was around — and the Mountaineers won 32 games in his final three seasons.
Since then, he coached at Michigan and Arizona through 2017 before making his return to college football in 2023 with Jacksonville State. His teams won 18 games over two seasons and he was brought back to replace Brown as the Mountaineers have won 10 games just twice since Rodriguez left for the Wolverines at the end of the 2007 season.
