MORGANTOWN — In today’s college football, it is the coaches who face what may be the most difficult challenge in summer camp.

It isn’t in putting in a system or deciding on a lineup or even creating a culture.

It’s far more simple than that.

It’s in learning the players names and what they are like.

In the WVU camp there are more than 70 newcomers to the program, but there 115 new to the coaching staff.

“I had forgotten about it. I remember we used to put tape on the front and back of their helmets so we knew the names, but I was thinking man, we should know the names,” Rodriguez said, thinking back to the old days.

“But there’s 115 of them here now. I’m getting to where I can recognize the faces now and I know the positions, but with a lot of them I don’t know them as well as I need to know them.”

And it isn’t easy.

Back, in 2001, most of the first names of players were quite common … James, Richard, Quincy, Grant, Bryan, Brad, Rasheed, Lance and Avon.

Naming children now has become an art form and while there are Eddie and Ben and Preston and Chris, you have also CharMarryus, Jayden and Jaden and Jaylan, Ayden, Ty’Kieast and Zae.

So, there is a lot of bonding that must go on and it isn’t helped in an atmosphere when players are often one-year rentals.

Sometimes when Rodriguez or a coach wants to praise someone or get on them for a mistake, he has to ask someone else who that was and what his background was.

“Part of our next 20 days we’ll be watching a lot of film together, or when you want to get on a guy you have to ask who that was, so sometimes when they make a mistake it helps us, too, in remembering them.

“We spend some time in the evenings, when it’s relaxed and we get together — I call them Fireside Chats. It might be like the O-linemen, but it can be mixed with a DB, a running back, quarterback and a staff member. We’ll sit for like 15 minutes and just get to know each other.

“I love doing that because all these guys — coaches, players, staff members — they all have unique stories, so I enjoy the Fireside Chats as much as anything we do in camp.”

Mark Kellogg, the women’s basketball coach who has more new players on his roster than returning players for the first time in his career, when asked if that presented a problem with names and if he’s having trouble, envisioned what it must be like on the football side.

“I can’t imagine,” Kellogg said. “There’s a different dynamic. They are dealing with 100 guys. We have more newcomers than returnees but our percentage isn’t near theirs. I can’t imagine what it’s like, but if you hire good people it can be done.

“That’s what we’ve learned. You can do it even with a new roster, if you have the right people and the right staff. It adds a little bit more legwork on the front end, making sure all the coaches are on the same page and new players need to study a little bit more and are in the film room.”

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The temperature rose up into the 90s as West Virginia opened camp and it had an effect on the day’s workouts.

“At the end of practice, we had a dozen guys cramping up a little bit, a little dehydrated,” Rodriguez said, most of them wide receivers and DBs, who do the most running. “Good lesson for our guys to make sure they stay hydrated before practice, during practice, after practice and any time in between.”

Relief reportedly in sight as predictions are for temperatures to drop to 71 or so for Thursday’s practice and be cooler into the weekend.

Rodriguez gives his players five-minute breaks during practice and they are true breaks when the players can recoup as they wish.

Having spent the last three years in Alabama at Jacksonville State, and before that in Louisiana, he understands that the heat in Morgantown is different. In those spots they doubled the number of breaks, but that’s life in the south.

In fact, on Tuesday, in St. Petersburg, Fla., the “feels like” heat index was up to 119.

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If nothing else, Rich Rodriguez is truthful as he deals with his players, so much so that outside the team room and the position rooms there is — or will soon be — a sign that names it “The Truth Room.”

It’s there that Rodriguez and staff go through film, watch mistakes, fix mistakes and let their players know where they stand as camp moves on.

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Mistakes are inevitable and with quarterbacks in the eye of the public so much, it makes sense to see how Rodriguez handles that. This is important to get across to the players competing for the position as they are being closely evaluated.

“I won’t pull one (out of the game) just for one mistake and if one’s hot I’ll keep him in there,” Rodriguez said. “It doesn’t bother me to rotate quarterbacks, if they’re good enough to win with. What I’ve told our guys is simple: Prove you’re good enough to win with and you’ll play.”

One thing is certain. The quarterbacks won’t be able to say they didn’t have a chance to win the job.

“The quarterback thing, managing so many guys is a little bit easier for us because of our pace in practice as we get a lot of reps … and I mean a lot of reps,” Rodriguez said.

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All the preseason publications have WVU picked down near the bottom of the Big 12 but Rodriguez maintains he doesn’t place much stock in that.

“If you are picked last or next to last in the Big 12, you might do a little something with that and your mindset, like say ‘I think we’re a little better than that’ and maybe to use it for some motivation. But I think when the stuff hits the fan and you’re in the middle of a tight game in the third quarter, you’re not going to worry about where you are picked in the poll,” he said.

“You are going to default to your level of training, no matter where you are picked. So our level of training has to go up because that’s where you are eventually going to default to.”