Rich Rodriguez

MORGANTOWN — Reality starts to set in this week as West Virginia football opens its fall camp.

And just what is reality in this matter?

The truth is, no one knows. Not you, not me. Not even Rich Rodriguez, for WVU is the mystery team of the Big 12, a team where more players are new — by far — than are holdovers.

They are a team without any real kind of depth chart, even with a veteran coach who spent seven years with the program, but it was so long ago that he admitted that even in the city in which he now works after a 17-year absence, much is new to him.

“It’s a little surreal and it’s been so busy that maybe I haven’t reflected,” he admitted at Big 12 Media Day. “Maybe that’s a good thing. It’s been 17 years.”

He likened himself to Forrest Gump at a time when he must be more Forrest Gregg, the one-time NFL coach who won an AFC championship at Cincinnati after a Hall of Fame career with the Green Bay Packers.

Rodriguez is back in Morgantown, where there is a love/hate relationship with him that he can turn into a love/love relationship by winning, but can he pull it off?

“It’s good to come back to a place where you know you can win at,” he says, a track record that saw him go 32-5 in his final three seasons. “Also, it’s home for us.”

But that was in a different dimension, in the Big East, under different rules. No NIL. No revenue share. No transfer portal.

The betting puts the over/under on victories this first season at 5.5, which would not even qualify for a bowl game, but that really means nothing because it is being established without any algorithms upon which to base it.

You can only guess right now who will quarterback a team that’s entire offensive structure comes from that position.

It appears that Nicco Marchiol, a holdover from the Neal Brown team who owns 3 WVU starts in his career and is 3-0, is the front-runner over transfer Jaylen Henderson, who played two years at Fresno State and two at Texas A&M, and Scottie Fox, a highly-rated freshman.

It’s expected that the Marchiol/Henderson battle will dominate a camp where there are so many other questions that will affect the play of the team (an all-new offensive line, a new defensive coordinator trying to patch what was one of the worst pass defenses in college football last year).

“It’s always a position you should worry about the most because it is the most important position probably in football,” Rodriguez said at Media Day. “You got no chance to win if that guy is not pretty good.”

But Rodriguez, whose resume’ carries gold stars over his ability to develop QBs throughout his career, speaks confidently that this will work out fine.

“That’s probably the room I’m least worried about from an athletic and talent standpoint,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of guys who have played some games in college football and I have a couple of good, young players. So, we’ve got the talent.

“They’ve got to learn our system. They’ve got to obviously get better individually around them as far as what they can do,” Rodriguez went on. “I’m hoping I have three I can win with. If I do, I will play all three of them. If I have two I can win with, I’ll play both of them.

“But I have a good quarterback room.”

What no one knows is how the other position rooms will develop and fit together. That is what August is for, creating a culture while developing skills and chemistry.

He gets to ease into the season with games against Robert Morris and at Ohio University — although nothing is easy when you are starting over — before he finally gets a rematch with Pitt in the Backyard Brawl with a chance to erase so much of the past that comes to life that the most important game this season will offer him.