File photo WVU and coach Rich Rodriguez open the season today at home against Robert Morris.

MORGANTOWN — It’s been 273 days since West Virginia concluded its 2024 regular season. It’s been a crazy 273 days for the program. Since then, Neal Brown was fired, WVU lost to Memphis in the Frisco Bowl, Rich Rodriguez was named head coach, 70-plus players transferred in, and almost as many transferred out. You might as well forget everything you knew from the 2024 season.

However, it has shades of the past. Rodriguez’s return is one of the most anticipated in college football, and according to ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit, the best hire in college football this offseason, even better than North Carolina hiring eight-time Super Bowl Champion Bill Belichick.

There’s a billboard outside of the Coliseum with Rodriguez on it, he’s in commercials, if you sit at Kegler’s for five minutes, someone mentions Rodriguez bringing WVU back to glory, even Uber drivers break the awkward silence by talking about Rodriguez. The anticipation for a coach to return can’t be higher, and the wait is finally over this Saturday.

Rodriguez’s return as WVU’s head coach starts against Robert Morris in Mulan Puskar Stadium at 2 p.m. Since Robert Morris isn’t the most competitive opponent, it’ll cost you $30 a ticket to get into the stadium, which could actually be cheaper than paying for an ESPN+ subscription to watch the game on television from home.

It makes sense that Robert Morris is on the schedule for the opening game. The Colonials are an FCS school, who no one knows anything about, not even Rodriguez and his staff, and were paid to keep the Rodriguez hype alive by getting rolled.

Imagine if WVU played a Big 12 opponent in Week 1 and lost. The high hopes would be immediately crushed. As of Wednesday, WVU is a 38.5-point favorite to win on FanDuel and has a 98% chance to win, according to ESPN analytics. Most of the other sportsbooks won’t even offer odds because it’ll be so lopsided. A loss is out of the equation.

The focus of the game isn’t for it to be competitive. Everyone will be focused on Rodriguez’s first game back, and that’ll be the headlines in the Sunday paper.

However, there’s a lot more than just that to watch for on Saturday. When a team plays a pay-to-win game, it’s about seeing what you have and figuring out what works, so they’ll be more prepared when they face a higher caliber opponent.

There’ll be a lot of seeing what WVU has this weekend. There are 70-plus new players, and most of them are still battling for a starting spot. For starters, there are five quarterbacks listed as the QB1, so it’ll be interesting to see how that works and if one of the five emerges from the pack Saturday. Starting tight end is still up for grabs, and multiple backup jobs aren’t filled out.

A win is expected, so the moral win will be more about how much is learned about the 2025 team, so when they face a better team, like Ohio in Week 2, WVU is prepared.

The prediction for this game will be predicting how much WVU wins by. It obviously won’t be close, and if it is, well, you might’ve just crushed the hopes by scheduling a Big 12 team at that point.

I think WVU will score a lot, especially with how much Rodriguez talks about the fast-paced tempo offense, and that the Colonials are an FCS school. In a long first game, I think the defense might let up a few scores because the freshman and backups will come in to see what they can do, but it won’t be enough to panic.

In a game full of emotions, the game goes according to plan, and Rodriguez wins in a big way in his first game back as WVU’s head coach.

— Prediction: West Virginia 45, Robert Morris 10