MORGANTOWN — With interest and anticipation at a fever pitch to match any level since West Virginia joined the Big 12, the Mountaineers open the 2025 football season with a 2 p.m. game against Robert Morris on Saturday.

In a way it is a sequel to the movie “Back to the Future” as it ends 17 years of exile for Coach Rich Rodriguez, who will be the central figure as he brings what once was his futuristic offense back to Morgantown to try and finish what he started back in 2001.

That era of WVU football was arguably the best and most exciting in the program history, climbing to the doorstep of a national championship game before losing, as a 28.5-point favorite, to Pitt, a game that changed the history and the direction of the program and left a bad taste in the mouths of Mountaineer fans who had been salivating at the thought of winning the school’s only national championship in what is now a 133-year history.

West Virginia is a 38.5-point favorite over RMU, another Pittsburgh school, which puts a certain ironic twist to the whole affair.

Under normal circumstances, a game against an FCS opponent would not generate any more interest than warranting a place on ESPN+, as this one has, for the Mountaineers are 22-0 historically against such lesser level foes.

But, while ESPN did not give into the drama that comes from Rodriguez’s return after having been a head coach at Michigan, Arizona and Jacksonville State of Alabama with assorted stops at other venues as an offensive coordinator, there is certainly more than a sprinkling of national interest.

The offense, Rodriguez promises, will be run as fast, if not faster, than it was when Pat White was at quarterback and Steve Slaton at running back, but he believes it’s improved and as updated as it is up tempo.

While White will not be lining up at quarterback, he will join another former RichRod QB — Rasheed Marshall — in the quarterback’s support crew coaching. And while Slaton is not part of Rodriguez’s staff, another WVU great who he recruited and brought into the system for his freshman year, Noel Devine, helps coach the running backs.

And that is important, for the centerpiece of this year’s team is not the quarterback, who should be holdover Nicco Marchiol, but instead running back Jahiem White, who figures to join the long line of WVU 1,000-yard rushers under Rodriguez that includes not only Staten and Devine, but the school’s all-time leading career rusher Avon Cobourne and Quincy Wilson.

Now Marchiol is not the second coming of White and is neither advertised as such or presenting himself as such, but this left-handed (as was White) redshirt junior is 3-0 in emergency starts as a Mountaineer and totally confident that he can handle what will be asked of him.

“We want to be the fastest team in America,” Marchiol said. “This offense, I feel, fits me so well.”

There have been indications that this new and revised offensive system may make more use of the forward pass than did Rodriguez’s previous groups. The wide receiver crew, while gathered from everywhere among 79 new players, is advertised as fast and dangerous with holdovers Jayden Bray, Rodney Gallagher III, Preston Fox and newcomers Cam Vaughn, Oran Singleton Jr., and former West Virginia high school player of the year Cam Bowie of Martinsburg.

“As much as I’m like other stubborn coaches with ‘this is our system, this is what we run,’ you still have to gear it to what your guys do best,” Rodriguez said during camp. “Not just our quarterback, but all our guys.”

So, much emphasis has gone into throwing the ball with efficiency.

Among all the debuts that will take place on Saturday, the most important one probably won’t be with a player but, instead, with new defensive coordinator Zac Alley, a wunderkind of sorts who has worked with Rodriguez at two other stops and who last season, just 32 years old, took over the Oklahoma defense.

That the defense made big strides forward cannot be understated as WVU’s defense was, to be kind, putrid last season, stopping only WVU’s chances to win on most occasions.

“I’ve got a pretty good feel for who we are and what we’re going to be,” Alley said this week. “Obviously, we’ve got a lot of guys who have never played here. I don’t know if we have anybody on defense that started maybe more than two games here, three games here overall. I’m not sure, but it’s somewhere around that number. Just excited to see how those guys perform.”

The defensive players are excited about the challenge they face. Returning defensive back Kekoura Tarnue put it this way.

“The biggest difference is just guys who want it more, and it’s more of an us thing instead of a me thing,” Tarnue said. “Just having guys who are hungry to make plays, having guys who are hungry to play for each other. Having 11 guys run to the ball. It doesn’t matter where the ball’s at, you’re going to see 11 going to the ball to have the opportunity to be violent and be physical.”

That, of course, is the embodiment of the new culture Rodriguez has installed, one he has labeled as having a “hard edge”, something he has emphasized over the final week of camp as opening day approached.