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MORGANTOWN -- Sometimes coaches are more alike than we think they are.
Take West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez and Houston’s Willie Fritz who meet in Morgantown for the final home game of the season on Nov. 21.
It seems Rodriguez has been in the public eye for a long, long time. Like could it really have been 25 years ago that he took over West Virginia? Well, it was, but RichRod had paid his dues for more than a decade bouncing around as something of a prodigy, starting all the way back at Glenville State University.
At the same time, Fritz, who is actually three years older than Rodriguez at 66, didn’t get to be a Division 1 head coach until 2024 when he replaced Houston’s Dana Holgorsen, who had sat in the same office at WVU’s Puskar Center himself before losing the job to Neal Brown.
But Fritz’s path to the big time may have taken far longer to reach the top than Rodriguez’s, but he came out of the same type of humble beginnings, something Rodriguez paid homage to during the Big 12 Media Days.
“I've known Coach Fritz since his time at Tulane, because I used to coach at Tulane and I went down there and visited with him,” Rodriguez said. “A lot of us got started at small school levels whether it was Division 2, junior college or high school or whatever. Willie’s won at every level he’s been at and finding his way to where he is now as coach of a Top 25 team. I think he’s one of the top coaches in America.”
Well, Houston isn’t quite a Top 25 team yet, but they border right on the edge of it in preseason rankings after going 10-3 last season, one of those losses being a 45-25 home upset loss to Rodriguez’s 4-8 Mountaineers in what Rodriguez called “probably the best game we played last season.”
Though born in Kansas, Fritz’s coaching resume is very much like taking a back roads trip through America’s South, having found a place to coach football at every turn in the road.
Perhaps the best way to capture it is to lift it from Wikipedia:
1982 Pittburg (Ga) State
1983 Shawnee Mission (Kan) NW High (assistant)
1984-85 Sam Houston State (Ga)
1986 Willis (Tex) High (assistant)
1987-90 Coffeyville (Kan)
1991-92 Sam Houston State
1993-96 Blinn (Texas)
1997-99 Central Missouri
2000-13 Sam Houston State
2014-15 Georgia Southern
2016-23 Tulane
2024-26 Houston
Yeah, he’s been around and he has to be pretty good because as a college coach his record is 222-127, and as a junior college coach, his record is 37-9-1.
Big 12 Media Day at the Dallas Cowboys facility in Frisco, Texas, is the big time to him.
“My first Media Day was in 1993 at the Navarro Community College cafeteria, so this is a few more people than I had back in ’93,” he admitted.
Fritz has done a lot and won a lot, and he has even talked about the goal of building a national champion football team at Houston, so naturally he was asked about that.
“You know, we don’t talk about it a whole lot as far as season goals are concerned. We talk about doing the very best we can day after day after day after day. You know, we’ve certainly got the location. We’ve got the university. We’ve got the facilities. There’s no reason why we can’t do that at the University of Houston.
“A good template for us has been Coach (Kelvin) Sampson and what he’s done with men’s basketball. I think every program in the University of Houston aspires to be national champs, and we certainly do in football.”
Fritz has a lot working for him with what’s left of his 10-win team, a strong recruiting class and a top-ranked transfer portal haul, but the most intriguing spot is quarterback where he brings in 5-star freshman Keisean Henderson and returns starter Conner Weigman, who last season threw for 2,705 yards with 25 touchdowns and rushed for an additional 700 yards with 11 touchdowns.
Henderson is said to be a dynamic two-way quarterback and the highest ranked prospect ever recruited by the Houston program but Fritz doesn’t plan to use any two-way system at the position.
“Conner is our starting quarterback, without question. What’s been really neat is I’ve never had two five-star quarterbacks before anyplace I’ve ever been at. I’ve never had one, let alone two,” Fritz said. “Those guys are both so unselfish. Everybody keeps asking me what kind of package you’re going to run with Keisean. We’re going to run our total package with him. He’s really smart, can throw and run the ball. Those guys really, really work well together in the quarterback room. I think it’s a perfect situation for Keisean to be in there and learn from not only great coaches, but a fellow great player in Conner.”
After last year’s loss to WVU at home, make no doubt Fritz has this year’s game with the Mountaineers circled, noting they could be the surprise team in the Big 12 this year.