At Jacksonville State, Rich Rodriguez has coached his way back to a bowl. Why 2023 has been unique
NEW ORLEANS — Before Rich Rodriguez sat in the front seat of Jacksonville State football's team bus riding around the bustling streets of New Orleans this week, there were stretches where it wasn't definite he'd be taking that seat up for a bowl team again.
Dec. 27, 2017 is the last time Rodriguez has coached, either in the head coaching position or as an assistant, in a bowl game. Arizona lost 38-25 to Purdue in the Foster Farms Bowl in Santa Clara, California. He gets back in the saddle against Louisiana in the New Orleans Bowl inside the Caesars Superdome on Saturday (1:15 p.m., ESPN)
That loss was his last in Tucson, after six seasons and helping lead the Wildcats to their first top 10 rankings since 1998 as well as the Pac-12 Championship Game in 2014.
Following his stint at Arizona, there were two years Rodriguez wasn't even on the sideline, the season after his dismissal in 2018 and 2020 two seasons later. Between those years was a floundering one-year stint as Matt Luke's offensive coordinator at Ole Miss in 2019 where the team won three games and his return to coaching in 2021 found him at perennial college football bottom program at Louisiana-Monroe as OC for Terry Bowden.
Six years is an eternity in the coaching profession and for most, an amount of time that would allow for doubt to creep in.
When Rodriguez took over at Jacksonville State following the 2021 season, the only thing he was sure about was the uniqueness of the situation he was walking into with the football program embarking on its transition from FCS to FBS.
"I don't know if I've thought about (it being six seasons since I've coached in a bowl game)," Rodriguez said in New Orleans on Friday. "Jax State gave me an opportunity to be a head coach again in a unique situation that I haven't been in. Taking a transition from I-AA to I-A, so that in and of itself was a new challenge. I really didn't think about when we could get to a bowl game. I thought it'd be a few years.
"So this has been an extra added bonus."
Not only has the 2023 season been the Gamecocks' first season at the FBS level — they won eight games in their first year competing at the highest level — but there's the moving parts of the team having to workout in a temporary space while the new fieldhouse is being built on campus at JSU Stadium.
Due to NCAA rules, Jax State came into the season believing that it'd be two years before it would get the chance to play in a postseason game.
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Rodriguez knew he wasn't out of juice as a coach. He's been to 12 bowl games before, winning five of those.
Despite all the new challenges for him at JSU, that experience still told him what it was going to take. And he was seeing what he needed to see.
"I don't think I was ever out of total juice, always had some juice in me. But the uniqueness of the challenge. When you coach, a lot of situations are similar but when you're transitioning from FCS to FBS and all the challenges that go with that and we're building a new facility which hasn't been completed," Rodriguez said. "We've been in a temporary building for two years now. All those challenge combined have kept me and us pretty busy.
"I've been blessed to be in a lot of (bowls), coached with a lot of good coaches and good players. I've got a great staff, great support. More importantly, I had a bunch of players that bought in from day one. They continue to do that."
Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers and Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers and Cajuns coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU/UL athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Rich Rodriguez hasn't coached in a bowl in 6 years. How he did at Jax State
