Rich Rodriguez has proved himself to be a winning coach. But if you look closely at the work he's done with the players he's done it with, he only has one top 25 recruiting class throughout his years at West Virginia and Arizona. And that one class was at West Virginia in 2007, which was headlined by Noel Devine, No. 3 running back in the nation. A breakdown of Rich Rod's recruiting class ranking and record that year lies below.
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West Virginia
2001: 51st (3-8)
2002: 50th (9-4)
2003: 54th (8-5)
2004: 42nd (8-4)
2005: 41st (11-1)
2006: 57th (11-2)
2007: 25th (11-2)
Rich Rodriguez landed a top 20 recruiting class each of his three years at Michigan, presumably because of the Michigan tradition and his tradition of winning. Now, we'll never know exactly what went down at Michigan, but after the failure of Brady Hoke, we know there was much more to the problem than what was at the surface. One could argue that he never got to coach with his own crop of guys on the field, using Lloyd Carr's guys from the years before, not necessarily the ideal fit for Rich Rod's system.
Both of Rich Rod's first two years at Michigan ended in losing seasons, but saw improvement going from 3-9 to 5-7. When Rich Rodriguez was finally able to utilize the commander of his offense in Denard Robinson, he led Michigan to a 7-6 record before being dismissed in the offseason.
This led him to Tucson, Arizona, where he has an overall record of 26-14. After back-to-back eight win seasons and a Pac-12 South Championship, Rich Rodriguez can count on the recruits to start giving Arizona a second look. Here's what he's done at Arizona when it comes to recruiting ranks and records.
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Arizona
2012 :41st, (8-5)
2013: 44th, (8-5)
2014: 31st, (10-4)
2015: 42nd, TBD
2016: 37th, TBD
Rich Rodriguez has already collected a few cornerstones to his game plan in the 2016 class, which is shaping up to be his best class at Arizona yet. With dual-threat quarterback Khalil Tate, running back Trevor Speights and defensive tackle Justin Holt, this class is just getting started.