West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez is going to have an earned success model.

That will be based around rewarding players who accomplish things on the field and will be fully integrated once the House Settlement is approved.

“We are going to have an earned success model where if you’re the starting left tackle after August camp you’re going to get more money than the scout team right tackle. To have a fair system we’re going to do that with our players,” Rodriguez said.

Overall in college athletics, there is more of a sense of entitlement than at any other point and one way to combat that is to have an established model in place.

“Whatever success we’re going to have or they’re going to have individually or as a team is going to be earned so when you earn it you’ll get rewarded and I think that’s the model we kind of have to adhere to,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez believes that players still love competing and his plan will appeal to that. The Mountaineers have all of the things in place to compete and win a national championship but what is non-negotiable is having that earned success model in place and a hard edge approach.

“Players love being competitive and we will appeal to that,” he said.

Rodriguez wants to identify and foster that competitive nature and points to an example earlier in his career with a freshman wide receiver who didn’t seem to possess those traits, only to eventually become one of the best blockers that he has coached.

Soft and lazy are the two worst words in the dictionary, according to the veteran head coach and he understands that while fans might not always know the game from an X’s and O’s standpoint, they can see if a team is playing hard from the stands.

“We still coach our guys. I think good players still want to be coached,” he said.