Last December, West Virginia turned to its relatively recent past when hiring a head football coach, bringing in former Mountaineers coach Rich Rodriguez, 17 years after he left his alma mater for Michigan.
Now, Rodriguez is bringing arguably the most famous player from his first West Virginia tenure back with him to Morgantown.
Former Mountaineers star quarterback Pat White is coming back to West Virginia as the assistant quarterbacks coach/assistant to the head coach under Rodriguez, the university announced Wednesday.
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“It’s really special to welcome Pat White back to Morgantown as a member of our football coaching staff,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “He has been involved in some of the biggest wins in program history, and he will be a great presence in our quarterback room. Pat and I have been through so much together, and I am really proud of the quality of coach and mentor to young players that he has become.”
The Mountaineers went 35-8 with White as their starting quarterback from 2005-08, a run highlighted by victories in the Sugar Bowl in 2006 and the Fiesta Bowl in 2008.
Alongside dynamic running backs like Steve Slaton and Noel Devine, White proved to be the perfect conductor of Rodriguez’s zone-read offense. White, a two-time Big East Offensive Player of the Year, finished his career as the all-time leading rusher among quarterbacks in NCAA history, with 4,480 yards (a mark that has since been broken). He set Big East records for touchdowns responsible for (103) and total offense (10,529 yards) while becoming the conference’s first player to pass for more than 10,000 career yards.
After a short-lived professional career, which included NFL stints with the Miami Dolphins and the team now known as the Washington Commanders, White got into coaching. He has previously served as the quarterbacks coach at Alcorn State (2018-19), the running backs coach at South Florida (2020), the interim offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Alabama State (2021) and the pass game coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Campbell (2022). Most recently, he was an offensive assistant for two years with the Los Angeles Chargers.
West Virginia is coming off a largely unsuccessful six-year run under former coach Neal Brown, who went 37-35 and only won more than six games in a season once before being fired last December.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: West Virginia hires former star QB Pat White as assistant coach
