West Virginia fans should not expect to see any of their college football players dancing on TikTok during the (second) Rich Rodriguez era. The 61-year-old head coach will not allow it.
He issued an official ban on all future TikTok dances, effective immediately.
As you are likely aware by now, these kinds of social media shenanigans have become something of an epidemic in college football— for better or for worse. Players like Travis Hunter and Ashton Jeanty are frequent users of TikTok for silly dance videos at the team hotel, before practice, or in the dining hall. They are not alone.
However, not every video gets the same reaction. For example, Nebraska quarterback Dylan Raiola very recently became the butt of the joke for dancing alongside running back Emmett Johnson. The post has since been deleted because of how badly it was roasted. Head coach Matt Rhule put his freshman through a brutal TikTok-themed workout so that they would not make the same mistake.
Rich Rodriguez is taking a similar approach. Dancing on TikTok is against the rules at West Virginia. Not the app itself. Just the dancing.
They’re going to be on it, so I’m not banning them from it. I’m just banning them from dancing on it. It’s like, look, we try to have a hard edge or whatever, and you’re in there in your tights dancing on TikTok, ain’t quite the image of our program that I want.
— Rich Rodriguez
Optics are not the only reason for the ban. Rodriguez has talked to his players about a large theme in society. People these days often put themselves, the individual, over the team. His decision to ban dances on TikTok is just one thing he can do to shift the culture back in the right direction.
Rodriguez does not care what the players decide to do in the future. They have free will. But for now, he is the head coach and they must do as he says. They cannot dance on TikTok.
I’m allowed to do that. I can have rules. Twenty years from now, if they want to be sitting in their pajamas in the basement eating Cheetos and watching TikTok or whatever the h—, they can go at it, smoking cannabis, whatever. Knock yourself out.
— Rich Rodriguez
In the meantime, their focus must be on football.
I hope our focus can be on winning football games. How about let’s win the football game and not worry about winning the TikTok?
— Rich Rodriguez
I don’t really know what the whole Cheetos and weed thing had to do with this new rule, but I enjoyed everything about this rant. Rich Rodriguez cannot even begin to comprehend why someone would want to post a video on social media in which they are dancing to a trending audio. He probably doesn’t even know what that means. He doesn’t care. Football is the only thing that matters and I love that.