A highly decorated veteran assistant coach is joining the West Virginia University football coaching staff to guide the Mountaineer running backs.
WVU announced Thursday afternoon that Larry Porter, most recently the running backs coach at the University of North Carolina, will be the new RB coach in Morgantown. Porter replaces Chad Scott, who left WVU to become running backs coach at the University of Texas.
“Larry Porter brings years of successful experience to West Virginia and is a highly respected coach and recruiter,” WVU football coach Rich Rodriguez said. “His ability to develop talent and the impact he will make on our running backs will be a huge asset.”
Porter has spent 27 years in coaching, including two seasons as the head coach at Memphis. His assistant coaching stops include UNC, LSU, Auburn, Texas, Arizona State and Oklahoma State, among others.
Porter has developed top-end running backs at multiple schools. At North Carolina, he coached Omarion Hampton to All-America and Doak Walker Award finalist nods in each of the last two seasons. Hampton finished this past season as the second-leading rusher among Power Four players with 1,660 yards and 15 touchdowns.
Other running backs who succeeded under Porter’s tutelage include Jacob Hester and Joseph Addai at LSU and Tatum Bell at Oklahoma State.
Porter is a two-time national recruiter of the year and a three-time nominee for the Broyles Award, given annually to college football’s top assistant coach. He takes over a WVU running back room that returns last year’s leading rusher Jaheim White, but no other player from last year who gained more than 120 yards on the ground.
Five practices into his first spring season back at WVU, and Rodriguez said it’s still too early to say what the players do best on the field.
“That’s probably going to be a work in progress,” he said. “I probably won’t know until two weeks into summer camp in August. Right now, I have no idea.”
He did say Thursday that the players were working hard. Any issues with pace in practice, he added, had more to do with the coaching staff all still getting used to each other. Many of the coaches had worked together in the past, whether on Rodriguez’ previous WVU staffs or on his Jacksonville State staffs from the last couple of seasons.
Yet, he said, this combination of coaches has worked together for just five practices.
“We meet enough,” Rodriguez said. “We meet more than Congress, you’d think we’d fix all of our problems. I’ll have another long staff meeting (Thursday) just talking about the efficiency of coaching and what I call ‘coaching on the run,’ getting corrected.”
Of all the positions on the team this spring, Rodriguez said that the thinnest group in terms of sheer numbers could be the wide receivers. Almost all of the group’s production last year is gone. Of the top four wideouts, only Rodney Gallagher remains. Last year’s leading receiver Hudson Clement transferred to Illinois, while Traylon Ray transferred to Ole Miss and Justin Robinson graduated.
Rodriguez feels some of his transfers – Oran Singleton from Eastern Michigan and Jarod Bowie and Cam Vaughn from Jacksonville State – will make an immediate impact. He’s also high on fifth-year senior Jaden Bray, who spent most of last year sidelined with injury, and redshirt junior Jarel Williams.
Yet Rodriguez said the group is still struggling with numbers.
“We can’t even run three full groups of wideouts,” he said. “So we’ll try to address that post-spring.”
Story by DEREK REDD
