Faith & Reflection: Voices from the Black Church and Beyond
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(ThyBlackMan.com) College football media days last month for the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, and Big 12 conferences were the major indicator of the upcoming 2025 college football season. College football media days are a great outlet to hear from college football head coaches about their team. Among the notable head coaching transactions for the upcoming 2025 college football season is the return of former alum Rich Rodriguez coming back to the school where he had his most notable head coaching success, West Virginia University. It is easy to forget that prior to Rodriguez’s failed stint with Michigan in the late 2000s, he was considered one of the top college football offensive innovators of a run-first spread offense while at West Virginia. He is trying to instill the winning culture he once had there over a decade ago through various methods including having some of his most accomplished former WVU players on the coaching staff. However, he also wants his current West Virginia Mountaineers to have a “hard edge” as a football team and one of the ways he wants that to happen is by banning his players from dancing in TikTok videos.
Rich Rodriguez isn’t joining in on the potential ban of TikTok in general, he just wants his football players not to dance using the TikTok app. He told the Associated Press back in March, “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.” For teenagers and young adults this generation, dancing on TikTok isn’t unusual at all and college athletes aren’t any different especially in the NIL age where they can profit from their social media presence.
Is Rodriguez being a grumpy, out-of-touch stereotype of a football coach by proclaiming that dancing on social media is equivalent of lacking a “hard edge” on the football field? Yes, and he even forgets that one of the toughest football teams of all time is also known for publicly singing and dancing while being taped! Back in 1985 the Chicago Bears players recorded “The Super Bowl Shuffle” prior to their team’s postseason that year. As many know, the 1985 Bears had one of the greatest and “toughest” teams in NFL history due to their historic defense while legendary running back Walter Payton led the offense.
There was no social media in 1985 but the Chicago Bears made waves in a music video with their confident song about being at a championship level before they actually won it. The “dancing” in “The Super Bowl Shuffle” isn’t as energetic as most dances on TikTok but the music video doesn’t exude “toughness” from the Bears football players as they moved and played musical instruments throughout the song. It is safe to say that measuring a football player’s “toughness” through their posting a video of themselves dancing seems to be nonsensical.
According to Rich Rodriguez, “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?” It would be interesting to see Rodriguez’s reaction to West Virginia football players having a great regular season, losing just one game, and the players coming together to record a “College Football Playoff Shuffle” video following that one regular season loss. Perhaps Rich Rodriguez would ease up on the TikTok dancing ban if West Virginia has a one loss regular season like the 1985 Chicago Bears.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines
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