Rich Rodriguez Accuses Opponent Stephen F. Austin Of Spying

In this day and age of college football, you can never be too cautious about protecting your playbook. This seems to be the case involving Rich Rodriguez and his Jacksonville State team, as they prepare for Stephen F. Austin on Saturday, which will be broadcast on ESPN.

The first-year head coach of the Gamecocks spoke with media members on Tuesday night, as his team prepares to open the season this weekend.

While discussing his preparations for the opener, the former Michigan coach seemingly called out Stephen F. Austin for spying on the Gamecocks spring game.

“Pretty good sources true that they had a couple staff members at our spring game, which is kind of like — that’s not really supposed to happen. We’re making plans accordingly, so if they’re over there thinking they have our plays or what have you, signals or something like that, we’ve changed things since the spring."

Rodriguez was then asked if he had seen a team send a spy to a spring game before.

"It's probably happened, but we're aware of it."

Jacksonville State Head Coach, Rich Rodriguez.Courtesy of Jacksonville State Athletics

The head coach then went on to say that they caught someone filming one of their recent practices, so he sent one of his massive strength coaches to run him off.

"We caught somebody trying to film something the other day. First, my daughter caught him, Raquel saw him. Then we caught him again, saw him peering through there with his camera. I sent the biggest guy in the program, 'Crew', he's one of our assistant strength coaches. He’s about like 6’7, 350, probably benches like a thousand pounds or something. Sent him up the bleachers to run him out, and that guy disappeared pretty quick.”

You can't beat this type of fireworks before a season opener. The team is moving into their first season in the ASUN Conference, before transitioning into Conference USA.

The former West Virginia head coach might have had sounded like he was joking around, but I imagine if he gets the chance to run up the score on Saturday he won't hesitate.