West Virginia football will be revving up over the next month of spring practices as they prepare for the 2025 Gold-Blue Showcase.
And if you found it odd to read the word 'showcase' instead of the word 'game' in it's place, you're not the only one.
Amidst a growing trend nationally of college football programs restructuring or completely cancelling their spring football games -- which once was a favorite pastime for die-hard college football fans that follow their programs religiously -- it begged the question if WVU would join the list of schools abandoning a more traditional format.
At a press conference on Saturday following the completion of the first week of spring football practice, Rodriguez broached the subject and gave just a bit of insight to the process.
"That's why the spring game is, we'll have a little fun, we'll do some stuff out there and engage with the fans," Rodriguez said. "But we're not going to do a true scrimmage or game from that standpoint because we just have so many other things we got to get done."
WVU Head Coach Rich Rodriguez on 2025 Gold - Blue Showcase: "We're not going to do a true scrimmage or game."
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) March 1, 2025
Rodriguez cited that "the first spring is always the hardest, and always been the ugliest everywhere I been" as one of the reasons for this approach, but it surely sticks with a national trend that seems to be approaching spring football more like NFL off-season workouts and less like the tradition die-hard fans have cherished.
However Rodriguez did remain vague about what the final approach will be -- he did not go on to define what "stuff" the team would do or what the "fan engagement" would look like.