The West Virginia Mountaineers recently wrapped up their spring football practices with the Gold-Blue Spring Festival, and are now focused on summer workouts and training camp moving forward into Rich Rodriguez's second season back in charge of the program. And for a lot of West Virginia fans, expectations are a bit higher than they were last year.
That is in large part due to an offseason haul that included a highly-touted Top 25 high school and JUCO recruiting class with four 4-star commits, and a transfer portal class with 11 Division 1 starters joining the team – including leading FBS rusher Cam Cook. But not everyone felt WVU's offseason was impressive, and one national outlet seemed to think quite lowly of the program's offseason.
ESPN projects West Virginia football will finish at bottom of the Big 12
ESPN's Eli Lederman, Max Olson, and Adam Rittenberg recently ranked every Power 4 team's offseason move from first to last in their conference, as well as their Top 10 overall Power 4 teams. The rankings judged roster additions, roster retention, and coaching staff continuity and upgrades.
And West Virginia fans will not like where they find the Mountaineers on that list – as WVU came in ranked 15th out of 16 teams in the Big 12. The outlet shared extensively on what they thought went wrong for the program.
"Rodriguez and his coaches are continuing one of the most ambitious roster flips in the sport," wrote ESPN. "West Virginia had 28 players start four or more games last season. Only three of them – quarterback Scotty Fox Jr. and offensive linemen Nick Krahe and Landen Livingston – are still on the roster."
"Eighteen of the players who moved on were graduating seniors, and another seven exited via the portal, including top receivers [Cam] Vaughn (Miami) and Rodney Gallagher III (Arizona). The Mountaineers parted ways with 43 scholarship transfers this offseason and are working with a 2026 that will feature more than 80 newcomers."
However, they also highlighted the high school recruiting class as something that went right, and indicated they felt the future would be brighter for the Mountaineers.
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