The West Virginia University football players will be away from campus for the next week for spring break. WVU coach Rich Rodriguez said it will give him and his coaches the chance to more deeply discuss the players on their roster – and some who may not be on their roster yet.
Rodriguez said the Mountaineers will be players in the post-spring transfer portal, as they try to shore up talent and build the best roster to debut Aug. 30 against Robert Morris. No position on the team will be immune, he said.
Complicating the matter further is the new roster limit of 105 players mandated by the NCAA, which will force Rodriguez and his coaches to be even more selective and make some decisions on roster cuts that they’d rather avoid.
Rodriguez has lamented the new roster limits – created as part of the settlement of the 2024 antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA – throughout the spring. In previous seasons, rosters had no limits except for the 85 scholarships issued. With the new rules, the walk-on pool, which has always been fruitful and has produced some good players, is dramatically reduced.
Walk-ons have served WVU well in the past. Some notable players who first joined the Mountaineers without a scholarship include former All-American offensive tackle Rich Braham, former fullback Owen Schmitt and former receivers Zach Abraham and Hudson Clement.
“That 105 thing is hanging over our roster,” Rodriguez said this past week. “I’ve already talked to our coaches and some of our personnel guys that we really have to get a good plan for that.”
Rodriguez said earlier this spring that his roster sat at 107 players, and that wasn’t counting incoming players who would enroll in the summer or fall.
“We’ve got to have the best 105 that we could possibly have here,” he said, “position-wise and everything. Probably the biggest thing I’m going to be working on over the spring break – and I told our GM this as well – we’ve got to look at the roster in totality. What do we have to do in the portal coming up? What moves do we have to make to get to our best 105?”
It’s not much different than what NFL teams must do to set their best rosters, though Rodriguez said those NFL teams have more options at their disposal to get it done. They can trade players. They can cut a player and allow him to enter the open market. Not all of those options are available to college programs, he said.
All of that will lead to decisions Rodriguez said he’d rather not make.
“This spring is really going to be hard to do that,” he said, “because there’s going to be some guys we don’t want to let go that we’re probably going to have to let go.”
It’s one of the reasons Rodriguez said he decided to end spring practice with an April 5 showcase rather than one on April 12. He wanted the extra week to huddle with his coaches, evaluate the spring roster and make the necessary choices.
It also gives those WVU will bid farewell more time to find a new landing spot.
“It gives us a week to talk with our guys and let them know if they maybe need to look at another opportunity and get into the portal and all that,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve got to be honest with all of them. We can’t keep all of them if we wanted to because of the roster size. That’s the hardest part.”
Story by Derek Redd
