MORGANTOWN — Saturday, March 7, marks the first spring practice for West Virginia football. Just a couple of days before the start, Rich Rodriguez had his pre-spring press conference. Rodriguez detailed the spring football schedule, including some important dates.

The Gold-Blue Spring Game has received another change in Year 2 of Rodriguez. Last year, Rodriguez changed it to the Gold-Blue Spring Showcase, which was essentially a practice in front of fans, with some offense on defense, and some drills. Rodriguez didn’t want to show off too much last year because the transfer portal window was directly after. He didn’t want to showcase players, so they could use tape to leave for other teams. This year, there is no spring transfer portal, so it should be safe to do a bit more. But, Rodriguez said that won’t be the case.

“We call it ‘Spring Festival,'” Rodriguez said. “We will try to make it an event for fans to come out, to be kind of fan-friendly. I think they want to see some football, too. So we’ll have some competitive stuff. We may do things a little bit differently.”

There’s been no official announcement of the date, but Rodriguez talked multiple times that the event would be on April 18, marking the end of spring ball for WVU.

What will the competitive stuff entail? Rodriguez said it won’t be a true scrimmage, like in years past. But there’ll be some one-on-one stuff and more fan interactive things. It’ll probably be similar to last year, which had some gameplay aspects, two-minute drills, redzone plays and fans calling plays. The Mountaineers ran over 90 plays in 2025’s Gold-Blue Showcase.

Rodriguez and his staff are still coming up with the format for this season’s Spring Festival.

“We’ll come up with a format that will be some football stuff for people to come there to do,” Rodriguez said. “But, also some other stuff that is family-friendly.”