Rich Rodriguez Gets Wish With Changes to College Football Calendar

Even though there are things about the current era of college football that Rich Rodriguez wishes he didn’t have to deal with, he’s been granted some changes he’s been advocating for.

On Friday, the NCAA Division I FBS Oversight Committee adopted changes that will significantly alter the calendar staring in 2027.

These changes are as follows:

• The regular season will kickoff as Week 1 in place of what’s been Week 0, thus ending Week 0.
• The spring practice can now include OTA-like periods, increasing the total number of practices to 21.
• The January transfer portal window moves to 10 days.

“The work of the calendar subcommittee in building off the American Football Coaches Association’s recommendations has been critical in establishing clarity with the college football calendar,” said FBS Oversight Committee vice chair and Georgia director of athletics Josh Brooks said in a statement on the NCAA’s website.

“We dedicated a tremendous amount of time and energy to ensure we built a calendar that best fits the needs of our coaches and student-athletes. I am proud of this work and appreciate the efforts of our group, which included athletics directors, coaches, student-athletes and commissioners from various schools and conferences,” he added.

“We should model as much about the NFL as we can. It makes sense to have kinda a pro model,” Rodriguez offered as his response about the calendar at the open of fall camp.

At that time, and multiples times before, Rodriguez publicly said he would prefer to have an OTAs, allowing him to work with his players in an organized basis more throughout the offseason. He’s also even gone as far as suggesting college football, at least at the Power Four level, add preseason games or scrimmages with regional teams not on the regular season schedule to help teams prepare. If those existed, he would then consider mirroring the modern strategy for NFL head coaches of not incorporating live tackling as much in training camp.

Well, Rodriguez is getting his wish with the new college football calendar.

Find more coverage of Rich Rodriguez the WVU football program at WV Sports Now.