West Virginia’s bowl picture is still very much a moving target, but the latest projections give the Mountaineers a handful of different landing spots after a 1-0 start to the 2026 season.
WVU heads into this weekend’s game against UT-Martin coming off its season-opening win over Coastal Carolina, and the weekly round of industry projections has the Mountaineers scattered across the postseason map. CBSSports has West Virginia facing Missouri in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee on January 2, a shift from its previous projection of Tulane in the Independence Bowl.
ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura still has WVU out of the postseason entirely, while ESPN’s Mark Schlabach moved the Mountaineers to the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana on December 22 against Washington State. That’s a change from his earlier pick of Liberty in the same bowl.
AthlonSports slots West Virginia into the Cactus Bowl in Tempe, Arizona on December 26 against Illinois, replacing its prior projection of Kennesaw State in the Independence Bowl. CollegeFootballNews kept the Mountaineers in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, Texas on December 23, where Navy remains the projected opponent. YahooSports also left WVU without a bowl game, same as before.
For now, the Big 12’s projected bowl order after the College Football Playoff selections is Valero Alamo Bowl, Pop-Tarts Bowl, Kinder's Texas Bowl, AutoZone Liberty Bowl, Cactus Bowl, and then the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl.
The picture is made even murkier by the “Pac 12 Legacy Bowl Tie-Ins,” with Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah linked to the Valero Alamo Bowl along with the Big 12, as well as the Las Vegas Bowl, the Holiday Bowl and Tony the Tiger Sun bowl.
West Virginia is 17-24 all-time in bowl games and has won only three since joining the Big 12 Conference. Neal Brown’s teams beat North Carolina in the 2023 Duke's Mayo Bowl and Army in the 2020 AutoZone Liberty Bowl, while the program’s first Big 12 bowl win came in the 2016 Cactus Bowl, a 43-42 win over Arizona State.
WVU has played in the Liberty Bowl three times and is 1-2 there, with losses to Texas A&M in 2014 and Utah in 1964. The Mountaineers are also 1-2 in the Cheez-It Bowl, which was previously the Cactus Bowl and is now the Guaranteed Rate Bowl, and they also lost to Missouri in the 1998 Insight.com Bowl.
WVU’s only other First Responder Bowl appearance came in 2017, when the game was still called the Heart of Dallas Bowl and the Mountaineers fell 30-14 to Utah.
In Other News...
WVU Sees New Revenue In Two Venues With One Big Catch
WVU is leaning harder into the business side of college athletics, and Wren Bakers latest restructuring puts Don Robinson in charge of a key slice of that effort. Robinson will serve as the liaison to Learfields Mountaineer Sports Properties while also helping lead the push to bring concerts and other events to Hope Coliseum and Milan Puskar Stadium, part of a broader plan to create new revenue streams for the athletics department.
The ambition is there, but so are the hurdles. Hope Coliseum still needs major work, including no air conditioning, and both venues have loading limitations that make it tougher to stage larger productions. WVU wants those issues addressed well enough to host bigger shows by 2028, turning two familiar campus sites into something more than game-day buildings, even if the path to get there is going to take some real upgrades. [Read more 🡒]
Rich Rod Is Trying To Shield WVU From Portal Chaos
West Virginias roster management has become just as important as the on-field work this fall, with Rich Rodriguez and general manager Chuck Lillie leaning hard into one goal before the transfer portal opens again: keep the Mountaineers from getting hit by another wave of turnover. The staff has spent time trying to retain players through multi-year contracts, part of a broader push to create some stability in a sport that keeps making roster building more complicated.
The timing matters because the new eligibility rules have reduced the number of free transfers available, giving programs a chance to be more aggressive about locking players in for their full college careers. West Virginia has not disclosed which players are involved or what those deals look like, but the direction is clear. Rodriguez is trying to get ahead of portal chaos before it starts, and for a program that has seen how quickly a roster can change, that matters just as much as anything happening on Saturdays. [Read more 🡒]
WVU Fans Have A Real Dilemma After Hawkins Sparked Mixed Feelings
The first half against Coastal Carolina gave West Virginia plenty to feel good about, with the Mountaineers jumping out fast and looking like a team ready to put the game away early. The overall vibe around the program changed quickly after the break, though, as the performance loosened enough to leave fans sorting through both the promise and the frustration that came with it.
Michael Hawkins Jr. was a big part of why the night still carried excitement, and his showing only sharpened the debate about what West Virginia might have in him going forward. For a fan base trying to balance momentum with a few too many warning signs, the bigger question now is how much of what they saw can travel into the next stretch of games. [Read more 🡒]