MORGANTOWN — It was either one of the best offensive calls of the season by Rich Rodriguez or Houston coach Willie Fritz should be searching for a new defensive coordinator today.
The situation: WVU faces a fourth-and-four from Houston’s 34-yard line. There’s 13 minutes remaining in the game. Underdog WVU, which hadn’t won a Big 12 game all season, leads the 22nd-ranked Cougars 31-28.
Outside of an H-back lined up off to the left, WVU freshman quarterback Scotty Fox Jr. is basically in an empty set, so a pass is expected. Houston counters with five pass rushers, but the two interior linemen are outside of WVU’s guards and everyone else is coming off the edge.
There is absolutely nothing but oxygen in the middle of the field.
Fox runs a draw and 34-yards later he is celebrating in the end zone for the game-clinching score in what turned out to be a 45-35 upset victory on Saturday for the Mountaineers.
He could have walked in over the last 15 yards, or so, as WVU picked up a major boost of momentum under Rodriguez.
“Great win on the road,” Rodriguez said. “We’re going to enjoy the heck out of it. Really proud of the guys.”
The Big 12, meanwhile, took another major step back.
If Houston (7-2, 4-2 Big 12) was, indeed, the fourth best team in this league and an emerging contender for the College Football Playoff, well, Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark has a bad joke on his hands.
The Cougars surprising results prior to Saturday had nothing to do with what was supposed to be a stout defense and a talented quarterback in Conner Weigman (he couldn’t even hold onto the ball for crying out loud) and had everything to do with Houston having played a strength of schedule ranked 78th in the country.
That’s behind such national powerhouses known as Ohio University, Tulane and Old Dominion, by the way.
It is very much the same story WVU (3-6, 1-5) experienced in 2023, when there was sudden optimism about the Mountaineers going 9-4 that season under former coach Neal Brown. The truth wasn’t WVU was turning things around under Brown, it was that WVU didn’t play anyone with a pulse other than Penn State in the nonconference and Oklahoma in Big 12 play.
Same thing, we believe, with Houston this season.
That leads us back to Yormark, because he’s got some major football issues on his hands right now. College football is the driver of anything economical in college athletics. Sitting at the ultimate poker table is the SEC and the Big Ten and they’ve got full houses.
Yormark and the Big 12 definitely have earned the right to be sitting at that table, but if WVU’s win Saturday was any type of indication, Yormark is sitting there with nothing but a busted straight.
Fox began the season, you may remember, as the fourth “Or” on Rodriguez’s depth chart and that guy, a true freshman, just looked like Tim Tebow in taking down the nationally-ranked Cougars.
The SEC and Big Ten have powerhouses. The Big 12 has parity. From August through the middle of November, parity creates interesting stories and nice headlines. Come December, parity absolutely gets you killed.
The problem isn’t that anyone could win the Big 12. It’s that, literally, ANYONE could win the Big 12. Remember the old West Virginia Wham semi-pro team from back in the day? They’d have a shot.
In the case of WVU, this realization, for the moment, is a blessing in disguise. The win Saturday is worthy of celebration. No one is taking this away from Rodriguez and his team.
Rod called a perfect game Saturday. Fox responded with three touchdowns – two rushing, one passing – and Diore Hubbard added 108 rushing yards and another TD.
“We played hard. Our guys played with a lot of passion,” Rodriguez said. “That was the best thing I saw from our guys. I said, ‘We’ve got to play West-Virginia-football-playing hard.’ That needs to be different than anybody else’s playing hard. That was kind of my challenge to our guys.”
He still has a long way to go in his rebuilding efforts, but those rebuilding efforts are in a Big 12 where all 16 teams are basically on the same playing level. All you need is one good head coach and six or seven truly talented players to have a shot.
Rodriguez, perhaps, gave WVU fans a glimpse of what may lie down the road. Unfortunately, it was also a reminder of just how far the Big 12 has to go in order to even sniff the air that is taken in by the big boys.
