Houston's Big 12, CFP hopes take major hit with ugly loss to West Virginia

Rich Rodriguez's return to West Virginia has not gone exactly as planned or hoped. But the Mountaineers helped deliver the first signature win of his return on Saturday with a huge road upset, 45-35, over No. 22-ranked Houston. 

It not only gave Rodriguez his biggest win back at West Virginia, but it also may have completely changed the course of this year's Big 12 conference. 

Perhaps the College Football Playoff as well

Houston's Big 12, CFP chances seem dashed

After scoring a huge upset win at Arizona State a week ago, Houston seemed to have positioned itself in the driver's seat for a potential spot in the Big 12 championship game. Even though the Cougars still trailed three teams in the conference standings — Cincinnati, BYU and Texas Tech — they would only need to climb over two of them to get a shot. 

And with Cincinnati and BYU still playing each other, and with Texas Tech still having to play BYU, there was a good chance they were going to get the help needed.

Add in the fact that Houston had what looked to be the easiest remaining schedule of all of those teams, and you could easily see a path.

That path, however, took a major hit on Saturday due to their inability to stop West Virginia's running game. 

The Mountaineers gashed Houston for 246 yards, while the Cougars also turned the ball over four times on offense while creating zero takeaways on defense. 

While that is disappointing for the way this season started for Houston, this still has a chance to be a spectacular year for the program and head coach Willie Fritz. The Cougars entered the year coming off back-to-back 4-8 seasons and were not really considered to be preseason contenders in the conference.

Even with Saturday's defeat, they are still in a position to potentially win 10 regular-season games for just the second time in the past decade.