The Toughest Road Tests on WVU's 2026 Schedule, Ranked
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It's a light road schedule for the West Virginia Mountaineers in 2026, and they won't play their first true road game until the first week of October! Quite the difference from schedules of years past.
Which road game will be the easiest? The toughest? I ranked all four road tests below.
No. 4: at TCU (10/24)
Did you really think I would put the House of Horrors (Ames) at No. 4? Absolutely not! More on them in a second.
With all due respect to TCU fans, Amon G. Carter Stadium hasn't been a daunting place for the Mountaineers in their first six trips there. They have won four of the six meetings in Fort Worth, and to be honest, could very easily have been 5-1. You know which game I'm talking about, right? The "pass interference" on David Sills V game. Yeah, that one.
TCU should have a decent team in 2026, but it won't be easy replacing Josh Hoover, who transferred to be Curt Cignetti's next guy at Indiana. Plus, the Mountaineers will have a bye week after this game, so they know they'll be able to rest and recover after giving max effort.
No. 3: at Iowa State (10/3)
I don't care that Iowa State is in a rebuild. I don't care that they may be one of the worst teams in the Big 12 in 2026. Playing in Ames is never fun. Just ask Will Grier and the rest of the 2018 WVU team about that experience. Their fans are loud, passionate, and truly make an impact on the game.
Defensive coordinator Jon Heacock is finally gone, which is good news for the Big 12, as is Matt Campbell. But Jimmy Rogers is a pretty good coach in his own right and seems to be the right man for the job.
This will be the first true road game of the season for the Mountaineers, and you just never know how a team is going to respond in that environment until you actually go through it.
No. 2: at Utah (11/27)
Rice Eccles Stadium is one of the toughest places to play in the entire country, winning over 73% of its home games since moving to the stadium in 1998. It also doesn't help that this is going to be a 9 p.m. ET kick (thanks, Big 12) on Black Friday. It's very reasonable to think that the Utes will have something to play for that night and will have a packed-out stadium to try and help them to victory.
Morgan Scalley is a first-year head coach, but has been in the program for nearly two decades. It might take him a few weeks to figure things out, but he'll be comfortable by the time game No. 12 rolls around. If WVU had this one earlier in the year, there might be a case for Iowa State to be No. 2, but yeah, just a bad luck of the draw here for the Mountaineers getting the Utes in the season finale.
No. 1: at Texas Tech (11/7)
Texas Tech has been the center of the college football world for all the wrong reasons this offseason. Brendan Sorsby is no longer with the team, and while that's a huge loss for the Red Raiders, they are still in pretty good shape at the quarterback spot. Will Hammond is very capable of leading this team to a Big 12 title and then some once he gets healthy. Texas Tech may have to fight its way through the first couple of games without him, but he will be back in time for their matchup with the Mountaineers.
I respect how talented and deep the Red Raiders are so much that I didn't even hesitate in naming this the toughest road matchup despite having a bye week before, giving WVU time to rest and get a great game plan together.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/westvirginia as The Toughest Road Tests on WVU's 2026 Schedule, Ranked.
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