The University of Houston desperately wants everyone to believe that its football program is bigger than Case Keenum, that it's a legitimate power on the rise.

Well, good luck with that.

Texas State 30, Houston 13. In the first game of the post-Keenum era, the Cougars lose to a school playing its first Division I (technically FBS) game ever. And not just lose. Tony Levine's team is completely dominated. At home. By a team the Las Vegas oddsmakers installed as a 35-point underdog.

A 35-point underdog. And they beat Houston by 17.

No wonder Texas State players started dancing on the sidelines with plenty of time left in the fourth quarter, rubbing extra salt into a gaping wound.

There are everyday disasters. And then there are Titanic-level disasters. In the realm of college football, this is a Titanic.

The ever-loyal University of Houston fans came out in droves to party. And ended up sitting through a football funeral. More than 32,000 showed for the first game of the last season at Robertson Stadium. That's a huge number for a game against an opponent that could not have been less marquee on the first full day of Labor Day weekend.

UH fans deserve major props. Too bad their team failed to show.

"They beat us in every facet of the game," Levine, who couldn't have had a worse first-season opener, said in his postgame radio interview. "Offense, defense, special teams, coaching."

Levine, who looked so brilliant with his go-for-the-throat gameplan against Penn State in his bowl game debut last January, appeared completely overmatched by veteran Texas State coach Dennis Franchione on this night. It turns out that things look a lot different when Keenum isn't the one making the quick reads and delivering on-target strikes again and again.

New UH starting quarterback David Piland couldn't have seemed more overmatched.

The redshirt sophomore from Southlake completed only 17 of his 44 pass attempts (a horrific 38 percent) and threw a crushing interception. It's hard to imagine Piland staying the starter the whole season.

Levine ran the up-tempo offense that Keenum excelled in. Only with Piland doing it, the Cougars couldn't stay on the field. Texas State completely dominated time of possession, befuddling Levine's team with a triple option attack of its own.

Bobcats running back Marcus Curry produced 154 yards of total offense and three touchdowns on only 16 touches. Texas State quarterback Shaun Rutherford completed 19 of his 25 passes for 196 yards and ran for 34 more yards.

And when Houston pulled within 14-10 in the second quarter and the Robertson crowd started to believe that things would right themselves, Texas State shrugged and ran off 13 straight points.

You know how Alabama dominated Michigan in Cowboys Stadium? That's how badly Houston was outplayed. Only Alabama — the defending national champs and pure college football royalty — weren't the ones doing the dominating. A fledgling new FBS program was.

Free Falling

The Cougars look much more like the team that finished 5-7 when Keenum went out early in the 2010 season than the one that enjoyed a 13-1 dream season last fall. Charlie Sheen's never even fallen from grace this fast.

Houston beat Texas State by 40 points only two seasons ago. Which might explain those sideline dances. Hey, the Bobcats earned them.

"We've got to worry about ourselves," Levine said when asked about UH's next opponent, a Louisiana Tech team that finished 8-5 last season and only lost to the Keenum Cougars by a single point. "We've got some work to do."

That's putting it mildly. With Louisiana Tech coming to Robertson next Saturday night and a trip to UCLA to follow, Levine faces the very real possibility of taking an 0-3 team into Reliant Stadium for that Sept. 29 Bayou Bucket game with Rice.

The coach and athletic director Mack Rhoades are lucky that UH fans are so faithful and largely so sane. Cougar backers don't tend to go crazy like their counterparts at the University of Texas, who moan and groan about a coach who has been in two national championship games in the last seven years, for example.

Levine will get time to show what he can do. Now, he needs to start building some faith.

It's hard to understand how tailback Charles Sims — the Cougars' most explosive offensive player — only touched the ball 14 times against Texas State.

I've long argued that Kevin Sumlin was largely underrated by Houston fans even as the school played up the success achieved during his tenure. Everyone expects Texas A&M to fall apart in the SEC.

It turns they may be looking to the wrong campus for a football implosion.