Presented by
100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters — No. 99: App State Over Michigan
September 1, 2007. Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32. In the Big House. The upset that gave every G6 fan base a permanent answer.
Tim Stephens
100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 99: App State Over Michigan
Advertisement
GET THE FREE NEWSLETTER
G6DIEHARD daily — the best of Group of 6 football in your inbox every morning.
Sign Up FreeSeptember 1, 2007. Opening day of the college football season. Appalachian State — an FCS program from Boone, North Carolina — walked into Michigan Stadium and beat the No. 5 team in the country 34-32 in front of 109,218 people.
Read that again. An FCS school. Top five. The Big House. On national television.
The Mountaineers weren’t some scrappy underdog stumbling into a miracle. App State was in the middle of a three-peat — three consecutive FCS national championships from 2005 to 2007, the first program to do it since the FCS playoff began in 1978. This was a loaded roster playing its best football. Michigan just happened to be standing in the way.
The game itself was a war. App State led 34-32 with 26 seconds left after Julian Rauch hit a 24-yard field goal. Michigan drove 46 yards on one play — a deep ball to Mario Manningham — and set up for a 37-yard field goal to win it. The snap was good. The hold was good. And Corey Lynch came off the edge and blocked it. Game over. Bedlam.
The Wolverines dropped out of the AP Top 25 entirely the next week — the first time a top-10 team had fallen out of the poll in a single week. The loss defined Michigan’s 2007 season before it started. For App State, it defined the program forever.
The upset did something no amount of lobbying or conference realignment could do. It proved that the line between the big programs and everyone else was thinner than the sport wanted to admit. The talent gap was real, but it wasn’t a canyon. It was a crack — and on the right day, with the right team, the little guys could walk right through it.
App State has since moved to the FBS and the Sun Belt Conference. The Mountaineers have won multiple conference titles and beaten Power 4 programs in their new home. The program kept climbing. But nothing will ever top September 1, 2007. Nothing needs to.
That single afternoon in Ann Arbor gave every G6 and FCS fan base a permanent answer to anyone who says the little guys don’t belong. They do. Corey Lynch proved it.
They told you it didn’t matter. Here are 100 reasons it does.
Advertisement
BECOME A DIEHARD PUBLISHER
You bring the hustle and the love for your program. We bring the platform and the tools.
Apply Now
Tim Stephens
Founder & CEO
Tim Stephens has spent nearly 40 years at the intersection of sports and technology — from small-town newspapers to leading day-to-day newsroom strategy for CBSSports.com. He founded Diehard Sports Network to cover the programs the industry forgot.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Want to talk about it? The G6 Discussion community is where fans discuss every story, every game, every rumor.
MORE STORIES
Your Best Player Just Left. His Contract Says He Owes You. Good Luck Collecting.
NIL buyout clauses may be the only retention tool Group of 6 programs have against the transfer portal. No court has ruled on the merits.
100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters
No. 100: MACtion
The G6 was never allowed to compound
If the College Football Playoff had started with 24 teams in 2014, 21 of 80 qualifying programs would have come from the Group of 6. Every one of them was denied the chance to build on it.