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Misperception of FCS (I-AA) Football

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This is a huge upset, a historic upset simply because a D1-AA team beat a D1-A team that was ranked for the first time! And to make it even more shocking is that said ranked team wasn't barely in the top 25, they were ranked #5. Some predicted a chance at the NC even.

Yeah, those are preseason rankings and preseason talk, but 50 years from now, and this upset will be remembered 50 years from now, no one will recall that it was preseason rankings. All will remember how App. State upset the #5 team in the country, at their house.

This upset story will always survive because as a society, we love to cheer for the underdog; on a personal level, as an OSU alum, Hollywood could not have come up with a better story.
 
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buckiprof;919243; said:
this upset will be remembered 50 years from now, no one will recall that it was preseason rankings.
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Hey, if I'm still alive then, I'll post something like this.

[BB73-over-100-years-old] Listen you whippersnappers of the year 2057. TSUN was only #5 because it was a preseason ranking, and the stupid voters saw a high-powered offense returning and didn't factor in a defense that had serious problems in the last 2 games of 2006, and lost their 4 best players to the NFL.

I'll never forget it - I was watching in a sports bar because the BTN network was brand new that year. Hard to believe the BTN is only 50 years old, since they just bought out ABC/ESPN, Time-Warner, and Comcast. ESPN sucked, the only live sports they owned the rights to lately are triathlons in Hawaii for folks over 100. By the way, I know the guy that finished second in that race. He posts on this board - and I can't believe he lost to Lllllllllllllloyd Carr. [/BB73-over-100-years-old]
 
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lvbuckeye;919279; said:
no shit. they got drilled 23-10 by a HORRIBLE NC State squad last year. the Wolfpack only won two other games.
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That was Edwards first game as a starter I beleive... my guess is he made some freshman mistakes and didn't gel with his recievers/ get used to the speed of college football before that game. And NC State wasn't that horrible last year. They just didn't know how to close. 2 point loss to conference champ Wake, beat BC and FSU (yes FSU wasn't as good last year but still). Their largest margin of defeat last year was 20 pts to Southern Miss, so they very easily could've won alot more games last year.
 
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buckiprof;919243; said:
and this upset will be remembered 50 years from now,
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I'm guessing there'll be a half-dozen or so upsets in Div-I college football that will equal this by then. It'll be remembered in 2057, but it will just lead the list (a short list, though) of games where a Div-IAA (or FCS, or whatever it's called at that time) beat a Top 10 team.
 
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I-A TEAMS PREVAIL 20-2
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Was Appalachian State's upset-for-the-ages Saturday at Michigan the first blow in knocking down the competitive barriers between Division I-AA and I-A football? Or was the Mountaineers' 34-32 victory simply a glorious performance by a lower division's premier team?
The numbers lean heavily toward the latter. In 22 games last weekend between I-A and I-AA schools, it was 20-2 for the big boys; Nicholls State knocked off Rice 16-14. In I-AA's losses, no team came closer than two touchdowns; the average margin was 32.8 points.
"What Appalachian State did was historic and has to go down as one of the greatest, if not the greatest win by a (I-AA) team," says Massachusetts coach Don Brown. "You're always rooting for your own, but the reality is this isn't going to happen very often."
In 1950, the Associated Press voted Centre College of Kentucky's 6-0 win against Harvard in 1921 as the greatest upset of the first half of the 20th century. Last year, an ESPN Classic show named it the greatest upset of all time. Harvard had won the 1919 Rose Bowl and owned a 25-game unbeaten streak. A 1996 USA TODAY story referenced the now-defunct Boston Post calling Centre "perhaps the smallest college that ever tackled a Big Three team (Harvard, Yale or Princeton)."
Now, that game might be overtaken. Appalachian State is believed to be the first school to defeat a ranked I-A team (Michigan was fifth in the preseason USA TODAY coaches' poll) since the divisions were created in 1978. The Citadel's 10-3 win at Arkansas in 1992 was considered the biggest inter-division upset. That led to the immediate firing of Razorbacks coach Jack Crowe.
More common, though, are scores such as these from last weekend: Louisville 73, Murray State 10; Cincinnati 59, Southeast Missouri State 3; Alabama 52, Western Carolina 6.
Massachusetts, which lost to Appalachian State in last year's I-AA championship game (now Football Championship Subdivision), will face I-A Boston College on Sept. 22. While he is thrilled by ASU's accomplishment, Brown knows what is ahead for other I-AA teams. "There's no question no one will be taken lightly anymore," Brown says. "This was a wake-up call everyone will pay attention to."
By Andy Gardiner, USA TODAY
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A 1-AA USA Today summary
 
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This was NOT Edwards first game.

He was a starter since the second game last season and he beat YSU 49-24 in the FCS Semifinals before the National Championship game.

Edwards is outstanding, but his O line is also outstanding. Their guards were hitting our linbackers before the read.

I was at the game and kept asking why YSU looked like they were in slow motion. It wasn't YSU, it was the speed of App State.

They are from Boone, North Carolina and they are better then Duke, NC State, North Carolina, Wake Forrest, and Virginia.

They recruit speed, toughness, then size. Their HC was an assitant under Frank Solich.
 
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penguinpower;920379; said:
This was NOT Edwards first game.

He was a starter since the second game last season and he beat YSU 49-24 in the FCS Semifinals before the National Championship game.
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I was referring to the NC State game, thus the quote in my post. I am among the minority in the country who saw Appalachian St. play last year. I watched a few of their playoff games, and saw how talented they were. What makes me sick is the majority of the national media who are ignorant to the fact that this is a good football team. I have said this before, and will say it again. App. St. would definitly beat at least 25% of the teams in Division 1-A. They would win half of their games vs. the next 25% of teams in D-1A. The way I see it, scUm basically lost to a team like Akron, like Houston, you could even say like a North Carolina. Appalachian State has a good football team.
 
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Zurp;920118; said:
I'm guessing there'll be a half-dozen or so upsets in Div-I college football that will equal this by then. It'll be remembered in 2057, but it will just lead the list (a short list, though) of games where a Div-IAA (or FCS, or whatever it's called at that time) beat a Top 10 team.
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Only time will tell if what you postulate is true, however, I tend to think that going forward, anytime a D-IAA team faces a Top 10 D-1A team, that the D-1A coach will have the beauty of Saturday at his disposal to remind his team to not take anyone lightly. The humiliation from this loss should serve as a powerful motivator for future D-1A teams.

Personally, I doubt the "half-dozen or so upsets" that will equal this in the next 50 years. People around the country (and here on BP as well) have been trying to find an upset comparable to this one, and Douglas-Tyson comes up as well as Miracle on Ice. Those aren't even college football!

From another thread here, it looks like the previous greatest upset in college football history happened in 1921:

BB73;919774; said:
The old-time college football game that's considered the biggest upset in the early days of college football was in 1921, when Centre College of Kentucky downed Harvard 6-0. That game was voted the greatest football upset of the half-century by the AP in 1950. Harvard hadn't lost since 1918, and Centre was the smallest college they had ever played.

After the 1919 season, Harvard won the Rose Bowl and was considered to be the National Champion. In 1920, they went undefeated, with a tie against then-powerhouse Princeton, who was considered NC that year.

Although Harvard had been tied by Penn State the week before the Centre game, nobody game the little college from Kentucky a chance when they went to Massachusetts.

Last year, ESPN named it the biggest upset in college football history.

Centre College: A U.S. News Top 50 Liberal Arts College
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No, I don't think this is the beginning of some trend, but a serious aberration. Time will surely show us which it is.
 
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I agree, THIS season App State is a mid-level Non-BCS conference team. People have this thing thinking that App State would be instantly ranked #120 if they were to join the FBS tomorrow, not true. I believe they are A LOT better than maybe 1/6 of the FBS teams. Granted they would not be able to withstand a full slate of conference play, they would certainly play up to a few games against BCS teams. These guys are only a 1 or 2 win team in a BCS conference, if that.
 
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