There was nothing to lose, and nothing to gain for the Appalachian State Mountaineer football team on Sept. 1, 2007. Nobody anticipated a small, relatively unknown school in the mountains coming off of two straight Division I FCS national championships to enter “The Big House” and knock off a No. 5 ranked FBS “power five” team with championship expectations.
Nevertheless, a game projected to be a lopsided victory for the ranked Michigan Wolverines football team turned into the biggest and most memorable college football upset in history.
On that day, App State, a small college located in Boone, North Carolina that had been known for their football team in the college football subdivision, became a nationally-known university with a 34-32 “upset in ‘The Big House’” in Ann Arbor, Michigan during the first week of the college football season.