Published: September 02, 2007 11:24 pm            

Kitchell tips his hat to Appalachian State

Mountaineers stun Wolverines; deliver a great message along the way.

While heading up the press elevator at Indiana University Saturday night, a guy asked if I’d heard the Michigan score.

I nodded, saying I had.

“Makes the Big Ten look bad,” he said looking down at the floor. Then his head rose, a smile blossomed and he said, “but (expletive) Michigan.”

So goes it if you’re a Michigan, Ohio State — yes even a Notre Dame. Don’t look for a lot of sympathy from those who are normally on the back end of the fanny-kicking that those teams routinely administer.

Journalists all over the country Sunday were carefully calling Appalachian State’s 34-32 victory over No. 5-ranked Michigan one of college football’s biggest upsets. Hey, forget the carefully crafted wording.

This was college football’s biggest upset. Ever.

This was Appalachian State, for heaven’s sake, against Michigan, the most successful program in college football history.

This game was thought to be so one-sided that Las Vegas bookies didn’t even list it. After all, apparently no Division 1-AA team had ever beaten a team ranked in The Associated Press poll. Certainly it’s never happened to a top-10 team.

Oh, and by the way, don’t look for the Mountaineers to receive any votes in this week’s Top 25 poll. Get this — they don’t play at a high enough level to be eligible.

This game represented the worst and best of college football. It’s the kind of game that is popping up on Division I schedules all over the country. It’s all about big money — adding small schools to the schedule with the hope of winning more games and reaching that magical plateau known as “bowl eligible.”

Because when that happens, it means even more money.

This was supposed to be one of those games for Michigan, which plopped down $400,000 to the Mountaineers for the right to come to Ann Arbor and get the snot beat out of them.

Of course the happy side of this is that Appalachian State not only got the check but tore the roof off The Big House in the process, sending 109,000-plus Michigan fans home in a state of disrepair.

Oh, there were a handful of Mountaineer fans on hand and a reporter from the Ann Arbor News found Jason Bond and LaJuanda Pritchard outside the stadium for a great story. The couple is getting married in a few weeks and as a wedding present, bought each other tickets for the game. They drove 10 hours from Asheville, N.C., to see the game that they knew their beloved Mountaineers didn’t have a chance to win.

“It’s been like a funeral march,” Bonds said, watching Michigan fans leave the stadium. “We’ve been on the phone whispering, ‘We won.’ It’s a miracle.” Talk about a blessed union.

Let’s leave miracles for the life and death issues but when it comes to the mind-boggling shocks of college football, hey, this is right up there.

Consider that this Appalachian State squad that beat Michigan — a team bursting with Heisman Trophy candidates and one that started the season with national championship hopes — was beaten by a team that this Saturday will play Lenoir Rhyne.

That’s right — Lenoir Rhyne. And no, I don’t know where it’s located either. Following that game, the Mountaineers play Northern Arizona, Wofford and Elon. Now that’s some follow-up to Michigan.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not poking fun at the Mountaineers. This is a team that has won consecutive NCAA Division 1-AA championships. Michigan learned this isn’t a team to be taken lightly.

But c’mon, the school is, according to its Web site, “nestled at the base of Howard Knobb,” in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Boone, N.C., a town of 15,000. It isn’t a community that screams out “college football capital of the world,” although today it is just that. It also, ironically, resides in a dry county — or at least it was dry until Saturday night.

To the university’s credit, there isn’t a single reference to sports where it lists its nine “Points of Pride” on its Web site. And while I’m all for education, I would say that Saturday’s Miracle in Michigan should comfortably slip into that No. 10 spot sometime very soon.

Mountaineers’ running back Kevin Richardson, a one-time walk-on, may have said it best.

“Michigan had great tradition, bigger players, faster players and stronger players,” he told the Ann Arbor News. “But it’s all about what’s in your chest; your heart.”

Appalachian State is the Milan of college football. While basketball underdogs all over the country view “Hoosiers” the night before the big game, trust me, if I’m a football coach at any level — I’d have my players watching film of Saturday’s shocker today.

And while Michigan fans may not want to hear it, this was as good for college football as for every underdog in sports or life.

As for Michigan, well — the guy on the elevator pretty much said it all.

        

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