Appalachian State's big upset loses a little luster

What Appalachian State did at Michigan last week seemed like a Hoosiers-type shocker.

But as the Mountaineers went back to beating up on schools no one has ever heard of this week, the Wolverines followed up their epic defeat by getting walloped by a team that hasn’t won a bowl game since the 2001 season in front of 100,000 people at the Big House. It was the team’s worst lost in nearly 40 years.

Suddenly Michigan looks nothing like the dominant program it’s supposed to be and we have to take that opening weekend upset for exactly what it was:

The very best team from the lower level defeating a very mediocre team from a BCS conference.

I don’t know about you, but the biggest win in the history of Appalachian State football has kind of lost some of its luster in my eyes. I almost feel like it wasn’t an upset at all. The USC of the Football Championship Subdivision probably should be able to handle an average 1-A team, right?

This could be a missed opportunity for Appalachian State and the FCS. Had Michigan ran the table for the rest of the season and won its bowl game, it probably would have found itself back in the top five in the final AP poll. Then, people could have made a case that the Mountaineers (assuming they finished undefeated) were among the top five or ten teams in all of college football.

Now, I feel like they still need to prove themselves in order to make that claim.

Because at this point, beating Michigan carries only a little more weight than beating Lenoir-Rhyne.