First day of school

App St. beat Michigan over the weekend and the talk is that this is one of the biggest upsets in sports history. Biggest upset in sports history? Gimme a break--you're comparing this to the Miracle on Ice? You crazy! Isn't it much more likely that Michigan's just overrated? Look, App State has won back-to-back Championships--a lower division, yes, but clearly they're used to winning games--they've got the longest winning streak in the nation. It doesn't strike me as that amazing that App won a game as an underdog. And the flip side: last year Michigan inched toward a national championship, then fell flat on their asses and hasn't done anything since. Why are we so amazed by this result?

Michigan is currently ranked #33; the last 1-A team that App St. beat was Wake Forest, currently ranked #39. Michigan was ranked #5 but upon seond thought they are now ranked #33--where they apparently belonged all along! They're marginally ahead of Wake Forest, a fellow losing contestant of mighty App St. Is this that big of a deal? This is bigger than Buster Douglas beating Tyson? Bigger than the Red Sox coming back from 3-0 on the Yanks? Dude, I'd put McEnroe beating Borg ahead of this!

Now consider the vicissitudes of college football. Now that Michigan has completely dropped out of the top 25, they have no shot of getting back in the championship race at all. They still have to play Penn State, Ohio State and Wisconsin (the only noteworthy teams on their schedule) and even if they beat them all, they're still out of the race. Okay, but if they'd been ranked #32 in the pre-season and beat all of these teams, they still would have been out of the race. Even with those 3 solid wins, from #32 they would have had to leap frog so many teams that it simply wouldn't have happened for them. (And of course, for those 3 squads to all lose to the #32 team, they would invariably have lost other games which would make them worthless victories and thus Michigan wouldn't have gotten any credit anyway!) The real upset here is that Michigan was ranked where they didn't deserve to be from the git-go.

The only thing that made the Michigan Wolverines a 'good' team is that they were ranked #5 without ever having to play a game. Now they're no longer a 'good' team even if they run the table from here. App State on the other hand is looking at a 3rd straight championship--doesn't strike me as that great of an upset. I understand the oddsmakers have been trumped, but I dare say this ain't this biggest upset in the history of sports!

(Incidentally, I heard App's division referred to as 'formerly known as 1-AA' on numerous occasions over the weekend. So what is it currently known as and why are we still calling it by the old name?)