Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Academic Blogs -> Velvel on National Affairs

Academic

: Velvel on National Affairs

Comment on Defeat by Applachian State

By Lawrence R. Velvel

From: Joseph Burgess
To: velvel@mslaw.edu
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 6:55 PM

Subject: Re: With Its Defeat By Appalachian State, Michigan Finally Realizes Its Many, Many Decades Old Desire To Be The Harvard Of The West.

Congratulations are due to Michigan for its achieving the long-held dream that you so well pointed out with your comparison of its loss in football to Appalachian State to Harvard's 1921 loss to Centre College.

One of the more comprehensive collections of information -- highly informative and enjoyable -- about the C6-H0 game is here --

http://www.centre.edu/web/library/sc/special/C6h0/ziegler.html

I think it interesting that the age 30s-40s bunch who produce and write and announce and pontificate for ESPN have already proclaimed the Appalachian State win over Michigan as the greatest upset in college-football history -- not a candidate for the designation, but undebatable holder of such. So have dozens of other similarly-aged sports pundits and writers and other assorted "experts" around the country who think that their generation invented or discovered sex; beer; football, basketball, and baseball; fast cars; and aging on past 30. Therefore, the greatest of anything that's happened or that will have happened did so or will do so on their watch.

It seems generally overlooked by the "experts" and fans who claim that Appalachian State's win over Michigan is the greatest upset ever that ASU's win was its 15th in a row, and that ASU has won the Division I-AA championship twice in a row, with its only loss in 2006 having been its season-opener at North Carolina State. Appalachian State ain't applesauce -- or even chopped liver -- by any means.

Eras differ, of course, but each of the following in its own way rates high on the upset scale, perhaps as high or higher as Michigan's recent embarrassment and Appalachian State's joy --

Carlisle 18, Harvard 15, 1911

Carlisle 27, Army 6, 1912

Notre Dame 35, Army 13, 1913

Centre 6, Harvard 0, 1921

Washington & Jefferson 0, California 0, 1922 Rose Bowl

Carnegie Tech (now Mellon) 19, Notre Dame 0, 1926

St. Mary's 20, Fordham 12, 1930

Oregon State Agricultural College 0, Southern California 0, 1933

Columbia 7, Stanford 0, 1934 Rose Bowl

Nevada 9, St. Mary's 7, 1934

Holy Cross 55, Boston College, 12, 1942

Columbia 21, Army 20, 1947

Santa Clara 21, Kentucky 13, 1950 Orange Bowl

Navy 14, Army 2, 1950

San Jose State 13, Stanford 12, 1971

Texas-El Paso 23, Brigham Young, 16, 1985

Temple 28, Virginia Tech, 24, 1998

UC Davis, 20, Stanford, 17, 2005

Joseph Burgess
Who is another there's-always-next-year University of Kentucky alumnus and diehard UK football fan among those who still crow about UK's 13-7 win over undefeated, No. 1, defending national champion Oklahoma in the 1951 Sugar Bowl, breaking UO's 31-game winning streak, which would be followed in a couple of years by UO's record 47-game winning streak. (A big upset? Naw. UK was coached by Bear Bryant in those days and went into the game ranked No. 7 with a 10-1 record, the single loss by 7-0 in Knoxville to the 10-1 Tennessee team that beat Texas in the 1951 Cotton Bowl, 20-14.)

Full post as published by Velvel on National Affairs on September 14, 2007 (boomark / email).