The Cult of I-AA Special Edition: Hail to the Victors
It's A-Day plus two here at the Lanier Drive Institute of Higher Thinking, and only has the High Priest just now finally removed himself from the Great and Excellent celebrations following the most momentous win by a I-AA program in the history of the subdivision, Appalachian State's 34-32 shocker over Big Ten powerhouse Michigan. I'll just assume you heard about it. A lot of things went into the Mountaineers' win over Michigan—and I'm not talking about just the X's and O's and all the things that have been hashed out by the talking heads on ESPN, either. (While we're on the subject of ESPN talking heads, by the way, Kirk Herbstreit and Mark May have a lot of good points about big schools playing cupcakes, but their insistence on belittling App State before and during the upset is understandable ignorance. Their continued assertion that Appalachian had no business at all winning the game is willful ignorance, for reasons I'll point out in a few paragraphs. Bear with me.) I spent many hours in the Shrine of I-AA communing with the Football Gods, chanting and fasting. Here are the real reasons App State won the game, as were passed down to me by the Football Gods themselves on stone tablets. Champions play like champions Whenever the debate begins about I-A and I-AA, the High Priest has always stood behind the statement that a Cult champion is usually as good or better than any team from the lower half of I-A. I have long maintained that the I-AA champ could not only compete in, but they could win most of the first week of shitty, uninteresting I-A bowls. I have been disputed on this point, but the Football Gods have sent you a sign. A star has risen over Ann Arbor, Michigan. Follow it, and you will find the place where it was shown that a two-time Cult Champion with enough returning players can beat even a team with millions of dollars and 100,000 fans. This goes back to a point I made in my first column back as the High Priest: if the I-AA championship game were played in late December—after the Irrelevant Bowl and Acme Giant Slingshot Bowl but before the equally-useless-but-higher-quality bowls between the third-place teams from legitimate Icon conferences—then I-AA football in general would grow in stature. It is like the theory of prestige used in the print industry: a magazine is more prestigious than a newspaper, a book is more prestigious than a magazine. Never mind that the book may be Ann Coulter's latest vapid pack of idiocy and the newspaper may be the Washington Post. Most morons will actually believe the book has more credibility just because it is a book. The same theory applies to the timing of the I-AA championship. Move it out of the ungodly awful Friday night slot before the I-A bowl season and into a late-December, prime time position and coupled with App State's sudden infusion of credibility into the veins of Cult football, the football world would watch. PS: For those who say the fans wouldn't travel that close to Christmas, blah, blah, blah—bullshit. Elevate the prestige of the time slot and of the game and passes to the game would be like Golden Tickets. You'd have Appalachian State, UMass, Georgia Southern, Youngstown State and Montana fans unwrapping chocolate bars for a chance to see their team play on ESPN on December 29 with all the world watching. And in just a few short years, the overall attitude toward at least the top programs in I-AA would see a seismic shift. Michigan's upset would still be an upset of monumental proportions, but you might actually hear this: Lee Corso: "Michigan played the entire game flat, you guys. And as we all know, if you play a game flat against a championship team from the Playoff Division, you run the very good chance of being beaten. The Football Gods hate "FCS" almost as much as the High Priest does If the NCAA ever needed instant feedback on just how everyone felt about the recent change in nomenclature from I-AA to FCS (Football Championship Subdivision), then they got it in week one. Not only did almost every graphic on the ESPN/Fox/NBC/CBS/Aurora Cable Access screens say I-AA, many of them didn't even bother to say "FCS/I-AA" or "FCS (formerly I-AA)." On top of that, announcers stumble over the new moniker. Some called it stupid. Most openly ridiculed it. One writer referred to it as "the new NCAA-ese for I-AA." Better men than those responsible for this debacle of nomenclature shift have reversed course. It's not too late for the NCAA to do the same. Or, if you really want to enhance I-AA with a name change, use the eloquent words of Brent Musburger, ABC's top-notch, veteran play-by-play man. He simply called I-AA the "Playoff Division." Division I Playoff Division. Sometimes the answer is simple and obvious. Thanks, Brent. Karmic realignment Just days before the Home Invasion in the Big House, Lauren Caitlin (the girl with two trendy first names; what, Brittany Lindsay wasn't available?) metaphorically kicked Appalachian State University in the groin. Caitlin, Miss Teen South Carolina, is the latest overnight YouTube sensation thanks to her stereotype-reaffirming answer to the question: why can't one in five average American's find the U.S. on a map? Given a chance to answer again on the "Today Show," Caitlin fared better, but that isn't saying much. She did, however, announce her college plans. That's right. Appalachian State. It didn't take long for App's rivals to begin a long series of jokes at App's expense. Q. How many Mountaineers does it take to screw in a light bulb? A. Well, personally I think most Mountaineer Appalachians have, uh, Osama and South Africa to get more electricity, um, ahh, transistor radios with surround sound and uhhh, crap… GO MOUNTAINEERS!!! WHOOOOOO! If you are a fan, student, professor, administrator or just a janitor at App State, this wasn't good. Karma, though, is a funny thing. Between Lauren-Lindsay-Brittany-Caitlin, the national media dismissing Appalachian, Michigan overlooking the Mountaineer's pedigree and skill and team speed, the NCAA hosing I-AA football so badly over the last 15 years that no one realizes just how good a Cult champion really is and the sheer karmic folly of renaming I-AA the "FCS," the football gods were left with no choice. Michigan was going down. And the Football Gods smiled at Mike Hart Mike Hart, the Heisman candidate and super-stud running back for Michigan, would not call the loss to Appalachian State "embarrassing." "I wouldn't call it embarrassing because that takes away from [Appalachian State]," Hart said in an Associate Press story. Had Hart not spent two quarters nursing a thigh injury, the Mountaineers might just be a cautionary "almost" tale for other Icon schools with Cult teams on the schedule. But the Michigan standout wasn't handing out excuses. Hart understands the quality of the football team his Wolverines lost to, a point lost on many pundits. He later said that the loss was tremendously disappointing, but not an embarrassment. The High Priest humbly inducts Mike Hart, an Icon school standout, into the Cult of I-AA as an honorary member. Your sportsmanship and acknowledgement of your opponent's quality has been noted by the Football Gods and, I hope, by all Cult fans everywhere. Oh yeah… Nichols State also beat Rice. A top Cult program beats an Icon school and a good-not-great Cult squad hands a defeat to a I-A school that falls almost directly in the middle between the Icons and the Wannabes. I think we'll call those schools "Field Fillers." If you're keeping track at home, here's how the World at Large sees Division I football: Icons (USC, Ohio State, Florida, Nebraska, etc.) But here's the pecking order if you go by overall quality of play: Icons-Field Fillers-Top Cult Schools-Wannabes-The Rest of the Cult An addendum As a lifelong fan of Georgia Southern football, it hasn't been easy for me to put my finger on my feelings about the win. After all, App State is our most hated rival, the antithesis of Georgia Southern football and—honestly—the school in the Southern Conference that looks the most like Georgia Southern in terms of size, funding, programs and student body makeup. It is as a journalist and the High Priest of I-AA that I can really experience the joys of the Great Upset. I met Appalachian head coach Jerry Moore in 1999 when I took over covering Georgia Southern for the Statesboro Herald. I played golf with him at the 2000 Southern Conference rouser and had the pleasure of chatting with him on many other occasions. He has always come across as a modest but self-assured football man, even when App State was the Phil Mickelson of I-AA before their back-to-back Cult titles in 2005 and again last year. It is hard for a Blue-Bleeder to accept that Georgia Southern has come so close to iconic upsets (88 at Florida State, 91 at Auburn) only to see arch-rival Appalachian actually pull it off. But it would be impossible not to tip your hat toward the Boys from Boone. All that is left is to hope that the Eagles kick their ass on October 20th in Boone and then do the same to Georgia in next season's opener.
Who would have guessed that Bruce Banner was an App State grad? -->
So is it too unreasonable to think that a Cult champion could manhandle a 6-5 team from Conference USA in the Chico's Bail Bonds Bowl?
Field Fillers (Vanderbilt, NC State, Rice, Baylor, Stanford)
Wannabes (Troy, Middle Tennessee, Louisiana-Monroe, Florida International)
The Cult
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