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Great way to start the football season. I was actually at the FIU/Penn St. game (a 59-0 blowout) and the Stadium went nuts every time the PA announcer would announce the score of the Michigan game. I cheered as well, even though they beat my alma mater in the Championship game last year. I didn't actually think until sometime in the 3rd quarter wiht App St. up by 2 scores that the Mountaineers could actually win the game. Everyone thought it was amazing when UNH beat Northwestern last year. But that was a case of a top 1-AA team beating a struggling Big Ten team that was recovering from tragically losing its head coach. Michigan is the #5 team in the country, the odds-on favorite to win the Big Ten, and a contender for the national title. While App St. is the 2-time defending 1-AA champions, they aren't in the same class. It would be like the Red Sox getting swept by the Yankees, the Scranton Wilkes-Barre Yankees.

I don't want to take credit away from App St. however. They showed resillance in this game, and they wanted it more at the end. When Michigan took a 32-31 lead, the Mountaineers got the ball at the Michigan 26 and threw an INT on the first play. At this point the standard thinking is to figure it's over, you gave it a good effort, but in the end you just were up against a far superior opponent. But they didn't think like that. They held them to a FG attempt, which they blocked, and got the ball back. They marched down the field for 69 yards in 7 plays and set up the go ahead score. Their kicker Rauch, on the road, in front of over 100,000 opposing fans, kicking from an angle, nailed it to give his team the lead.

Michigan still had a chance at that point. Henne was able to find Manningham and get it inside the App St 20 to set up another field goal try. Sure looked again like Michigan was going to survive. Not to be. They found a way to block another field goal and end the game. Great story.

You don't get games like this in the NFL. Just look at the upcoming week 1. The biggest favorite is the Patriots against the Jets at 6.5 points (Michigan was a 25 point favorite btw, but some places did not have a line at all for this game). If the Jets beat the Patriots on Sunday, so what? The Patriots get to play them again, and they still can recover. In fact, four years ago the Patriots lost their opener to the Bills, 31-0. They went on to a 14-2 regular season (ending it in week 17 ironically with a 31-0 defeat of the Bills) and won the Super Bowl.

This loss has a far greater impact. Not only will there not be a rematch, but Michigan cannot possibly win a national title now. The best they can do is win the Big Ten and go to the Rose Bowl. That's not to be scoffed at, but it's disappointing when you went to the Rose Bowl last year and are looking to improve on that this year. It'll be interesting to see how Michigan responds. I think it's likely they just go into the tank like MSU did last year after blowing a big lead to Notre Dame. Started out 3-0, lost to ND, lost at home the next week to lowly Illinois, and then won just 1 of their last 6 games. Michigan has Oregon at home next week, a good but not great team.