Worse loss: App State or Toledo?

Submitted by MBAgoblue on
The 12th game rumor post has evolved to an App State vs. Toledo discussion - so it probably deserves its own thread. I still hold that Toledo was a worse loss. Discuss amongst yourself -- or ignore if you don't care.
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Alton

December 24th, 2008 at 2:51 PM ^

Yes, as far as that goes. But think about it this way: there are 120 FBS teams. Appalachian State was undoubtedly the best team not in the FBS. The worst they could have been is #121 overall, and I think you would agree that it would be pretty myopic to say that they were not better than at least 20 of the 120 FBS teams. Given that there are a handful of wins by FCS teams over FBS teams every year, and a large number of games between the top FCS conferences and FBS teams, we have a pretty good idea year-to-year that the best FCS team is usually around #80 or so in the nation. An again, there isn't much dispute that the best FCS team that year was Appalachian State. I certainly don't agree with Sagarin's ranking of them in the top 40, but there shouldn't be much controversy that they were in the top 100.

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Blue Durham

December 24th, 2008 at 2:53 PM ^

but Appalachian State suffered 1 loss last year and won the D-Iaa championship. This year they had 3 or 4 losses, I think, and did not win the championship. So I guess it could be argued that this years team wasn't quite as good as last year's team.

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Blue Durham

December 24th, 2008 at 2:29 PM ^

After the Appalachian State game, I knew we still had a good team with a lot of future NFLer's. I also had confidence that we were going to have a good season (which was immediately quashed after Oregon). The Appalachian State loss was 1 game. An isolated incident. After the Toledo loss, I started wondering if we were going to have a winning season in the next several years (challenging for a conference championship out of the question), and what impact that was going to have on the program at large. How long could RR survive such losses, and if he suffers another such year, (or God forbid, two) is he given his walking papers. And if so, how devastating would that be for the program. The Toledo loss was more than one game. It was fear for the health of the program, survival of the coaching staff. Over-reaction? Shafer didn't survive the subsequent Purdue debacle. I am sure I am not the only person who had visions of our entire program circling the bowl ready to go down.

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Magnus

December 24th, 2008 at 2:40 PM ^

But would that "fear for the program" exist (at least to such a high level) if Michigan hadn't suffered The Horror in 2007? You might have a slightly different view of the Toledo game - oh, it sucks, but it might be an anomaly - if Michigan had beaten ASU last year or if that game just hadn't existed.

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Blue Durham

December 24th, 2008 at 2:50 PM ^

didn't happen, the loss to Toledo would look much, much worse, and the implications to the present coaching staff would be far more severe. RR would be hearing many, many more catcalls that "Lloyd never lost to such bad teams." But Lloyd's team did lose, and this broke the aura that Michigan teams are invincible, at least against the lesser opponents. But, if the Appalachian State loss did not happen, we very well may be talking about the future of Michigan head coach Mike DeBord, and dreaming about if we had a real good head coach, like the West Virginia head coach with the spanish name who wins 10 games a season by running this weird spread-and-shred offense and 3-3-5 defense

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Real Tackles Wear 77

December 24th, 2008 at 3:47 PM ^

Simple. App State would have won the MAC last year if they had been a MAC team. Toledo has sucked with few exceptions for years, and if 07 ASU had played 08 Toledo in some type of time-space continuum warp game, ASU rolls by 3 TD's. All that said, the 07 Wolverines were far superior to to the 08 Wolverines and therefore getting beat by App State was a worse loss.

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Hannibal.

December 29th, 2008 at 3:40 PM ^

Toledo was a worse team, but App. State was a worse loss for the program, given how humiliating and infamous it became. Our grandchildren will still be watching that field goal block fifty years from now.

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ThWard

December 29th, 2008 at 4:12 PM ^

App State and [insert "it's not even close" here]. Seriously. Pre-season top 5. Ton of returning NFL talent. Coming off of a solid 2006 campaign where we were 4 points from the MNC title game. DIAA (FCS, if you prefer). Nothing, nothing comes close to that, even losing to a lowly MAC team.

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