Texas A&M football hosts the Appalachian State Mountaineers on Saturday and, though not what you would call a traditional “name brand” opponent, they bring quite the reputation with them.
Most college football fans are aware of their 2006 upset of the then-5th-ranked Michigan Wolverines on the first Saturday of the season, back when App was still an FCS program. Well, they’ve come quite a long way since then, joining the FBS in 2014 as a member of the Sun Belt Conference, and have excelled, crossing the 10-win threshold 5 out of the last 7 seasons – averaging 10.4 wins over that same period.
All this to say, they may be the team with the reputation as a scrappy underdog, but, as Jimbo Fisher said in his press conference, they have the bona fides to compete in any P5 conference. They’re a legitimate program that competes for their conference title pretty much every year, and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
According to SP+, they currently rank higher than Louisville, West Virginia, and Virginia Tech, just to name a few programs. The Sagarin ratings have them at 51st among FBS programs, higher than the Aggies’ conference-mate Missouri and rated similarly to cross-division foe South Carolina.
On this day: September 1st, 2007.
— On This Day: College Football (@onthisdayCFB) September 1, 2022
One of the biggest and most memorable upsets in college football history went down as Appalachian State stunned the Michigan Wolverines in front of 109,218 fans.
34-32 pic.twitter.com/xhK4x9BLft
In other words, I don’t think the Aggies are overlooking their upcoming opponent. App has never been a layup for power programs – UNC being the latest to find that out – and the Aggies won’t treat them as such. Here are three reasons that we can expect A&M to pull out the victory this Saturday.