The Great Upset!

In a post entitled With Its Defeat By Appalachian State, Michigan Finally Realizes Its Many, Many Decades Old Desire To Be The Harvard Of The West, Dean Lawrence Velvel, an old Michigan grad, compared Appalachian State’s victory over Michigan to tiny Centre College’s 1921 upset of Harvard, which was then a major football power on the order of Ohio State, Texas or USC today. Velvel points out that the Centre College victory is regarded as the greatest upset in college football history, and that now Appalachian State’s win, 86 years later, will be regarded as the second greatest upset. Yet, because we are a society that knows little and cares less about history -- a trait which in larger matters causes us to get into war after war -- nobody in the news media seemed to mention or even know of Centre’s 1921 upset over then-mighty Harvard. Velvel also says that, by virtue of last Saturday’s loss, which caused it to join Harvard as a victim of one of the two most shocking upsets in college football history, long-elitist Michigan has finally realized its many, many decades long desire to be the Harvard of the West.^*