Just in case you haven’t heard, this past Saturday Michigan’s football team became the first ranked-DI-A team to lose to a DI-AA team. Appalachian State upset the Michigan faithful, and pretty much the whole nation, with a 34-32 victory over the Wolverines at Ann Arbor.

Appalachian State is considered the best of the best in DI-AA football-now known as Football Championship Series-where the university has won the last two national championships; but to put that team at the same level as Michigan is absolutely ludicrous.

The Wolverines fell from their preseason ranking of No. 5 out of the Top 25. They are the first team since 1968 to drop out of the rankings after starting in the Top 5. Did this team deserve to drop out of the top 25, or was it premature to declare that this team is no longer one of the elites in the nation?

There’s no explanation for why Michigan lost, other than the fact that they were outplayed in every facet of the game. The Wolverines’ defense let up big play after big play. Their offense, with powerful weapons all across the board, did nothing (with the big exception of Mike Hart, who had 188 yards with 3 TDs). And as the last play of the game showed, the special teams’ play was horrific.

So maybe Appalachian State just caught Michigan in a bad week. But the way the Mountaineers played, the Wolverines had just as much of a chance to win the game. Appalachian State played well, but Michigan handed them the win.

Losing one game doesn’t necessarily mean that Michigan will not go undefeated for the rest of the season; perhaps they could still get a Bowl Championship Series bid and win a major bowl game. What the loss shows is that a team can be hyped all summer and then not even deserve to be ranked.

This was the team ranked No. 5 in the nation on opening night on Thursday. This was the team that was going to battle with Wisconsin, Penn State, and Ohio State for the Big Ten title. This was supposed to be a team that was going to battle all the other elites for a bid to the National Championship game.

But instead, a team full of future-NFL players couldn’t even beat a team that has no full-scholarship athletes on its roster. A team with the best left tackle in the nation (Jake Long), one of the best quarterbacks (Chad Henne) and a couple of the best offensive weapons (Hart, wide receiver Mario Manningham) was all outshined by Appalachian State’s quarterback Armanti Edwards, who threw for 227 passing yards and three touchdowns while rushing for another one.

A team built for winning during the off-season will now have to make sure they find a way not to lose for the remainder of the year to salvage the season. The remainder of the season will concentrate on making up for a season that went down the drain within the first four quarters of this year for the Wolverines.