Giant slayer is now the hunted

What every underdog lives for is the chance to play a national power on the road with a chance to make history.

What makes college football different is the idea that a little-stadium school can walk into a big stadium and walk out with a headline.

“Maybe they’ll fumble a few times, maybe they’ll throw a few interceptions,” the longshot coach said this week. “Maybe it will snow.”

Seriously, does anyone think Lenoir-Rhyne has a snowball’s chance against Appalachian State?

One week after Appalachian State pulled off arguably the greatest upset in college football history, Division II Lenoir-Rhyne assumes the giant-killer role Saturday when the Bears make the one-hour bus trip from Hickory, N.C. to Boone, N.C.

First-year Lenoir-Rhyne Coach Fred Goldsmith said his team upsetting Appalachian State would be exponentially more stunning than Appalachian State beating Michigan.

“Oh yeah,” said Goldsmith, a former head coach at Duke and Rice. “People didn’t realize how good they were. Right now, Appalachian State is better than North Carolina, North Carolina State, Wake [Forest] and Duke in the ACC, and perhaps Virginia.”

Lenoir-Rhyne offers 24 scholarships to Appalachian’s 65 and Goldsmith admits Saturday’s trip is a “paycheck” game for his school. Lenoir-Rhyne was 3-8 last year and lost this year’s opener to Virginia Union.

Goldsmith, though, understands the game’s psychology.

“No way their guys are going to be as sharp, I don’t care what the coaches tell them,” Goldsmith said. “No way Appalachian State will have the same edge, the same mental edge, when they look at us.”

And that’s how strange things happen.

In 1998, North Carolina State scored a shocking upset win at Florida State and lost the next week in Waco to a Baylor team that finished 2-9. Baylor and Lenoir-Rhyne, for what it’s worth, share the same nickname.

Goldsmith was also defensive coordinator on the 1982 Air Force team that upset Notre Dame and knocked the Fighting Irish out of the rankings.

Not familiar with Lenoir-Rhyne?

Thought she was an opening act in Las Vegas?

The school plays small-college ball in the same South Atlantic Conference that includes Catawba, Tusculum and Mars Hill.

Consider this: Should Lenoir-Rhyne do to Appalachian State what the Mountaineers did to Michigan, the Bears would have beaten the team that beat the team some thought might win this season’s Bowl Championship Series title.

Forget Kevin Bacon, that’s only two degrees of separation.

Great as it was, Goldsmith said he was “surprised, but not shocked,” at Appalachian State’s win.

Goldsmith said when he was coaching at Duke, from 1993 to 1998, he wouldn’t schedule the Mountaineers and said he would be surprised if another BCS conference school would now.

But this week Appalachian State is Michigan in the eyes of another.

Goldsmith likes to note that it was at Rice, in 1962, where President John F. Kennedy challenged his country to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade.

“But why, some say, the moon?” Kennedy said. “Why choose this as our goal. And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic. Why does Rice play Texas?”

And so, for Lenoir-Rhyne, it’s on to Boone, which rhymes with moon.

“This is neat,” Goldsmith said of the challenge. “We’re playing the team that won the last two I-AA titles and beat Michigan,” he said. “And now we’re part of the story. You wouldn’t be calling otherwise. Now we’re part of it.”

Time to dust off that Kennedy speech?

“Oh,” Goldsmith assured. “I will.”

Upsets special

Former Oklahoma and Dallas Cowboys coach Barry Switzer spent the majority of his new call-in show on XM Radio this week talking about Appalachian mania.

The difference between college and pro football?

“They’re going to be talking about the game the rest of the year,” Switzer said while seated at his home-office desk after wrapping up Monday’s show. “There’s not a pro game that’s going to be played that they’re going to talk about the rest of the year.”

Switzer lives near the Oklahoma campus, about “a Tiger driver and two-iron” from Owen Stadium. And while he won a Super Bowl while coaching the Cowboys, his heart remains in college.

“Appalachian State beating Michigan is what college football’s all about. It’s a coach’s worst nightmare,” Switzer said. “[Michigan] had nothing to gain and everything to lose. . . . And if you do lose it, you can’t overcome it. It’s devastating. It’s a nightmare.”

Boise State, of course, started all this live-to-dream stuff on Jan. 1 when it beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.

Broncos Coach Chris Petersen said it would be up to others to judge whether Boise State’s historic win would serve as inspiration for others.

But Petersen did say this: “In college football, it just seems like the emotion of these kids influences things tremendously, more so than . . . in pro football. You just can’t take anything for granted. Because stuff like Michigan-Appalachian, it happens. Most times it doesn’t, but it does happen. And I think that is kind of the beauty of the game.”

For every Appalachian upset, of course, there are 10 dozen taken-to-the-woodshed outcomes. Last weekend, Alabama drilled Western Carolina (Goldsmith’s alma mater), 52-6, and Florida almost scored half-a-hundred on Western Kentucky.

Anyone like Middle Tennessee’s chances tonight at Louisville?

And then there’s Fresno State Coach Pat Hill, college football’s Don Quixote, who takes his Bulldogs into College Station to face Texas A&M.;

Hill has made it his life’s work taking on establishment teams for the chance to score a breakthrough victory that might send his school to a major bowl.

Last year, Fresno State played at Louisiana State (loss). Next week, Fresno State plays at Oregon. Next year, Fresno State opens the season at UCLA, at Kansas State and home versus Wisconsin.

“My thing is, I’ll just play whoever is going to play and whoever wants to play,” Hill said.

As they say in this sport: dream on.

Blitz package

* You think Brutus wears size XXL? The Associated Press reported this week that phone lines have been jammed to the Appalachian State book store, with many of the calls coming from Ohio. You can bet Appalachian State will be well represented again at Michigan when Ohio State visits the Big House on Nov. 17.

* Add this to things you have lived long enough to see:

Schools ranked in this week’s Associated Press top-25 poll: Hawaii, Boise State, Rutgers, Texas Christian.

Schools not ranked: Michigan, Notre Dame, Alabama, Florida State.

FYI: The AP does not allow voters to cast ballots for anything but major college programs, so that’s why Appalachian State did not show up in this week’s poll.

It will be interesting to see what any of the 114 Harris poll voters have to say.

* Why bother kicking to him? California receiver DeSean Jackson is averaging a touchdown every 4.5 times he returns a punt. Jackson’s 77-yard return against Tennessee on Saturday was his sixth in 27 career attempts. Tennessee punter Britton Colquitt seemingly tried to kick it away from Jackson in the second quarter, but his foot caught too much of the ball. “It’s a lot easier said than done to kick it away from someone,” Cal Coach Jeff Tedford said.

One thing that catches your eye about Cal is how fast the Bears’ offense looked against a physical Tennessee defense. Jackson may be the fastest player in the Pacific 10 Conference, and freshman Jahvid Best (11.5-yard average in six carries versus Tennessee) may not be far behind. “We have very good team speed,” Tedford said. “It’s nice to have all those playmakers.”

* Here’s looking (up) at you, kid. Oklahoma junior left tackle Phil Loadholt, at 6 feet 8, is the tallest player in Sooners’ history and, at 352 pounds, is two pounds shy of being the heaviest.

* You know Boise State has defeated Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl, but did you know Boise has never defeated a Pac-10 team on the road? Saturday, Boise State plays at Washington in the first football meeting of the schools. Boise State is 0-12 on the road versus BCS conference schools. Last year’s Fiesta Bowl was considered a neutral site game.

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com