It’s open seasonon Carr and Weis

The story goes that, in 1877, a few Michigan students taught a few Notre Dame students the game of football and thus began glorious histories that lasted through, well, Friday?

Michigan would emerge to lead the planet in college football victories with 860 while also commanding the top winning percentage, .745.

Notre Dame is No. 2 on both lists.

The question heading out of Labor Day traffic is how two proud programs can recover from disastrous season-opening losses.

The short answer is: They can’t.

So both seasons have been essentially flushed before the final money tally in the Jerry Lewis Telethon?

Sorry to say.

Michigan, a team that had national title aspirations, is tainted goods after a home loss to Appalachian State that will never be forgotten or forgiven.

One football coach since 1948 has won a national title at Michigan and it was Lloyd Carr, not Bo Schembechler.

Yet, Carr’s legacy now will be as closely tied to Saturday’s loss at the Big House as it will be to the 1998 Rose Bowl win over Washington State that made him Victor Valiant.

Taking the long view is nice, and sometimes perspective has its place -- but not here.

Michigan’s reality is cold and hard.

Plenty of schools have rebounded from losses to win the national title. Florida did it last year. USC earned a share of the 2003 prize after a loss to California in Berkeley.

But no team has ever, or will ever, win the national title after losing to Appalachian State. Never mind that the two-time defending Division I-AA champions are probably better than a handful of major-college schools, including Duke, Buffalo, Temple and maybe Stanford.

Bad losses stick in college football more than great wins do.

Michigan could run the schedule starting next week against Oregon, win the Big Ten title and earn a Rose Bowl berth, but the stain is as indelible as Saturday is irretrievable.

There have been rumblings that Carr, who is 62, was going to retire after this season and now it seems all Ann Arbor is flowing on that track.

This is Carr’s 13th season at Michigan. Saturday’s was his 150th game. Sometimes the relationship between a football coach and a school simply wears down.

There won’t be a firing here, no way, but make way for the exit plan.

Paradoxically, the only thing that made Notre Dame’s season-opening, touchdown-less home loss to Georgia Tech less shocking than Michigan’s defeat was that few people outside the coaching staff and players’ lounge had expectations for this Fighting Irish team.

It’s not as if Notre Dame was, like, even ranked.

Yet watching a Charlie Weis-coached team scrounge a field goal in the most lopsided season-opening home loss in school history had to be disconcerting for even the most devoted Irish followers.

Weis kept his starting quarterback decision secret until opening kickoff, and now we know why, as neither Demetrius Jones, Evan Sharpley nor Jimmy Clausen looked like the answer to a ton of questions.

The good news is that, after a trip to Penn State this week, Notre Dame gets to play at Michigan.

Or maybe that’s the good news for Michigan.

Weekend wrap

Where does Appalachian State’s upset over Michigan rank in the annals?

Don’t even think Boise State’s beating Oklahoma in last season’s Fiesta Bowl belongs in the same conversation, as some pundits (this one included) actually predicted Boise State would win.

The upset that comes closest to mind is the 1998 game in which hapless Temple, a 35-point underdog, scored a stunning victory at powerhouse Virginia Tech.

College football’s longest-running reality show, “The Bowdens,” moves into the prime time Labor Day slot tonight on ABC when Florida State plays at Clemson.

It will be the ninth pairing of Bobby Bowden, major-college football’s winningest coach, against his son Tommy.

Reaction: Well, at least it’s not Miami and Florida State again. That rivalry was devalued when it moved from its traditional October slot to Labor Day weekend because neither school had worked out the kinks.

Dad leads son in the Bowden Bowl series, 5-3, although Tommy has won three of the last four.

“It hasn’t been easy,” Tommy Bowden said about playing his dad.

The best Bowden Bowl remains the first, in 1999, when Tommy’s team nearly derailed Bobby’s top-ranked squad before Florida State rallied for a 17-14 win at Clemson Memorial Stadium. The Seminoles went on to win Bobby Bowden’s second national title.

Walk, don’t run? Syracuse, the school that produced Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Floyd Little, Larry Csonka and Joe Morris, amassed eight yards rushing in Friday’s home loss to Washington.

Another defending sub-division national champion that Michigan might want to avoid is Division III Mount Union, which scored 52 first-quarter points in a 75-7 rout of Averett.

On the other side of midnight: North Texas hired a high school coach to take over the program this year, but Todd Dodge found out that there’s a difference between Friday Night Lights and Saturday. Oklahoma crushed North Texas, 79-10, in Dodge’s debut. Interestingly, 79 was the number of wins Dodge recorded (against one defeat) in his first five years as coach at Carroll High in Southlake, Texas.

Cal Coach Jeff Tedford isn’t much for piling on in the ongoing Pac-10/SEC battle, but he said after Saturday’s 45-31 win over Tennessee that he looked forward to seeing how the Vols would fare this season against Les Miles-coached Louisiana State.

Tennessee (East Division) and LSU (West) actually miss each other on the SEC schedule this year but could meet in the conference title game.

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Play it forward

1. Former UCLA coach Bob Toledo (remember him?) makes his debut as Tulane coach Saturday when the Green Wave plays host to Mississippi State, the school that was just routed by Louisiana State. Tulane will have a better chance of upsetting this SEC school than LSU, which visits the Superdome on Sept. 29.

2. Welcome back? In what seemed like a strange move, longtime Boston College coach Tom O’Brien left Beantown last year to take over at North Carolina State. O’Brien led Boston College to seven straight bowl wins but this week leads the Wolfpack against his old team in Chestnut Hill.

3. In perhaps the best game on a big-game weekend, Virginia Tech treks to Baton Rouge for a Saturday night showdown against LSU. It is a game with national implications in one of college football’s storied backdrops.

4. Has it been that long? Saturday marks the 34th anniversary of Tom Osborne’s first victory as Nebraska coach, a 40-13 rout of Pepper Rodgers-coached UCLA. Osborne went on to win three national titles at Nebraska.

5. This might not be the best time for Oregon, coming off an opening-weekend home win against Houston, to be playing at Michigan. Oregon was going to have a tough time winning this game under normal circumstances. But, as you know, nothing is normal now in Ann Arbor.

-- Chris Dufresne

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com