40 Fun Facts About Appalachian State University

In 2007, Appalachian State football won 34–32 at which fifth-ranked Big Ten team in a famous upset?

Michigan fell from No. 5 out of the AP Top 25 entirely, the first time a single game had knocked a top-five team out of the poll.

The Old Mountain Jug, Appalachian State's rivalry trophy with Western Carolina, is an old jug for what?

Moonshine gave the 25-pound trophy its start: the campus bookstore manager donated the old jug in 1976 and his wife painted it gold.

Which country star studied criminal justice at Appalachian State and played his first country show in Boone?

Luke Combs worked as a bouncer at a Boone bar before he ever took its stage, then left school short of a degree to chase music in Nashville.

Appalachian State's mascot Yosef takes his name from a mountain-dialect way of saying which everyday word?

Yourself is the idea behind Yosef: any fan with a heart of black and gold counts as one. He debuted in the 1942 yearbook, filling a spot left one picture short.

Appalachian State's mountainside football stadium in Boone, opened in 1962, is known to fans by which nickname?

The Rock hosted a 30-game home winning streak, then the longest in Division I, until Georgia Southern snapped it in October 2007.

Which future WWE champion played volleyball at Appalachian State in 2005 and 2006 before transferring to NC State?

Charlotte Flair, daughter of ring legend Ric, had captained her high school to two state volleyball titles and did not begin training as a pro until 2012.

Which future NBA MVP drew one of the Holmes Center's biggest crowds when his team visited Appalachian State in 2009?

Stephen Curry was starring for Davidson that season. Until 2023, only his visit and the arena's opening night against North Carolina had drawn 7,000 fans.

Appalachian State's library holds a Stock Car Racing Collection with a gift from which NASCAR legend's family?

Richard Petty's family gift shares the five-story library with a special room of rare books on English history, a collection reaching back to the 16th century.

Which country singer with a marketing degree from Appalachian State gave out his album Carolina on campus?

Eric Church gave the copies away at a release-party concert the night before the album came out. His early bar band included his college roommate and his brother.

Appalachian State graduate Stephen Dubner, once in a band signed by Arista Records, co-wrote which bestselling book?

Freakonomics grew into a book series and a radio show he hosts, but Dubner walked away from music just as his college band, The Right Profile, landed its deal.

Charles Frazier, who earned a master's degree at Appalachian State in the 1970s, wrote which Civil War novel?

Cold Mountain was his first novel and won the 1997 National Book Award for Fiction; its success brought an $8 million advance offer for his second.

Appalachian State began in 1899 as a small mountain academy meant to train people for which profession?

Teaching was the mission from day one: the first 53 students met in a borrowed building while townspeople gave money, labor and materials for the school's own.

Installed in 2008 at the highest point on Appalachian State's campus, what became a symbol of its green energy work?

A wind turbine more than 153 feet tall went up beside the Broyhill Inn, picked specifically because it looks like an industrial-scale machine.

Which magazine put Appalachian State on its cover the week after the football team's 34–32 upset in 2007?

Sports Illustrated billed the game as the "Alltime Upset", and the win also led that night's SportsCenter.

Appalachian State safety Corey Lynch sealed the famous 2007 football upset by blocking what on the final play?

A field goal from 37 yards was the home team's last chance, and the Mountaineers had retaken the lead with only 26 seconds left on a short kick of their own.

Which Hall of Fame coach led Appalachian State football to three straight national titles from 2005 to 2007?

Jerry Moore had only one losing season in 24 years in Boone, and a statue of him now stands outside the stadium's north end zone.

Which future national championship-winning coach got his first head coaching job at Appalachian State in 1983?

Mack Brown, who later won a national title at Texas, went 6–5 in his only season in Boone, then left to become offensive coordinator at Oklahoma under Barry Switzer.

In 2022, Appalachian State football won 17–14 away from home against which sixth-ranked SEC team?

Texas A&M was a 19-point favorite, but the Mountaineers held the ball for more than 41 minutes, including a nine-minute drive to the winning kick.

Which traveling TV pregame show first visited Appalachian State in 2022, broadcasting from Sanford Mall?

College GameDay made Boone the 96th city it had visited, and the Mountaineers capped the day by beating Troy on the final play before a sold-out stadium.

Appalachian State football beat Troy 32–28 in 2022 on what kind of last-play touchdown?

A Hail Mary pass from Chase Brice was tipped by a Troy defender, and Christian Horn caught the deflection and ran it into the end zone.

Appalachian State football stepped up to the top FBS level in 2014 by joining which conference?

Sun Belt life began 1–5, but the Mountaineers won their last six games of 2014. The NCAA's transition period still kept them out of a bowl until the next season.

Appalachian State's football three-peat of 2005–07 was the first in Division I since which team's 1944–46 run?

Army last managed it around the end of World War II, and the Mountaineers were also the first to win three in a row since the FCS playoffs began in 1978.

Which Appalachian State quarterback became the first player to win the Walter Payton Award twice, in 2008 and 2009?

Armanti Edwards was also the first Division I quarterback to throw for 9,000 yards and run for 4,000 in a career, yet he reached the NFL as a wide receiver.

Which Appalachian State linebacker won two Buck Buchanan Awards and made three Pro Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys?

Dexter Coakley, a high school safety who was moved to linebacker in Boone, became the school's first College Football Hall of Fame inductee in 2011.

Appalachian State's stadium is named for which coach, whose 1937 team was unscored upon in the regular season?

Kidd Brewer's 1937 squad outscored its regular-season opponents 206–0 before losing a postseason game 7–0, and he later ran twice for statewide office.

Appalachian State's stadium was the first venue in the Carolinas with which feature, debuted against Elon in 1970?

Artificial turf reached Boone before anywhere else in either Carolina, and in 2003 the school was again among the first colleges to switch to FieldTurf.

Appalachian State was founded in 1899 by two brothers, known as B.B. and D.D., who shared which family name?

Dougherty brothers Blanford and Dauphin opened the school as co-principals with Dauphin's wife, Lillie, leading classes, and Blanford stayed in charge for 56 years.

Before it became Appalachian State, the school opened in 1899 as an academy named for which North Carolina county?

Watauga Academy's wooden building burned in 1946, and its steeple bell, one of the few artifacts known to have survived, is still displayed on campus.

Appalachian State was founded to serve isolated North Carolina mountain counties once known by which nickname?

The Lost Provinces sat behind the high Blue Ridge, cut off from the rest of the state, and had no highway to points east until a turnpike was begun in 1911.

Appalachian State's mascot Yosef debuted in the 1942 yearbook, a publication named for which mountain shrub?

Rhododendron pages listed the mascot as a first-year student called Dan'l Boone Yoseff, and the second f was dropped from his name in 1947.

Which fight song do Appalachian State's Marching Mountaineers play whenever the football team scores or wins?

Hi Hi Yikas also closes every rehearsal, when band members gather around the drum major's podium to play it before they are dismissed.

In 2023, Appalachian State opened its second campus in which North Carolina city in the Catawba Valley?

Hickory had been the state's largest metropolitan area without a public university campus until the first students arrived in August 2023.

Appalachian State basketball All-American Belus Smawley was an early adopter of which scoring move?

The jump shot took form in an abandoned train depot near his home that had been turned into a court, and he later won an NBA game with a 50-foot buzzer-beater.

Which former LSU head coach took charge of Appalachian State men's basketball in the early 1970s?

Press Maravich came to Boone after coaching his son, Pistol Pete, at LSU and steered the Mountaineers through their early Division I seasons before resigning in 1975.

Which indie band formed in an Appalachian State dorm room in 2013 and first recorded for a student-run campus label?

Rainbow Kitten Surprise cut its first EP in that same dorm room, then recorded under Split Rail Records, the label run by students at the Hayes School of Music.

Appalachian State students who build and race solar cars, a group founded in 2013, compete under which name?

Team Sunergy won the multi-occupant class of the 2021 American Solar Challenge with a car named ROSE, short for Racing on Solar Energy.

Appalachian State's research observatory, off the Blue Ridge Parkway 20 miles from campus, goes by which name?

Dark Sky Observatory opened in 1981, and one of its telescopes is robotic, turning on its own toward gamma-ray bursts within seconds of an alert from space.

Appalachian State football's first FBS postseason win, 31–29 over Ohio in 2015, came in which bowl?

Camellia Bowl victory in Montgomery, Alabama, made the Mountaineers the first former FCS program to win a bowl in its first season of eligibility.

James Edgar Broyhill, a student at Appalachian State's forerunner school in Boone, built a company famous for what?

Furniture became his own business in 1926, when he mortgaged his house for $5,000 to start a chair company after a key supplier burned down.

Which Appalachian State team remains in the Southern Conference because its main league does not sponsor the sport?

Wrestling stayed behind when the rest of the athletic program changed leagues in 2014, and the squad still holds its home matches in old Varsity Gymnasium.