BOONE, N.C. — Karl Smith walked downtown Saturday night to the apparel shop he owns. He knew it would be busy. When he arrived at the store, shoppers were streaming in and out. They bypassed registers and seemed to walk out with merchandise in hand.

"Aren't you going to pay for that?" Smith asked.

"Well," someone replied, "isn't this the line?"

Customers snaked through the door and down the street, black-and-yellow shirts in hand. Smith has owned Appalachian Tees for 20 years, but he had never seen this. Of course, no one in Boone had seen anything like what happened when Appalachian State, the division I-AA school that plays in the stadium a couple of left turns from Smith's shop, felled Michigan, the No. 5 team in the country, 34-32.

The upset launched Boone, a town of 13,000 in the mountains of northwestern North Carolina, into a frenzy. Fans piled out of the bars where they had watched the game and into the streets. Smith opened a second register, something he never does.

"I still can't believe it," Smith said.

Corey Lynch was still trying to grasp it, too, when he woke up yesterday morning after five hours of sleep in order to be interviewed on "SportsCenter." Lynch had triggered the scene after he blocked a Michigan field goal in the final seconds. As Lynch rumbled down the field, ball tucked in his arm, he completed what has been hailed by some as the largest upset in college football history.

"Hopefully the whole world knows that just because we're called Division I-AA doesn't mean we can't play with the bigger school," quarterback Armanti Edwards said during a first-time, day after news conference that drew about 20 reporters and several TV crews. "The only thing different is that they were bigger than us. That's all it was."

Edwards, who was recruited by Clemson and several other big schools but only to play defensive back, is typical of coach Jerry Moore's team: small, quick and unappreciated during recruiting.

"Just having a chip on our shoulder, going up there knowing we can play on their level, and show them why," said receiver Dexter Jackson, recruited by Georgia and Clemson but told he wouldn't play until he was an upperclassmen. "Show them that just because you're at that school doesn't mean we can't play with you."

When you enter this town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a sign greets you announcing the Mountaineers' consecutive Division I-AA titles.

Yet, all anyone talked about in restaurants and convenience stores yesterday was Michigan.

"What we just did at Michigan, they've got to really, really bathe in it and enjoy and cherish the moment," Moore said. "I'm not about to rob our staff, our school, our town and particularly these players, to enjoy what they just did."

The win, the first time a Football Championship Subdivision team — formerly I-AA — beat a team ranked in The Associated Press Top 25, left many wondering how were the Mountaineers so fast. Why weren't these players recruited by the big boys of college football?

Mostly because they were considered too small. And Moore, in his 19th season, was more than happy to snatch them up.

"Size is probably our third factor to look at," said Moore, whose players come mostly from the Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee. "We want good kids that are tough kids that can run. We feel we can put weight on them, make them bigger, make them stronger."

Moore has used his fast, quick offensive and defensive lines and undersized, speedy receivers to dominate the second tier of Division I. The Mountaineers have won a nation-best 15 straight games overall and 27 consecutive home games.

"It's still like I'm dreaming or something because, we just beat Michigan!" Edwards said. "I'm trying to sit here and think about it, but I really can't. It's like a dream."