BOONE, N.C. -- Jerry Moore looks like he hasn't slept in a week, which kind of overrates the benefits of sleep. At times the Appalachian State coach looks like he hasn't blinked since Sept. 1.

Jerry Moore is carried off the field at The Big House following the Michigan win. (AP)

There are clinics, banquets, alumni functions, an Emmy ceremony. An Emmy? Yes, Moore was there for that too after Fox Sports won a regional Emmy for a documentary on his program. Moore has honored almost all the requests, having been on the road an estimated 25 days each month during the offseason. All of it is beginning to resemble a Springsteen tour. Greatness in a different city every night. None of the performances scripted.

"Good or bad," the coach says of his speeches while pointing to his head, "it's all here."

Moore feels he owes it to the school, to the players, to himself to tell the story of the greatest upset in history. But of course it goes much further than that. Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32 defined the season in 2007 and maybe defined college football for a while.

Almost a year after the Michigan game, the defending I-AA champions open against LSU, the defending I-A champions. Who would have thought a year ago that chat rooms and message boards would be filled with debate whether the mighty Tigers are "ready" or not to play the previously faceless team from the boondocks of Boone. Who would have thought that Moore would be behind all of it?

If nothing else, this is some sort of lifetime achievement award for the coach entering his 20th season here. No one voted on the honor. His peers, though, had to smile when fate came to Ann Arbor that afternoon. Like a lot of them, Moore is somewhat of a coaching vagabond. Since 1973, he has coached at SMU, Nebraska, North Texas, Texas Tech and Arkansas before coming to Appalachian State.

On days like today the wear shows. The lines on his face are just a little deeper than they were in 1985 when Texas Tech fired him and Moore thought he'd never be a head coach again.

"It was a place to coach," Moore said of the day in 1988 he was hired here. "It was just a job. I couldn't pronounce Appalachian. I couldn't spell it. I didn't know where Boone was."

Now it's a part of him, a part of everyone who was on the field that day, who experienced a life-changing event. From the kid who blocked the game-winning Michigan field-goal attempt, to the defensive back-turned-missionary to the banker down the street.

A year after the greatest upset in history lives, programs and a sport has changed. Here are some of the stories surrounding them.

The Capitalist

Welcome to Jeff Fancher's midlife crisis. The vice president at Mountain 1st Bank and Trust is 50 and divorced. Each morning before the bank job he wanders over to WXIT and becomes "Jeff the Ref" hosting "The Sports Page", a three-hour lovefest for all things Mountaineer.

This week Fancher had the idea/made the mistake of getting on an LSU message board to invite its fans onto his show. See the, uh, friendly reaction at Tigerdroppings.com.

"If anybody has reason to crow, it's Appalachian State," Fancher said. "It's almost like the mentality going to Michigan was, 'Let's play respectable, not get hurt and get our $750,000.' Now they're talking about winning this (LSU) game."

Fancher is more than a businessman. He is also a Division-I and II basketball official and the brother of App State basketball coach Houston Fancher. He is also a dreamer. Jeff had 15,000 bumper stickers printed up that read: 9/01/07 34-32 The Day College Football Changed He sells them for $5 each on the Internet.

"I sell them like crazy, in the state of Ohio believe or not," he said.

Yeah, imagine that. A year ago Jeff the Ref promised he'd put on a Speedo and prance around if the Mountaineers beat Michigan. He kind of wussed out and ended up doing one of those winter polar plunges in a local body of water wearing something more than a Speedo.

Like everyone, Fancher has a memory of when the team returned back to Boone from Ann Arbor. Fancher proudly says that WXIT stayed on the air for 4 hours and 38 minutes after the game. The team had to bus in from Johnson County, Tenn., about 90 minutes away. Fancher estimates there were 15,000 people waiting for them that night. Boone is a town of only 14,000 permanent residents.

"Four years ago they were trying to run Jerry Moore out of town," Fancher said. "You would not believe statewide, now you get on I-40 going toward the East Coast and you see three big, old championship rings."

They are up there on billboards advertising Appalachian State football. They're also soothing Fancher's midlife crisis.

"Everybody here has their chest out ... ," he said. "I'm looking to semi-retire."

The Quarterback

The swagger is there. But he's earned it, you know? Appalachian State's dreadlocked quarterback could buy this campus without a dollar in his wallet.

"You hear about it at least once a week," Armanti Edwards says of The Game. "During the season, it was every day."

That day at Michigan, Edwards showed the world the wonders of the spread option. Coaches all over the country were kicking themselves wondering how this kid slipped through their fingers down to I-AA. He's not small -- 6-foot, 184 pounds -- not by today's dual-threat standards. But most schools, including home state Clemson, wanted him as a defensive back or receiver out of Greenwood, S.C. So instead of playing in the ACC, Edwards took his act to the SoCon -- the Southern Conference -- to a I-AA football power.

Edwards says the lack of I-A attention, "drives me but at the same time if they offered me right now I wouldn't go. I feel like I'm at one of the places that wanted me from my senior year. I've got a lot friends. I wouldn't go just because it's D-I.

"We've already proven that we're faster than most of them. They're just bigger than us."

Edwards came along at exactly the right time. The game today is all about speed. Against Michigan, he threw for 227 yards and rushed for 62. That's more amazing when you consider that he played the second half against Michigan with a balky shoulder that would cause him to miss 4½ games. It was tantalizing, then, that Edwards fell just 52 passing yards short of twice surpassing 2,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards in his career.

Only six other players in D-I history have accomplished that feat. One of them is named Vince Young. The other joins Edwards (2006) as the only other freshman to do it, Missouri's Brad Smith.

It's so weird that the quarterback who engineered the greatest upset of all time was only second-team All-SoCon in 2007. That shoulder injury and a Walter Payton Award (I-AA Heisman) season by Georgia Southern's Jayson Foster made it a strange reality.

Moore decided to put the spread in five years ago. The coach had been thinking about making a change. Urban Meyer's offense at Utah intrigued him but Appalachian State didn't have the money to send the staff out there for a visit. Next best thing: Good friend Fisher DeBerry of Air Force sent some tapes of Utah from playing it in the Mountain West.

The school could afford a van and a cheap hotel in Morgantown, W.V. West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez welcomed in Moore for a visit, one Mountaineer to another.

"They put us in these little meeting rooms and said, 'Here's all this tape,'" Moore said. "We don't know what's going on. We're watching tape. We don't know why. One of the quarterbacks walks through the room to get protein drinks. He hears us asking questions. The kid stops and starts talking to us. About that time Rich comes in just to check on us. He didn't intend to stay in there three minutes."

Instead, Rodriguez stayed and talked a while, unlocking the secrets to the spread option. All Moore needed was a triggerman. Appalachian State has huddled since. Not once. That's part of the effectiveness of the offense. It runs at its own pace. When that pace is set by one of the quickest quarterbacks in the country, everything else falls in line.

How many teams in the powerful SEC would kill for Edwards' talents right now? There's one in Baton Rouge for sure. Think The Ol' Ball Coach couldn't find a spot for him at South Carolina? Edwards would be lethal at a place like Auburn which is installing the spread option this season.

"I haven't really thought about it," Edwards says of the monstrous numbers he has put up. "I'm not the type who goes back and looks at how many yards. I was taught in high school to help the team win."

That could be a problem this weekend, and not just because the opponent is LSU. Edwards hates flying, really hates flying. It's not an issue most of the time. There are a lot of bus trips in the SoCon. But last season at Michigan, his fear actually tempered his postgame celebration. Edwards began thinking about the flight home.

"I'm just not good with heights," he said. "Flying is like, if something goes wrong, it's hard to survive it. On a bus crash, I can get out."

Suddenly the swagger is gone. The 20-year-old who has the world at his feet would like to keep them planted firmly on it.

The missionary

We're way too happy. Spoiled, you might call it.

Billy Riddle, senior defensive back, will tell you to your face.

"It's something I'm trying to tell people here in America," he said. "We're so healthy and we work every day to get more and more stuff. It doesn't make us any happier. Go to a place where they have absolutely nothing. They barely have good to eat."

Riddle has been to such a place. Twice. It doesn't get much worse than war-torn Sudan. Riddle felt a calling early on and joined a relief organization called Samaritan's Purse. A week after the Michigan game, he flew to Africa for the second time, missing the 2008 season.

"I was laying in my bed one night and I asked, 'Why do children in Sudan get nothing? Why do I get to lay in a warm bed while there are children laying in bed tonight hiding from rebels?' " Riddle said.

Those aren't questions that pass through the minds of the average defensive back. The answers from above, though, compelled Riddle to go help. Poverty doesn't begin to describe the things he has seen. Rebels were once within four miles of his village. Your worst thoughts aren't capable imagining what those rebels would do. Fortunately, there was a garrison of soldiers in Riddle's village for protection.

Once a week he had access to the Internet via a satellite dish in the city of Yei. There, he would be able to follow the Mountaineers.

The Sudanese, he says, take joy from just being with family and friends. Frequently, that's all they have. Getting and keeping food and shelter are constant struggles. Riddle celebrated just like everyone else after the Michigan game, then embarked on a seven-month trip to Africa's largest country.

He came back with a case of malaria that required a two-night stay in the hospital. His number of visits to Sudan equal his number of championship rings (two). It will be nice getting back on the field this season but first he has to get in shape mentally and physically.

"Taking 1½ years off and not doing any kind of training is tough," Riddle said. "It's coming back slowly but surely."

If Riddle gets a third national championship ring (App State's fourth in a row), it will be followed by a third trip to Sudan in May. The creative writing major will return and finish his degree work next fall. Riddle started a non-profit group called "Why The Woods" when he got the inspiration to go overseas.

"The woods are a sacred place for me to get away from the world, to get close to God," he said. "Sudan was also a sacred place to me. It's a horrible place to be but within the roughness there is beauty."

The brain

Senior linebacker Pierre Banks wants to be a broadcaster. The honor roll student has graduated in 3½ years with a degree in media literacy. He'll get his master's this fall. Never mind what a media literacy degree entails, Banks wants to take his pipes and personality and get into a booth somewhere calling games.

"That's what I'm saying, me and Verne," Banks said when the name of CBS' Verne Lundquist comes up. "I'd be right beside Verne."

Notified that one of the best in the business resides in Colorado, Banks stiffened.

"I have to meet him somewhere besides Colorado Springs," Banks said.

The Springs, one of the most beautiful places in the country, was not kind to Banks. To know this you have to go back to Durham, N.C., where Banks was raised with 16 other siblings. As the second-youngest all he wanted to do was follow in the steps of his 12 brothers, all of whom played some sort of organized football.

Banks was going to play in the SEC, there was no doubt about that. He committed to Ole Miss five years ago and was about to sign before the David Cutcliffe regime had questions about his height.

"As soon as Ole Miss offered, I jumped on that," Banks said. "That was October. In December they said, 'You look 6-2, 6-3 on film.' I'm 5-11. They pulled their scholarship."

At that point, Banks didn't have many options with schools filling up with commitments. Even prestigious Duke wasn't an option because it was in Durham.

"It was too close to home," Banks said. "Durham, man, is no place you really want to be. There's nothing to do there except get in trouble."

The service academies were an option. Specifically, Air Force Academy Prep. It was football except you don't go to Air Force (or Army or Navy) to necessarily play football.

"I didn't like anything about it," Banks said. "I went to play football. They wanted me to be a soldier. Consequently, I was getting in trouble for things I didn't know. You have to walk a certain way, eat a certain way. It finally came to a head."

Banks walked, left Air Force after a couple of months. It was too much. He wasn't a bad guy, just not an Air Force guy. The nomad linebacker remembered that Moore had recruited him and asked if there were any openings. From Ole Miss to Air Force to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Not too many players have traveled that road to stardom. Two-hundred seventy-five career tackles later, Banks is part of the program's lore. He fulfilled his wish to play in the SEC, if you count a 24-0 loss at LSU in 2005.

"I was about to piss myself," he said.

A return to Death Valley on Saturday isn't as big a deal, not after what Banks accomplished a year ago. His sack of Michigan's Chad Henne set the tone early on in the Michigan game. Later, he recovered a fumble.

"It wasn't like Michigan wasn't playing hard. It wasn't like they weren't a great team," Banks said. "They definitely didn't expect us to be that fast. That's the one thing we had on them is team speed. That's the one thing that killed them."

Speed, right up until the final play. Usually on the field-goal block team, teammate Corey Lynch rushes from the outside. Banks has an inside position. Lynch suggested at some point in the game that they switch. On Michigan's game-deciding attempt, Lynch can be seen coming through untouched to block the kick.

"I'm glad he switched," Banks said. "I probably wouldn't have blocked it."

That's another way of saying miracles still do happen, or at least are passed down a generation. Lynch is married to the granddaughter of Rev. Billy Graham.

The program

God, it's beautiful here. Squint and you could be in any mountain town in Colorado. Charlotte has all the humidity and heat. There are ski slopes surrounding Boone.

Kidd Brewer Stadium is going big time. Nestled into a mountain slope, it is getting 4,400 new seats. A 120,000-square-foot football complex is going up. It almost looks to the naked eye that this is a I-A program. That's the next logical step, but there is no momentum to move up. That would ruin everything that has been built. App State would be competing in a low-level I-A conference instead of ruling I-AA.

"I think we'd do pretty well (in I-A)," Edwards said. "I've played in two 15-game seasons. It wouldn't be nothing to us."

It is mentioned to Moore that it seems like none of his players ever get in trouble in his Carolina paradise. Maybe it is being up in the mountains where even XM radio is scratchy, or being in Division I-AA or maybe that, until last week, liquor by the drink was prohibited.

"I guess that is a good thing that it's isolated," defensive back Leonard Love said. "There's not a lot of trouble we can get in."

Moore has another theory.

"If you know some guy is fixing to screw it up, you won't let him," he said of his players.

After practice, Moore will shout out, "Don't forget about bible study," and it means something. Each Wednesday, players gather for pizza and talk about scripture. If nothing else, they bond. Leading up the stairs of the football complex are key words that players have to pass every day. Yes, they are hackneyed trigger words like "trust" and "respect."

"If you see that every day, you're going to get brainwashed," Moore said.

Banks has his own theory as to why this program is so good, so pure and so damn hard to beat.

"Trouble has to come up the mountain," he said.

When it does, App State usually wins.