If you watched any college football coverage on Saturday, you probably saw that 10 years ago...plus a day (hey, Saturdays don't always line up) Appalachian State upset the hell out of No. 5 Michigan in an embarrassing debacle that you no doubt have some familiarity with if you're over, say, 12 years of age and watch CFB with even the slightest hint of regularity.
However, late into the evening an arguably even bigger upset (at least by the standards of point spreads) went down in Las Vegas when the Howard University Bison, an FCS program, came in and bested the hometown UNLV Rebels by a score of 43-40 in a game where they kicked off as 45-point underdogs.
Howard was led by none other than Caylin Newton, the younger brother of NFL star Cam Newton, who followed in the footsteps of the 2015 version of his older sibling by filling up the stat sheet at the quarterback position. Caylin accounted for 330 yards of total offense, including 190 on the ground (plus a rushing touchdown), and another 140 in the air (plus two passing touchdowns).
According to ESPN, local gambling outfits were not offering a money line on the game, but Howard was as much as a 600+-to-1 long shot to win on offshore betting sites. ESPN further goes on to state that there have previously been 254 games with point spreads of 40 or more over the past 12 years, and in those first 253 games, the favorite was 253-0.
In fact, the previous largest upset on the books came in October of 2007 when Stanford went into Los Angeles to play USC as 39-point underdogs and beat them by a score of 24-23. As for the aforementioned Michigan choke, there are no archived gambling lines from that game, but oddsmaker Jeff Sherman of the Westgate Superbook told The Worldwide Leader that he recalls Michigan being favored by "31 to 33" points.
Also, since we're on the subject of money, UNLV paid Howard $600,000 to play in the game. And while you won't see highlights of this contest on loop for the next decade like that final App. State field-goal block (at least, I think) it still can't be a good day to be a Rebel.
