The Appalachian State Mountaineers football team is the intercollegiate American football team representing Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. The Mountaineers have competed in the Football Bowl Subdivision and the Sun Belt Conference since 2014.
The Appalachian State Mountaineers football team represents Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and plays in the NCAA Division I-A. Since 2014, the Mountaineers have played in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) in the Sun Belt Conference. Appalachian's home games are played in Kidd Brewer Stadium, which is named for previous head coach Kidd Brewer, whose 1937 team went unbeaten and undefeated throughout the regular season, outscoring opponents 206-0.
Appalachian State's football program has won 648 games, three NCAA Championships, and participated in a bowl game or, alternatively, the Division I FCS playoffs 35 times in its history. The Mountaineers have 22 conference titles and one of the finest home field advantages in the country in terms of winning percentage. Armanti Edwards, the program's back-to-back Walter Payton Award recipient, is the first to win in successive years (2008, 2009). Appalachian State University's all-time winning percentage of.649 ranks 16th among all programs.
From its inception in 1978 through 2013, the Mountaineers participated in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). From 2005 through 2007, they won three consecutive national titles, becoming the first FCS team to accomplish so since the playoffs began in 1978. Appalachian is also the first Division I program to win three consecutive national championships since Army did it from 1944 to 1946[7], as well as the first Division I school in the contemporary era to do so. [When FCS Appalachian State defeated No. 5 Michigan in 2007, it was the first time an FCS team had beaten a ranked FBS squad. Appalachian State then tallied votes on its own, becoming the first FCS team to be ranked in a final Associated Press (AP) college football poll. In the poll, the Mountaineers earned five points.
Appalachian State advanced from FCS to FBS in 2014 and has already had many seasons (e.g., 2018, 2019, 2020) in the AP Top 25.
The Mountaineers finished the 2019 season with an AP poll ranking of No. 19 (and a Coaches poll ranking of No. 18) after winning their fifth straight bowl game, third straight Sun Belt Championship, and statement wins over both UNC and USC in out-of-conference matchups at Chapel Hill and Columbia.
As of 2021, Appalachian State is the only team to have competed in a bowl game every year it has been an eligible member of the FBS; with a 6-1 record in these modern NCAA-sanctioned bowl games, Appalachian has the highest bowl winning percentage of any football program that has competed in five or more.
