I know about the Junior A team and club hockey there...neither are 7-time NCAA champions. Bozeman is 200 miles away from Missoula...how fast are you driving?
All that high talent for EWU drew 10,000 to see the #1 ranked team in the country play a Sam Houston State team that has eliminated them in the playoffs two years in a row. Apparently there wasn't any need to move the game to Seattle to accomodate all the fans.
Is there a D-1 hockey team in Missoula? If Montana football is lackluster, do fans just join the other side and drive to Bozeman (a solid three hour drive) for a game instead? Nope and nope.
Grand Forks is a hockey-mad town...considering that only approximately 3,000 fans (not including students) could attend a game, it certainly wasn't unreasonable to think that that number could easily be increased.
I don't know what the average attendance was, but even if it was 15,000, you are talking about more than doubling attendance. Where are all of these new fans going to come from?
And what FBS opponents are you talking here? Sure, 35,000 would show up to see Michigan or Wisconsin come to Grand Forks. You think that many would come to see Troy or Tulane as opposed to Montana or Eastern Washington?
Go ahead...call me skeptical...
Wins are wins. UCLA's defense bailed out a supposed Heisman candidate today and West Virginia is giving Alabama all it can handle. Michigan rolled...Michigan State rolled...Minnesota won its opener...Big 10 is undefeated so far in week 1.
As far as "de-railing" a thread, I'm not sure where general NCAA football should be discussed. It's not community, not non-college sports, obviously...we need a new forum somewhere.
These good-to-great FCS teams that "upset" lower-level FBS teams happen with such regularity these days that you almost can't call them "upsets" anymore. Now, Jacksonville State over Michigan State? THAT would have been an upset.