You don't have to be Lloyd Carr, Michigan's embattled football coach, to appreciate the seismic consequences of Appalachian State's overturning of Wolverines.

While the rest of us non-Wolverines revel in the Mountaineers' one-for-the-ages triumph, underdogs everywhere, off-the-board and small, are emboldened and energized by it. If the opening of a new season weren't enough, now there is a further injection of optimism and revolutionary fervor to pump up even the most written-off of teams.

If the Division I-AA "Hillbillies" — the derisive tag by which the Mountaineers were welcomed into the Big House by Michigan fans — could do it, then, why not (fill in your school here)? Teams given little — or no chance — in their own games can't help but draw some inspiration from the events in Ann Arbor last Saturday.

People such as, perhaps, Louisiana Tech.

For the Bulldogs are 28-point underdogs on their home field to the Warriors for Saturday's Western Athletic Conference opener on several Las Vegas hotel lines. That's a hefty pile of points when traversing the Pacific for a 4,035-mile journey, the longest conference commute in college football.

It is the most the Warriors have been favored by in a Mainland appearance, much less in the Central time zone, a place where victories of any stripe have been, like the timely arrival of their flights and luggage, few and far between. "We remember our last trip there (to Ruston, La.)," Colt Brennan said. "We got it handed to us (46-14 in 2005)."

This time the Warriors arrive with a target on their backs bigger than a town house. Their No. 23 national ranking marks them for any team looking to make a splash. Their Heisman Trophy candidate of a quarterback and endless ESPN love make them a ripe target. It is a role the Warriors will take with them everywhere they go this year.

And while the Warriors are hardly Michigan when it comes to college football lore, they'd still make a dandy head to mount over the mantle for Tech's new head coach, Derek Dooley, son of former Georgia coach Vince Dooley. What better way for a new coach to win converts than take down a ranked team in front of the home crowd in his first I-A game?

So, here are the Warriors, nationally ranked in the early season for the first time in the school's history and, thanks to Appalachian State, it is suddenly open season on favorites everywhere. An irony the Warriors have eight hours of travel to ponder.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.