Appalachian State (0-0, 0-0) vs UNC-Charlotte (0-0, 0-0)

Friday, August 29th, 2025 7:00pm EST

TV/Video: ESPNU

Radio: FLAGSHIP 97.3 FM (North Wilkesboro), 730 AM & 97.5 FM (Charlotte), 950 AM & 92.7 FM (Greensboro), 980 AM & 96.7 FM (Winston-Salem), 107.7 FM & 1450 AM (Hendersonville), 97.3 FM & 790 AM (Johnson City, TN) 87.7 FM (In-Stadium)

Bank of America Stadium

Capacity: 75,037

Surface: FieldTurf

Jeff Sagarin Ratings

App State: 57.30

UNC-Charlotte: 45.26

Home: n/a

App State is favored by the Sagarin ratings by 12.04 points

VegasInsider Consensus: App State -5.5 (Closed at -3.5)

Series: App State leads 3-0

Last Meeting: App State 35, UNC-Charlotte 20 September 12, 2020, Boone, NC

Finally, another season is upon us. Sometimes those offseasons are longer than others. Unfortunately, last season ended long before we would have liked, but it still felt appropriate. Last fall was a bad one in the mountains for more reasons than just football, and we’ll still feel the effects of a rebuilding process in the hills for several reasons. On the football side of things, expectations have hardly simmered. A lot of people aren’t sure what to expect with a lot of new faces in town attempting to correct what went wrong last year. The fact that it won’t happen overnight is what is trying to be whispered across town, but we all know college football fans are not that patient. Some leniency might be granted, but it will wear thin if things head too far south. There is one easy solution. Winning takes care of a lot. It will make things easier on some who are trying to fit in and find their footing. And to get to winning, you have to do the little things. Eventually it all adds up, and it starts on Friday night.

It’s been a longish five years since Appalachian and Charlotte have played each other. That game in Boone had a zero attendance policy due to pandemic restrictions. It was quite odd being at home, just a short distance away from the stadium and watching that game on a screen. We were robbed of what could have been a great atmosphere. Fast forward, and this short-lived squabble between schools separated by two-hour drive, will hopefully have that atmosphere in downtown Charlotte on Friday evening. Both sides will be entering into a new era of their programs and there are plenty of unknowns to go along with it. Nowadays, when coaches move from one job to the next, regardless of who made the decision, players usually follow them or flock elsewhere. With that brings tons of uncertainty and newcomers for each team. It might take fans a couple games to get to know their players, especially with the rather new practice of withholding depth charts from the media.

Tim Albin will the third head coach for Charlotte to have faced App State in just the fourth meeting. From afar, Mountaineer fans enjoyed the Biff Poggi era where the 49ers compiled a 6-16 record in his two seasons. Albin was a smart hire for Charlotte. He spent a lot of his time at Ohio, as a position coach and offensive coordinator. He was on the coaching staff when the Mountaineers defeated Ohio in Camellia Bowl I in 2015. I’m sure Ohio has not forgotten Marcus Cox and Taylor Lamb’s fourth quarter of football that gave App State its first bowl win in it’s inaugural bowl-eligible season. Albin accumulated a 33-19 record in his four seasons in Athens, with ten wins in each of his last three seasons. Ohio won the MAC for the first time since 1968 last season. It’s hard to explain a 56-year conference championship drought to Mountaineer fans, who have haven’t won a championship since 2019. Where has the time gone?

On the Mountaineers side of the field, Dowell Loggains was hired to replace Shawn Clark, a former student athlete who wore the black and gold. A tough decision had to be made last fall, and when you let go of one of your own, you better get it right. Loggains understands the pressure of winning, and he understands what came before him as well, but this is his first head coaching job in his career. There are a lot of new things to learn and adapt to when you make that leap from assistant to the guy. Loggains spent the majority of his early career working in the NFL across five organizations, rarely spending enough time in one place to get settled. He jumped into the college ranks at his alma mater at Arkansas in 2021 where he spent two years before jumping to become the offensive coordinator at South Carolina. If you haven’t heard, Loggains coached Spencer Rattler, who was just named the starting quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, and Xavier Legette, a famous South Carolina native who enjoys riding horses and coincidentally is a wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers.

There really is no way to mentally prepare ourselves for what might unfold in front of our eyes on Friday night. Only a few have really gone through this type of transition before. Appalachian State made the decision to release a head football coach from a contract. This has not happened in a very long time. Eli Drinkwitz, Scott Satterfield, Jerry Moore, Sparky Woods, Mack Brown. Everyone of those listed has coached in what would be considered a power conference in today’s world. In their respective eras in Boone, they won a lot of football games. When their time in Boone was over, they were hired away. During the Clark era, App State won 62.5% of their games, and that’s why it’s different on the mountain. That’s not good enough. So the pressure is already there for Dowell Loggains. Despite all the unknowns, production is the precedent. That might be the hardest part of all this. We as fans, don’t know where the production is coming from. While other programs across the nation have been through this upheaval, its the first real time it has happened on the mountain. And potentially making matters worse for those sitting in the seats, we haven’t seen live game action from a starting quarterback. Sure, we have gone through the Chase Brice and Joey Aguilar seasons, but we knew a little bit about them. Heading into August of those seasons, we had a better grip on certain things. This is truly unchartered territory. I’d love to sit back and prognosticate on things I think might happen, such as giving a lot of touches to this running back or that running back. We might see a split load that could turn into a hot hand getting more touches in the second half. I would not be surprised to see the tight ends used a lot in the passing game. I would expect both sides to feel each other in the early going. We’ll be waiting to see who makes that first big play, and see what the counter to that is. But honestly, I am uncertain of it all. Charlotte is probably going to play conservatively, as that was the way Albin coached at Ohio when he was the head coach, and how his mentor Frank Solich preferred as well. It worked. Is App State the better program with better history. No doubt about that. Does all that history guarantee a win on Friday? Not for a second. I’ve heard a lot of coachspeak over the last several days. A lot of mentions of playing clean football. So maybe this prediction leans in the direction of clean. It’s old fashioned, and maybe boring, but that might just be what we see a lot of this season. Play better, play cleaner, give yourself the best chance to win.

The First Pick

Concord 24

Mountaineers 27