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How often does a pastry beat a top team early?  I can recall once, maybe some other close calls.  Do you replay the film of Appy State the night before?

It's doubly tough because the top team is going to be pumped at least early on, first game and all.  I agree the coach should practice execution of their game, not put in anything or much weird to try and win.  Listening to his speech pregame might be interesting.

How often does a pastry beat a top team early?  I can recall once, maybe some other close calls.  Do you replay the film of Appy State the night before?

It should be noted that the Michigan team that ApSt upset wasn't nearly as good as their preseason #5 ranking and that obviously helped the Mountaineers a LOT.  

Michigan dropped all the way from #5 to unranked then got obliterated by Oregon which wasn't a conference game at the time.  After the Oregon loss the Wolverines didn't even receive any votes for two weeks but they smoked what turned out to be a terrible Notre Dame team then beat a pretty good Penn State team and got back to getting votes.  

They rattled off eight straight wins and got all the way up to #13 at 8-2 but then lost badly (37-21) in Madison and dropped to #23 before losing at home to Ohio State and dropping back out.  They finished the season with an also-ran Capital One Bowl win over Florida and were ranked #18 in the final poll.  Unranked ApSt upsetting #18 Michigan doesn't have the same shock value.  

My point is that if you are the heavy underdog you can't realistically win just based on what YOU do.  Ie, Ohio State and Texas are probable preseason top-5 teams and if they are legitimate top-5 teams then how well BallSt/TexasSt play against them will only impact the margin, the end result is a foregone conclusion.  The upset is only a possibility if the favorite is overrated or the favorite plays really poorly or some combination of the two.  

I dimly recall when Stanford was a 43 point dog and beat USC.  We all realize it's possible given certain events, just very improbable.

That Stanford team may have had the best 4-8 season in football history. First, it upset USC, beating the 43-point spread, the largest in history. USC finished the year AP #3.
And if you know anything about the old Pac-10/12 conference, beating USC is always a big deal. The bigger the upset, the bigger the deal.

Then Stanford upset Cal--it's primary rival--for the first time in six years (and the first under Harbaugh), to finish the season on a win, and with the trophy Stanford most covets (the Axe). Cal finished the year 7-6, with a bowl win over Air Force (it had started the year AP #12!).

If you're going to suck, at least beat your main rival and shock the nation with an historic upset of a national title contender.