Mountaineers

Marshall fans call it the Old Mountain Feud, and even in Boone, where Georgia Southern draws its own share of ill will, the games against the Thundering Herd carry a different weight.

The program dates to 1928, when Graydon Eggers took charge of a team that spent decades chasing conference titles rather than national ones. The North State Conference wins of the 1930s through the 1950s belong to that earlier version of the school. The identity people now associate with Boone was built later, in the Southern Conference, where the Mountaineers won it twelve times between 1986 and 2012.

What set the program apart came in the middle of that stretch: three straight FCS national championships, 2005 through 2007, a run no other program in the subdivision had managed. The step up to what is now the FBS followed, and the Sun Belt Conference became the new stage — four titles from 2016 to 2019. The 2023 Cure Bowl added to a bowl record that stands at seven wins against two losses, the best winning percentage of any program with five or more such appearances.

Kidd Brewer Stadium holds 40,168.

Ask around Boone long enough and one name still comes up ahead of the rest: Appalachian State plays as the Mountaineers.