Travel woes force Appalachian State to stay overnight in College Station after upset win over Texas A&M

After pulling a historic upset at No. 6 Texas A&M on Saturday, the Appalachian State football team didn't get to celebrate back home in Boone, North Carolina.

Mechanical issues with the team charter forced the Appalachian State team to spend the night at the hotel where they'd slept the previous night in College Station, a team spokesperson told ESPN. With the hotel sold out, the team spread out in various hallways, conference rooms and the lobby area.

The team spent about three hours on Saturday night at the airport before returning to the hotel around midnight. They had an unofficial 3:30 a.m. wake-up before returning to the airport, where they boarded a flight at 4:30 a.m.

The team flew to Charlotte on Sunday morning. They landed around 8:30 a.m., and the five team buses were expected to get to Boone, which is about two hours away, around 11 a.m.

While the delay was a slog, it'd be difficult to dampen the spirit of team and staff. They pulled off what will be remembered as the second-biggest upset in school history, stunning a Texas A&M program that had been stockpiling talented recruits and had coaches and administrators engaging in a verbal joust with Alabama coach Nick Saban this offseason. Instead, the Aggies became the second top-10 team to lose to a program from the Sun Belt on Saturday, as Marshall toppled No. 8 Notre Dame.

While attempting to wait out the mechanical issues on Saturday night, coach Shawn Clark was informed the program would be hosting ESPN's College GameDay for the first time on Saturday. Clark is a 1998 Appalachian State graduate who took over in 2020 and has been on the staff for seven seasons.

Appalachian State entered the game coming off a heartbreaking loss to North Carolina, which saw the