Just because Appalachian State can play with the best doesn’t mean the Mountaineers want to do it all the time.

They’re content dominating the second tier of Division I football — at least for now — and should serve as a role model to other schools who are itching to be go big-time but better off staying put.

“Why not enjoy where we are?” Chancellor Kenneth Peacock said Sunday, less than 24 hours after Appalachian State became the first I-AA team to beat a ranked I-A team, stunning Michigan 34-32 in the Big House.

“At some point it may be the right thing for Appalachian State.”

Or not.

With a two-time defending I-AA national championship team that regularly plays in front of sellout crowds at home, Peacock and athletic director Charlie Cobb are in no rush to give up the good life on the small stage, even if they could.

The NCAA approved a four-year moratorium last month on teams moving into what is now called the Football Bowl Subdivision, formerly I-A.

Western Kentucky is beginning the transition this season to major college football, and the Hilltoppers will be the last until at least 2011.

Even before winning its first two national titles, Appalachian State had been a consistent winner in I-AA.

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Cobb, who has been on the job for two years, said Appalachian State studied a move to I-A five years ago. What the university found out was its facilities needed upgrading and more money was needed for scholarships.

Appalachian State has an athletic budget of $9.5 million for 20 teams and 450 student-athletes. If you’re wondering, Michigan had a $13.6 million athletic department surplus last school year.

The Mountaineers decided they weren’t ready for the grand stage back then, but it didn’t keep them from making improvements. If Appalachian State does reconsider a move up in the future, it will do so cautiously

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“If we’re going to do something we’re going to do it the right way,” Cobb said in telephone interview. “If you can’t do it successfully, you can set yourself back years.”

There’s plenty of evidence to support that. Since 1992, Division I-A has welcomed 14 new members. Most of the schools have done so with little success.

Marshall, Boise State and South Florida are the exceptions. The rest: Buffalo, UAB, Central Florida, Connecticut and seven of the eight members of the Sun Belt Conference are either terrible, irrelevant or both.

The move already looks like a bad one for Western Kentucky, which won the 2002 I-AA national title but slipped to 6-5 the past two seasons.