The first-ever Jimmy Kimmel L.A. Bowl will be played in SoFi Stadium, which will host the upcoming Super Bowl in February. It\u2019s a first-rate venue for a pre-Christmas bowl, and the matchup is a good one. Mountain West Conference champion Utah State faces an Oregon State team which came close to winning the Pac-12 North Division and upending the Oregon Ducks. Mountain West teams don\u2019t have the stature of Pac-12 teams, so any bowl game between the two conferences offers an instant proving-ground moment for the Mountain West team. Let\u2019s see if Utah State is up to the challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Utah State Aggies vs. Oregon State Beavers Location:<\/strong> SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, CA<\/p>\n\n\n\n CFB Odds:<\/strong> Oregon State -7.5<\/p>\n\n\n\n Utah State Aggies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Utah State Aggies stunned everyone by winning the Mountain West this year. Coach Blake Anderson came from Arkansas State and whipped the Aggies into shape. Utah State\u2019s year was built on the foundation of three specific wins. The first was a road win at Washington State in the season opener which showed the Aggies what they were capable of. There was total buy-in of Anderson\u2019s methods after that Week 1 win. The second big moment was the 49-45 win at Air Force which ultimately made the difference between winning the Mountain West\u2019s Mountain Division and finishing in second place. The third especially large moment for the Aggies was their 46-13 demolition of San Diego State in the Mountain West Championship Game. This team did have a few clunkers, the 27-3 loss to Boise State and a 44-17 loss to Wyoming, but Utah State knew how to turn on the jets when the moment was important, and that knack for rising to the occasion created a great season Utah State fans are going to remember for quite some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oregon State Beavers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Beavers were great at home and bad on the road. Oregon State beat Pac-12 champion Utah at home. The Beavers handled Washington and blew out Stanford at home. They also whacked Arizona State in Corvallis. Away from home, however, OSU lost to Purdue, Colorado, California, and Oregon. Football is football, but the location of games had an unusually large effect on how well Oregon State played. The Beavers were extremely formidable when they were playing their best, but they didn\u2019t play their best with great consistency. Oregon State had to fire its defensive coordinator midway through the season and search for answers in midstream. It will be fascinating to see how the Beavers handle a bowl game at a neutral site, given the marked splits between home and road performance in 2021. Coach Jonathan Smith needs a win here to build momentum heading into the 2022 offseason and a very fluid landscape in the Pac-12.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outlook<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Utah State looked like an elite team when it crushed an 11-win San Diego State team by 33 points, but San Diego State\u2019s offense pales in comparison to what Oregon State can offer. Oregon State is likely to score big in this game, probably enough to eclipse whatever Utah State can generate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aggies vs. Beavers Prediction:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Beavers 41, Aggies 37<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first-ever Jimmy Kimmel L.A. Bowl will be played in SoFi Stadium, which will host the upcoming Super Bowl in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":4983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaaf"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20476,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20470\/revisions\/20476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Date:<\/strong> Saturday, December 18th, 7:30 PM ET<\/p>\n\n\n\n