The New Mexico Bowl is the highlight of the opening day of 2018 college football bowl action as Utah State takes on North Texas. The game is being played in Albuquerque, New Mexico at Dreamstyle Stadium. That\u2019s the home of the University of New Mexico\u2019s football team which has recently sold naming rights to the Dreamstyle Remodeling Company. This is the 13th annual New Mexico Bowl and the first trip to the game for the Mean Green of North Texas. Utah State played in this bowl in 2014, a 21-6 Aggie victory over UTEP. This is the 7th bowl trip in eight seasons for Utah State and the third straight for North Texas.<\/p>\n
The big storyline of this game is the coaching upheaval at Utah State. Leveraging one of the best season performances by the Aggies in recent years both head coach Matt Wells and offensive coordinator David Yost are \u2018moving on up\u2019. Actually, they\u2019re heading to Texas Tech to take over the Red Raiders\u2019 football program replacing former head coach Kliff Kingsbury who is the new offensive coordinator at the University of Southern California. Neither former Aggie coach will be involved here<\/a> and the team will be led by defensive coordinator Frank Maile.<\/p>\n No real concern about the absence of Wells or Yost since the team\u2019s offensive system is well established and very potent. Led by quarterback Jordan Love, the Aggies lit up the scoreboard as the #11 total offense at the FBS level of the NCAA (492.5 yards per game). Utah State was very effective at cashing in this yardage for points ranking #3 in scoring offense at 47.2 trailing only Alabama and Oklahoma. The Aggie defense wasn\u2019t as formidable as the offense but did a credible enough job keeping Utah State\u2019s opponents from turning games into a track meet as they ranked #38 in scoring defense (23 PPG against).<\/p>\n Some serious reservations about North Texas despite their glossy 9 win season. Their ATS performance was nowhere near as impressive and particularly down the stretch. The Eagles were just 4-8 ATS with three of the covers coming early in the season. That means they finished their regular season failing to cover in five straight games and 7 of their last 8. Their inability to win by a decent margin against substandard opponents like UTSA and UTEP could become very problematic against an offensive juggernaut like Utah State.<\/p>\n The Mean Green defense doesn\u2019t seem to have much of a shot at stopping Jordan Love and company. North Texas does have the #31 ranked scoring defense in the country allowing just 21.8 PPG but that says more about the quality of offenses they faced than it does about their own ability. The defense became more porous as the year progressed and before a decent showing in their final game of the year they went through a three game stretch where they looked awful against substandard opposition. The nadir was a 34-31 SU loss to Old Dominion that finished the season 4-8 SU as a -15.5 road favorite. A defense that struggled to contain Florida Atlantic and Old Dominion will likely get run off the field by the Aggies.<\/p>\n Simply put, North Texas is taking a big step up in class and likely playing the best team they\u2019ve faced all year. It\u2019s certainly the best offense they\u2019ve seen and you can make a compelling case that Love is the most talented quarterback they\u2019ve lined up against. Utah State, meanwhile, has played a number of better teams than this during the season including a very competitive effort at Michigan State, a decisive win against BYU in Provo and in the Mountain West championship game loss to Boise State. After facing Boise State\u2019s high quality athletes North Texas will be a huge drop in class.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll throw in a final \u2018X factor\u2019 that further solidifies our position on Utah State. Denver may have the nickname as the \u2018Mile High City\u2019 but Albuquerque sits at a lofty 5,312\u2032 feet above sea level. Utah State plays their home games in Logan, Utah at 4,534\u2032 above sea level. North Texas plays their home games in suburban Dallas at 430\u2032 above sea level. The Mean Green could be huffing and puffing in the second half and that\u2019s not good against an offense like Utah State\u2019s. Game day weather should be excellent meaning that the \u2018Over\u2019 68 looks like the play. In many of these early bowl games the smart strategy is to take the points. This doesn\u2019t look like one of them. The current college football betting line<\/a> of -7.5 looks short for such a capable offense.<\/p>\n BET UTAH STATE -7.5 OVER NORTH TEXAS<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The New Mexico Bowl is the highlight of the opening day of 2018 college football bowl action as Utah State…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":4891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4889","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\/4889","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=4889"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4892,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889\/revisions\/4892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}