Trace Adams
Friday's Selection ...
For Friday, Raise The Bar 1500♦ is the Michigan State Spartans as the home favorite over the Utah State Aggies. At 7:00 am eastern time, the Spartans are the -23 1/2 point favorites in Vegas and offshore.
They were one of the youngest teams in the land last season, and all they did was go 10-3 to mark the biggest single-season turnaround in school history.
I am talking about Mark Dantonio's Spartans of Michigan State who are now a season more mature and should be very ready to open the year with a home win and cover - 4-1 as the home favorite a season ago in East Lansing - over this Utah State edition.
The Aggies form Logan do return some 18 starters from last year's bowl team, but the issue for Utah State is when they step up in class, they usually are road kill. Last season they opened with a 59-10 loss in Madison against Big Ten - Wisconsin.
The other "Power 5" school they played last season saw them get beat 46-10 at Wake Forest.
Throw in USC in 2016, and Washington and Utah in 2015, and they Aggies are 0-5 with a 205-58 point difference.
That does not bode well for this visit to Sparty.
Utah State is just 1-4 against the spread their last 5 when getting double-digits, so even though this is a decent team that may stay close for a while against Michigan State - traditionally slow starters - do look for Sparty to break this game open come the second half behind the bigger offensive line, and the better pedigree of the Big Ten Conference.
Michigan State has road games at Arizona State and at Indiana over the next couple of games, and it will be a month before they are back at it in front of the home crowd. Dantonio gets his team snowballing down the hill in this one.
Spartans by a full 4 scores for both the win and the cover this Friday night at home.