It’s the 2012 Bowl Daddy Rematch You Didn’t Know You Desperately Needed

The last time Arkansas State played Northern Illinois, I wore a rubber werwolf mask that I painted red. It was the 2012 GoDaddy Bowl, located in Mobile, Alabama and hosted at a hollowed-out chunk of asbestos called Ladd-Peebles Stadium. The Red Wolves, anointed Champions of the Sun Belt, were glowing like radiation after its first 10-win season since 1975, courtesy of Hugh Freeze’s one-and-done year in Jonesboro. A-State quarterback Ryan Aplin was the Sun Belt Player of the Year. Defensive end Brandon Joiner was the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year. It was a great A-State football team.

Arkansas State’s opponent, the Huskies, were also a great football team. MAC champs at 11-3, the program would be selected as the College Football Playoffs Committee’s NY6 Bowl rep the next season. That year, Huskie head coach Dave Dorean would pull a Hugh Freeze and take a P5 gig before the bowl game.

Meanwhile, back in January of 2012, the fact that Freeze had taken a gig with Ole Miss had removed some air out of the post season, but the program made a very popular hire to mitigate the pain – Gus Malzahn, an assistant at Auburn with deep Arkansas ties. The new head coach would be in attendance at the GoDaddy Bowl that evening, but it was running backs coach David Gunn who would call the Xs and Os for the game.

This was before NIL. Before the transfer portal. We were still playing NCAA Football on our gaming consoles. It really was a more “innocent time.” The GoDaddy Bowl was certainly nothing fancy – it was just about the football, an aspect for which the Huskies dominated 38-20 after spotting the Red Wolves 13 points in the first quarter (David Gunn’s offense seemed to run out of ideas before the start of the second quarter). A-State coughed up 5 turnovers that night, and Northern Illinois legend Chandler Harnish put up two touchdowns on 274 yards passing. For Red Wolves fans, it wasn’t much of a game, but it also felt like an appetizer for much greater things to come.

Time is a Flat Circle

Much like in January of 2012, the Red Wolves and Huskies meet in Alabama (this time at the Camellia Bowl in Montgomery) as eerily similar teams. Both programs finished the season 6-6. Both programs endured painfully slow starts. Neither team had high expectations entering the season (the Huskies were expected to finish 3rd in the MAC West).

Arkansas State arrives to Montgomery a team on the rise. After winning just five games the last two seasons, the Red Wolves enjoyed their first non-losing season under Butch Jones, who dedicated himself and his staff to building the roster through traditional recruiting. The season’s start was nothing short of a disaster, first absorbing a 73-0 annihilation to Oklahoma, then a 37-3 crotch-crushing to Memphis. The year’s fortune’s saw a dramatic improvement when the Red Wolves’ offense put true freshman Jaylen Raynor (2,300 yards, 15 passing TDs) behind center. Playing behind a revamped offensive line, Raynor (a threat with both his arm and his legs) provided the multiple layers necessary to jumpstart what was once a miserably underperforming offense.

Northern Illinois is also a team recovering from a downturn. After submitting a 9 win season in 2021, the Huskies went a dispiriting 3-9 in 2022 which ended with a crushing 44-12 loss to Akron. NIU rebounded by doubling their victories this season, opening with an overtime victory over Boston College and winning five of their last seven. The Huskies are led by veteran senior QB Rocky Lombardi (2,074 yards, 10 passing TDs), a transfer from Michigan State who manages the game well. However, the secret sauce to the NIU offense is running back Antario Brown (1,164 yards, 10 TDs), a 5’10” 219-lb junior named to the 2023 All-MAC First Team Offense squad.

Portal Attrition

Transfer portal decimation has been a storyline this post season, but thus far, both the Huskies and the Red Wolves have largely mitigated the damages. The Red Wolves will be without starting freshman linebacker Javon Mackey, who portaled to Memphis. The Huskies will be without contributing defensive end George Gumbs (Cincinnati) and starting center Pete Nygra (Louisville) who was considered one of the better offensive linemen in the MAC.

The Tape

	NIU	Arkansas State
Record	6-6	6-6
Total Off	77th	72nd
Total Def	21st	124th
Red Zone D	105th	77th
Red Zone O	62nd	103rd
Sacks	22	24
Rushing O	38th	74th
Passing	105th	63rd
Points For	25.3	27.8
Points Against	21.2	31.2

The Huskies will get you on defense, allowing a stingy 21 points a contest while maintaining possession with its better-than-average run game. The Red Wolves offense is a bit more balanced, with running backs JaQuez Cross (688 yards, 7 TDs) and Zac Wallace (556 yards, 6 TDs) providing an effective ground attack, and wide receivers Courtney Jackson (658 yards, 7 TDs) and Jeff Foreman (551 yards, 4 TDs) offering defendable targets to Raynor.

Husky to Holster: Antario Brown RB

Brown doesn’t catch the ball much – just one receiving TD in two season, but the big man is a plow horse averaging 6.6 yards per carry and toting the ball more than twice as many times as his battery mate, Gavin Williams (448 yards, 3 TDs).

Wolfing Out: Charles Willekes LB

The team leader with 88 total tackles, junior linebacker Willekes and his linebacker buddy Melique Straker (77 total tackles) will be tasked with bottling up Antario Brown. Without second leading tackler Javante Mackey in the mix, Willekes will be plenty busy on Saturday.

Final Analysis

The Camellia Bowl offers fans a pairing of even teams. The Red Wolves and Huskies bear striking similarities in both their play and their position in the college football universe. This is the Spiderman Pointing meme of Bowl games.

This is an exhibition game, but it’s also a litmus test for both programs – are the Huskies and Red Wolves positioned to building upon the modest gains made in 2023? Or have one or both programs hit a ceiling? In our opinion, the ceiling is much higher for the Red Wolves.

PHOTO CREDIT BELONGS TO ME