After more than a week of waiting, the Utah State Aggies now know where they are going bowling and who they will be playing to close out the 2023 college football season.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution first reported Sunday that the Aggies (6-6 overall, 4-4 in Mountain West Conference play) will play in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl against the Georgia State Panthers (6-6 overall, 305 in Sun Belt Conference play) on Dec. 23 at Albertsons Stadium — the matchup was later confirmed by the bowl itself.
Kickoff is slated for 1:30 p.m. MDT and the game will be broadcast on ESPN.
Utah State will play in its 11th bowl game in the last 13 years, an unprecedented run of success in the program’s history. Prior to 2011, USU had played in just five bowl games over a nearly 100-year period.
Georgia State is playing in its sixth bowl game in 11 seasons as an FBS program. The Panthers transitioned to the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2013 — the football program was started in 2010 — with their best season coming in 2021 when they finished 8-5 overall with a win in the Camellia Bowl.
The Panthers started the current season 6-1 but lost five consecutive games to end the regular season.
Utah State head coach Blake Anderson went 5-1 against the Panthers during his stint as the head coach at Arkansas State.
The Aggies have made a bowl appearance every year of the current era under Anderson dating back to a berth in the LA Bowl in 2021, followed by the berth in the First Responder Bowl last season.
For the second straight year, Utah State had to battle tooth and nail to become bowl eligible, after starting the season 1-3 overall and then needing to win three of the final four regular season games to reach six wins.
The Aggies pulled it off, though, thanks in part to the heroics of third-string quarterback Levi Williams in a double-overtime victory over New Mexico in Utah State’s regular-season finale.
Becoming bowl eligible was a high priority for Anderson, both as a reward to the current team as well as with an eye on the future.
Anderson noted following the win over the Lobos that “every kid you talk to in recruiting wants to know if you are going to go to bowls and if you are going to play for championships.
“I’ve been a head coach for 10 years now and have gone to nine bowls and won three titles. I want to be able to sit down with every kid that we talk to and say, ‘Hey, we may not win it every year, but we are going to stay competitive. Even in our down years, even when we are rebuilding, we are going to go bowling. We are going to play somewhere against somebody.’ Not every program can say that.”