There's nothing quite like going on the road to face a team that has just lost their head coach. Will the opponent be listless and disorganized, or motivated to make the interim guy look good? With Herm Edwards out at Arizona State, fired before he could even make his way off the field after falling, badly, to Eastern Michigan, Utah is about to find out.

Coaches are usually let go in between seasons, when schools have the time to hand-select a new face and set him up for success. However, mid-season firings are not unheard of, and often follow embarrassing losses. So how do the teams perform the week after?

Pretty much exactly like you'd expect.

I tracked every midseason firing of a head coach that was the result of on-field performance for the last ten years. I ruled out next games that were a bowl game (too much time to prepare) or against an FCS team (hard to predict the score). In these 24 games, there was no variation from the kind of performances you'd expect if the teams hadn't lost their head coach.

67% of games, the margin was within a touchdown of the expected result. Teams underperformed five times and overperformed three times- just what you'd expect from random chance in a sample of this size.

With no 'there' there, fans must turn to the fundamentals to predict the result of the game. In this case, the fundamentals strongly favor the Utes- although the prevailing wisdom is a bit more optimistic than the cold hard math of beating a PAC 12 opponent on the road.

Despite the abysmal showing against Eastern Michigan, Arizona State still looks like a tough out in the eyes of advanced metrics. This hasn't been borne out on the field- despite being roughly average in those metrics, riding some of the wave from solid preseason expectations, the Sun Devils rank 80th in both offensive and defensive efficiencies. The Vegas line reflects this wisdom and pessimism about the lack of a head coach, giving a bold 15.5 point advantage to the Utes.

I predict Utah is going to be slow to score in this road contest, but not nearly so slow as the Sun Devils.

Utah 23, ASU 13