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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas, NV

Stream: CBSSN

Northern Illinois +21½ over UNLV

10:30 PM EST. We saved the worst for last, too. Only we are taking the worst. Northern Illinois is winless, overmatched, and getting buried by everybody, and now the Huskies are a 23½-point underdog on Halloween night in Sin City against a team the whole world expects to win by four touchdowns. Everybody is laying it with UNLV. Everybody. And that is the entire case. When the entire world agrees a team is unwatchable garbage, the number grows until it is fat enough to cover itself. Twenty-three and a half points is a mountain. Meanwhile, the same people selling you a 28-point UNLV win will admit in the next breath that the Rebel offense is not exactly a fireworks show. And look at how this number got here. Northern Illinois is 1-6 against the spread this year and has failed to cover four straight, so oddsmakers have been forced to keep inflating the price just to get anybody to look at the Huskies. Every week the dog burns the people who take it, so every week the number gets bigger, until you end up here: 23½ points, a number that has more to do with a month of inflation than with these two teams. Additionally, big favorites get bored. Northern's one cover this season came exactly that way, when the favorite stopped trying and started goofing around. Garbage time is undefeated, and on Halloween night in Las Vegas, garbage time has a way of starting early. Then there is the UNLV sideline. Dan Mullen spent the week as the subject of coaching carousel chatter, with Maryland open and everybody in the Mountain West knowing he would love a springboard back to the Power 4, just like Barry Odom used this same job before him. Do you think his week was spent scheming for winless Northern Illinois? On the other side, the Huskies took the Mountain West money, got thrown into the deep end with an interim coach and a bare cupboard, and have been drowning in public all season. That public drowning is precisely why you are getting 23½ instead of 14. The ugliness is the value. UNLV will probably win the game. Nobody is pretending otherwise. But laying 21½ points with a distracted favorite, on Halloween, in Vegas, against a team with nothing left to lose is how you end up sweating a backdoor cover at one in the morning. We will take the points, take the ugly dog, and let the rest of the world lay the lumber with the pretty favorite.

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