2016 Heart of Dallas Bowl, Army vs. North Texas: Date, time, location and everything to know

Also, head over here for the fully updated bowl season calendar as it fills in, from the New Orleans Bowl through the Rose Bowl. We’ll also add picks, scores, and more to that calendar over time.

Hope you put in for time off from work already, because the Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl will get things going at lunchtime on Tuesday from the Cotton Bowl. The Heart of Dallas Bowl, which began as the TicketCity Bowl back in 2011, is the first of four games on Tuesday.

It may not have the name cachet that other major bowls have, but what Heart of Dallas Bowl lacks in name recognition, it makes up for in scoring punch. The winning team in this game has never scored fewer than 30 points, and has scored at least 44 points in half of the contest’s in bowl history. Sure, that’s only six games, but not every game can be the Rose Bowl.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Heart of Dallas Bowl.

Date and time: Tuesday, Dec. 27, Noon

TV channel: ESPN

Location: Dallas, Texas

Stadium: Cotton Bowl

Last year’s score: Washington 44, Southern Miss 31

Last year’s attendance: 20,229

Last year’s payout for each school:

Teams with the most all-time appearances: No team has ever played in this game more than once.

Teams with the most all-time wins: Houston, Oklahoma State, Louisiana Tech, North Texas, Texas Tech, and Washington (tie), 1

Army (6-5 with a game still to go against Navy, independent)

Army’s good again! Or at least, it’s decent. The Black Knights are bound for their first bowl game in six seasons and just their third since 1988. Head coach Jeff Monken took over the program for the 2014 season, after the Knights had won eight games in three years and posted losing records in 16 of 17. The team had been consistently awful, and it had been that way for ages.

Monken didn’t fix things right away. Army was 4-8 in 2014, then 2-10 last year. But something’s clicked this year, and the Knights are back in a place they don’t see often: postseason play.

It’s been a weird formula that’s gotten Army here. The Knights’ points-per-game figures on offense and defense are a lot better than their national rankings by the advanced stat S&P+. The triple-option offense has worked roughly as it’s supposed to, allowing for efficiency but not many big plays. The defense isn’t good against either the run or the pass, but it plays pretty well when it’s backed up into its own territory. It’s just worked out, even if it hasn’t been pretty.

Keep an eye on quarterback Ahmad Bradshaw, who’s mainly a runner in the option scheme. Bradshaw isn’t a good thrower (with a sub-50 percent completion rate and more picks than touchdown throws), but he can move and makes big throws from time to time.

The Knights still have a regular season game to play, next week against Navy.

North Texas (5-7, 3-5 in Conference USA)

North Texas had only five wins this season, but the Mean Green will make a bowl due to the program’s Academic Progress Rate score, the highest of the country’s five-win teams. North Texas went 2-3 to begin the season, with wins over Bethune-Cookman and an overtime win on the road against Rice. The Mean Green was then able to beat Marshall and Army to get to 4-3 on the season, but proceeded to lose three out of their last four games, bringing their regular season record to 5-7 on the season.

North Texas’ offense is led by running back Jeffrey Wilson, who has rushed for 855 yards on the year and leads the team in touchdowns with 13 on the season. As far as how this team has done from a statistical standpoint, let’s just say it hasn’t been that great. On offense, the Mean Green ranks inside the 100s, and on defense the unit is inside the 90 mark.

Thanks to its APR score, North Texas is going bowling for the first time since the 2013 season, after the Mean Green went 9-4. North Texas beat UNLV, 36-14, in the Heart of Dallas Bowl on Jan. 1, 2014.