New Year’s Six Preview: Cotton Bowl

Hosting Purdue and Maryland, as well as going on the road to IL and IN, should provide this Badgers football team an opportunity to work on things and get back on track if things happen to go awry. And like he has all season, coach Paul Chryst worked in jet sweeps to Jazz Peavy (three rushes for 50 yards) to keep the defense off balance.

But 39 of those yards came in the first quarter, helping the Badgers take a 14-0 lead they would never relinquish.

The Badgers picked up their second touchdown in as many drives on a 1-yard run from Dare Ogunbowale. A hard-nosed blocking specialist and a Third Team All-MAC selection, he contributed nine catches for 112 yards and is slated for a bigger role in the Broncos’ offense. Corey Clement rushed for 42 yards on the game’s opening drive, which he capped with a touchdown run through a hole so big you could’ve rowed a boat right through it.

Senior Bart Houston was named QB 1 at the beginning of the college football season. He would finish going 11 for 12, with 159 yards passing. Coincidentally, Houston’s lone incompletion was a ball Fumagalli dropped in the end zone.

Houston started the first three games of the season before Hornibrook became the starter.

But Hampton also missed an extra-point attempt after the Broncos’ touchdown with 3:27 remaining that cut Wisconsin’s lead to 24-16.

The Broncos have maintained a respectable rushing defense and pass rush all season, and they’ve honed in on ways to be successful in those areas against a UW offense that can present challenges they didn’t see all season in the Mid-American Conference. In case you were wondering, the one hand he used to make that catch in the first quarter was his left one. Consolation games are meant to console, but they’re also meant to help you celebrate yourself and your teammates. A former Western Michigan commit, Edwards received more than his share of jokes from his teammates entering the game.

Coming out of the halftime break, Western Michigan had no thoughts of packing it in and slowly crawled their way closer to the Badgers after another sustained drive of 65 yards that resulted in a field goal.

The Badgers would not surrender the lead on the day, and were seemingly always prepared to go to Fumagalli in big moments.

After Zach Terrell was sacked, bringing up fourth-and-20, punter James Coleman was run into, drawing a 5-yard running into the kicker flag. Redshirt freshman guard Luke Juriga (6-foot-4, 289 pounds) started 13 games this season. The junior force caught six passes on seven targets for 86 yards and a touchdown.

Fleck’s future is a topic of speculation because Western Michigan is the latest program outside the Power Five conferences to go 13-0 and get a shot in a major bowl.

The 36-year-old was trending on several social media platforms Monday during the Broncos’ Cotton Bowl game against Wisconson and there are plenty of reasons why. That should be enough, even if the stream ends up not being as merry as you want it to be, and life turns out to not be entirely the dream you dreamed.