On Thursday at Northwestern’s bowl game press conference, Wildcat head coach David Braun said that watching Central Michigan tape is like looking in a mirror. He’s right in more ways than one.
Northwestern’s opponent in the GameAbove Sports Bowl runs the ball hard and plays tough defense. CMU Linebacker Jordan Kwiatkowski spends as much time in opposing backfields as Wildcat safety Robert Fitzgerald. Toss in a senior quarterback — who, like Northwestern’s Preston Stone, came by way of the transfer portal. A three-deep running back by committee that features two underclassmen, and Mount Pleasant starts to have shades of Evanston-North.
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“I’m from Iowa originally, so I’ve been following coach Braun’s career since he was at [Northern Iowa] and then NDSU, and I’ve got a couple guys on my staff that have crossed paths with him,” said Central Michigan head coach Matt Drinkall. “You knew exactly when you drew them in the bowl game, like, ‘Oh man, I already know what this film is going to look like.’”
Drinkall, a former offensive assistant at Army, was hired a year ago to right the ship after three consecutive losing seasons. He didn’t inherit a crisis like Northwestern’s 2023 hazing scandal, but seven wins in year one is still an accomplishment with real weight. His Chippewas entered the final week of the season with a shot at the MAC Championship.
It’s no secret that bowl season isn’t what it once was. Nine teams have declined bowl invitations thus far in 2025, including a 10-2 Notre Dame side that chose to end its season after missing out on the College Football Playoff. Countless more juniors and seniors will end their college football careers prematurely, opting out of a bowl game to focus on the NFL Draft. Who can blame them?
But then again, you can’t tell the story of Northwestern’s 2023 season without the Las Vegas Bowl. That 14-7 fistfight of a victory over Utah is up there in the pantheon of Wildcat football history. Ben Bryant’s Tyson Fury, get-off-the-mat moment before throwing a perfect ball to Bryce Kirtz for the go-ahead touchdown. That’s Northwestern legend Ben Bryant to you. `
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All those seniors, the group who stayed after a 1-11 season without a win on America soil and after their coach was fired in a scandal that became a national embarrassment.
Coach Drinkall gets it.
“This senior class is incredibly personal to me,” he said. “I got hired here [in December], and we started up operations in mid-January. The portal opened two teams with this group of seniors, and the ones that stayed had two different opportunities to leave.”
Central Michigan will have its shot at its own Las Vegas Bowl moment in Detroit. Drinkall’s Chippewas got killed in its only two matchups against Power Four opponents in 2025, falling by a combined 88 points to Pittsburgh and Michigan in Weeks 2 and 3. Drinkall said his team relishes the chance at redemption.
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Northwestern is now two years removed from Las Vegas, and the GameAbove Sports Bowl is a far cry from the championship aspirations set out by its head coach, even if most didn’t have the ‘Cats sniffing six wins in 2025. The stakes feel elevated by the $860 million stadium project that should be ready for kickoff in 2026.
A little more than a month ago, with Northwestern on the precipice of bowl eligibility after an upset win over Penn State and a 19-0 shellacking of Purdue, coach Braun told reporters that he was not satisfied with six wins.
“Nowhere on our list of goals does it say, ‘make a bowl game,’” he said. “Nowhere does it say, ‘beat Purdue.’ This team set out to do something really special this year.”
The goal remains a Big Ten championship and the College Football Playoff — on Thursday, Braun made sure we knew that just about every time he opened his mouth — but that does not mean that Northwestern’s matchup against Central Michigan is a meaningless football game.
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Ask Caleb Tiernan, Northwestern’s beast of a left tackle who will be among the first offensive linemen selected in the NFL Draft come April. Braun told reporters that he and offensive line coach Bill O’Boyle were trying to manage Tiernan’s reps ahead of the bowl game, nervous at the possibility of anything going wrong that could impact his NFL future.
“Caleb, day two of practice…comes over to coach O’Boyle and says, ‘Hey, you’re not managing my reps today. I showed up to practice today to get better,’” said Braun. “I think that embodies who our team is, what we’re about and how much this full opportunity means to this team.”
The bowl game provides Northwestern with an opportunity to develop its young players — Braun shouted out true freshmen Elijah Jones, Jon Jon Stevens and Trey Boyd by name. But the focus still remains on the seniors. Sophomore quarterback Ryan Boe will have to wait another day for his first career start. Preston Stone will get the chance to end his college football career with a victory.
“We’ve got to do a really good job around college football not diminish how much it means to play in a bowl game,” said Braun. “We’ve got to protect that. I don’t have answers, but that’s something as a college football community we’ve got to figure out, because it matters. When it starts to not matter, we’ve got to evaluate how we’re doing things.”
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Northwestern has been slow to adapt to many of the new realities of the current college football landscape, but Braun’s emphasis on postseason football is one relic of the past that ‘Cats fans should be proud of. It matters that the seniors take pride in their one last ride.
Playing for a trophy matters, especially given the state of this program two-and-a-half years ago. The standards can and should be higher than the GameAbove Sports Bowl against an opponent from the MAC. But for the next two weeks, it’s worth appreciating the opportunity to win two bowl games in three years.
