Big Ten Bowl Week: Purdue Plays a MAC Team and Lives to Tell About It

Purdue 37, Western Michigan 32

Half-empty stadium, sloppy ball-handling leading to a flurry of fumbles, tipped interceptions (and more fumbles), ridiculous special teams plays. It all adds up to the perfect MAC game.

For the most hardcore of college football junkies, the Tuesday/Wednesday MAC action during the regular season is the best way to scrape through the week. Thursdays might bring some ACC games of dubious value, and Fridays are usually reserved for some MWC team, but if you are starved for a week's worth of action shoved haphazardly into 60 minutes of action, a mid-week date with the MAC is your ticket.

This year's Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl was just dripping with MAC-itude. The bowl game routinely brings a MAC team to Detroit for a late December bowl game, and this year's challenger Western Michigan is the kind of high-flying offense/barely there defensive combo that would make the conference proud.

The influence of MAC football does strange things. Would Purdue be able to survive?

At first it looked like things could get ugly. The first two possessions led to a punt and then a fumble that set up a flea-flicker touchdown and two-point conversion for the Broncos. Purdue would miss a field goal before finally getting in the end zone late in the first quarter to put the score at 8-7.

Then the fireworks began. Over the next three quarters there would be 10 fumbles or interceptions, six touchdowns, four field goals, three fourth-down stands, two fumbles by Purdue defenders after forcing a turnover and a kick return touchdown. Just another day in the MAC.

It should have worried Purdue fans late in the fourth quarter when the team had forced five turnovers, recovered two onside kicks and returned a kickoff for a touchdown but still only led by five points.

Turns out, six turnovers would be enough.

The Boilermakers certainly didn't win the game in impressive fashion. Both teams were sloppy with the ball for large stretches, and ultimately the game came down to who would make the last mistake.

While Purdue did enough to win the game on defense, allowing Western Michigan's Jordan White to go off for 249 yards on 13 receptions is not best case scenario. Had quarterback Alex Carder not thrown four interceptions the game might have turned out differently. 

However, Purdue put together a great defensive game on the ground by allowing Western to gain just 46 yards on 23 carries. It was so bad that it became obvious that this had a big effect on Western's play calling in the red zone; the team routinely pulled out gimmicky plays and short passes rather than running the ball.

And so the Boilermakers survived against a MAC opponent the same way they survived six games this year: with a heavy dose or running, a few passes and a bit of luck. Purdue gained 266 yards on the ground at 4.8 yards per carry and threw the ball only 21 times (completing 15 for 177 yards and two touchdowns).   

In the end, this game means very little. Bowl games by definition are simply exhibition games with little meaning outside of the BCS title game. Purdue didn't beat a great team, it didn't put together a dominant effort against an inferior opponent and it didn't limit mistakes.

However, for a program that has seen nearly as many ACL injuries in the past two years as conference wins, it is hard to look past any positive development. Purdue got the win to put it over .500 for the season, did it with positive contributions in all three areas of the game and made the opposing team painfully one-dimensional (despite it being a one-dimensional team to begin with). This is the kind of game that Purdue has lost in the past, and even late it seemed like it could be more of the same.

Sure, Purdue just survived a decent MAC team in late December in Detroit. But that isn't the right way to look at it.

Purdue survived a decent MAC team in late December in Detroit.

Right now, for Danny Hope that is enough to build on.