After the Boilermakers finished 6-6 by beating Indiana in the Old Oaken Bucket game, they became bowl eligible. Speculation of which bowl game Purdue would play in swirled around the world of Twitter for days after this exciting victory. Three different bowl games were most likely destinations for the Boilers postseason game.

Despite popular belief, the Boilermaker community found out last Sunday that Purdue would be traveling to Santa Clara, California for the Foster Farms Bowl. Many fans thought that Purdue would have gotten an invitation to play in the Music City Bowl in Nashville, TN or the Pinstripe Bowl in New York City.

However, I am personally thrilled with the bowl that we accepted an invitation to play in. The warm weather and quality of competition on the field should allow for a competitive, fun, and high-level football game. Therefore, Purdue University will be taking on The University of Arizona on December 27, 2017.

As I previously mentioned, the game will be played at Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers, in Santa Clara, California. The 2017 Foster Farms Bowl kicks off at 8:30 P.M. Eastern Time, televised by FOX and broadcasted on the following radio stations: 96.5 FM in Lafayette area and 97.5 FM or 1260 AM in Indianapolis.

This season for Purdue football has been seen by 99% of its fans as a success. A renewal of energy, passion, and a winning mentality regardless of the opponent have uplifted the Boilermakers.

First-year head coach Jeff Brohm has brought both tangible tactics and intangible features that have shined bright throughout the season. On paper, Purdue was outmatched in about half of their games in terms of “talent”, but that did not stop the Boilers from competing and having a chance to win in the fourth quarter of all twelve games this season.

Despite Brohm’s high power offense and proved success, the defense, in my opinion, has been the bright spot for this team. This shocked many professional analysts who study college football daily and caused their predictions of Purdue winning finishing near the end of the Big Ten again.

This team used that as fuel, nearly beating highly ranked Wisconsin, Michigan, and Louisville. Although all three of those games resulted in a loss, it showed such positive signs and gave off so much confidence that the Boilermakers were able to power through and beat Iowa on the road and Indiana at home to finish 6-6, making them bowl-eligible.

Arizona is a football program that has had its share of success in recent years. Although their program is in a much different internal era, the teams are separated by a single win and loss. Despite it being a down year in ways for Arizona, their high power offense is still touted as top-notch nationally.

At one point in the season, the Wildcats were on a four-game winning streak with wins over #15 Washington State, Colorado, UCLA, and Cal. Despite losing a heartbreaker on the road at #17 USC, the Wildcats came back to defeat Oregon State the following weekend. Even though Arizona lost two straight games to finish the regular season, they are a very good team that has the potential to pose threats to the Boilermakers.

As one may expect, both teams are excited to get a chance to continue playing football late into December. In an interview with the Lafayette Journal & Courier, senior defensive tackle Gelen Robinson said, “We’re just looking forward to make this a season that we can pass down to our underclassmen and have them build off of it.” This goes off Brohm’s mentality ever since he got hired as the Head Football Coach.

He firmly believes that these seniors deserved a year of passion and winning, providing more than just something to build off of for the younger players. Brohm went onto to discuss the game in this week’s press conference. One valuable statement he made goes as follows, “This is a chance for our guys to have more fun. It’s a bowl game and we want to win it. When we’re on the field, anytime, we want to compete to be the best.” The Purdue community is overall thrilled and excited for this game. The hype around the program continues to build and if things go the way that I believe that they will, Purdue will finish the 2017 football season with a winning record.

I see this game as a run and gun type game. Both of the offenses for the two teams work at fast pace with the idea of scoring as fast as possible and run offenses that give them the ability to score on every single play. Therefore, I see it going back and forth in the first and second quarters. The difference maker that is most notable to me is the lack of quality defenses that Arizona has seen this year. On the flipside, Purdue’s defense was one of the best in the Big Ten statistically.

I think that because of this, the Boilermakers will gain some sort of edge in the second half to give them enough separation to pull out the win. Although Arizona has a high octane offense with many weapons, Purdue’s defense has faced similar offenses and held them in check. My final score prediction of the 2017 Foster Farms Bowl has the Boilermakers winning 35 – 28.