College bowl games
Every winner, from the Celebration to Rose
When the College Football Playoff Top 25 was first released, way back on Halloween, Paul Chryst learned of the Badgers’ ranking only because a reporter told him.
The next day.
That’s Chryst. In a business where the standard approach is to handle daily details rather than muse about the big picture, he might be the extreme example. But combined with a low-key personality, his grinder’s approach has proved the perfect fit for Wisconsin — and in 2017, for the first time in school history, that resulted in a perfect regular season. And it’s why Chryst, 52, in his third season in Madison, is one of five finalists for the American Football Coaches Association’s 2017 National Coach of the Year award.
Chryst joins Iowa State’s Matt Campbell, Wisconsin’s Paul Chryst, Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Fresno State’s Jeff Tedford and Scott Frost, formerly of UCF, as regional winners. The national award will be announced at the American Football Coaches Awards presented by Amway.
“You don’t want to ever come off as ungrateful,” Chryst said when asked how he could not have known the Badgers’ ranking, adding it wasn’t his focus.
“You play the season,” Chryst said, “and at the end you earn the opportunity for a bowl game. Or you earn the opportunity to play in the championship. Whatever that is, you earn that through the season. You want them to just enjoy that moment. Who’s not to say that day or that moment won’t be as good as it gets?”
During the regular season, that approach led to as good as Wisconsin has ever been, at least in record. And although the Badgers narrowly lost to Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game, they were rewarded with a trip to the Orange Bowl, where they beat Miami (Fla.) and finished 13-1.
It provided yet more validation for doing things the Wisconsin way — which is to say, conventional power football.
“You never want to stop finding ways to make it better, but I think certainly the foundational pieces are from the experiences we’ve had here before.”