2017 Music City Bowl


The 2017 Music City Bowl was a college football bowl game played on December 29, 2017, at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Tennessee. It was one of the 2017–18 bowl games concluding the 2017 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The 20th annual Music City Bowl, the game was sponsored by the Franklin American Mortgage Company and was officially known as the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl.
The 2017 Music City Bowl featured the Northwestern Wildcats from the Big Ten Conference and the Kentucky Wildcats from the Southeastern Conference. Northwestern beat Kentucky by a score of 24–23.

Teams

This was only the second time that Kentucky and Northwestern had played against each other. Their previous match-up was on October 20, 1928, and was won by Northwestern, 7–0.

Game summary

Scoring summary

Statistics

StatisticsUKNU
First downs1720
Plays–yards338442
Rushing–yards65333
Passing yards273109
Passing: Comp–Att–Int21-39-29-21-0
Time of possession24:0835:52

TeamCategoryPlayerStatistics
UKPassingStephen Johnson19-36 257 yards
UKRushingSihiem King30 yards
UKReceivingTavin Richardson5 rec 89 yards
NUPassingMatt Alviti4-11 50 yards
NURushingJustin Jackson157 yards
NUReceivingCharlie Fessler1 rec 28 yards

Controversy

Kentucky running back Benny Snell was ejected in the 1st half for shoving a referee attempting to help him up. However, the video of the incident shows that Snell was simply attempting to remove the referee's hands from his wrists.