The 1997 Western Michigan Broncos football team was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

team that represented

Western Michigan University Western Michigan University (Western Michigan, Western or WMU) is a public research university in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It was initially established as Western State Normal School in 1903 by Governor Aaron T. Bliss for the training of teachers ...

during the

1997 NCAA Division I-A football season The 1997 NCAA Division I-A football season, play of college football in the United States organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association at the Division I-A level, began in late summer 1997 and culminated with the major bowl games in ea ...

. In their first season under head coach

Gary Darnell Gary Brent Darnell (born October 15, 1948) is a former American football player and coach at the college level. Darnell is native of Arkansas and an alumnus of Oklahoma State University, where he played college football. A long-time defensive co ...

, the Broncos compiled an 8–3 record and finished in second place in the West Division of the

Mid-American Conference The Mid-American Conference (MAC) is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I collegiate athletic conference with a membership base in the Great Lakes region that stretches from Western New York to Illinois. Nine of the twel ...

(MAC). In non-conference games, they defeated Temple (34–14) and Louisiana–Monroe (32–19) and lost to

Michigan State Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States. It i ...

(42–10). The team's statistical leaders were Tim Lester with 2,160 passing yards, Robert Sanford with 1,033 rushing yards, and Corey Alston with 32 catches for 761 receiving yards. Sanford was named the MAC freshman of the year. Gary Darnell was hired as Western's head football coach on December 14, 1996. He had been an assistant coach at

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

since 1992, including three years as defensive coordinator.

Schedule

References

Western Michigan West Michigan and Western Michigan are terms for an arbitrary region in the U.S. state of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Most narrowly it refers to the Grand Rapids- Muskegon-Holland area, and more broadly to most of the region along the Lower Pen ...

Western Michigan Broncos football seasons

Western Michigan Broncos football The Western Michigan Broncos football program represents Western Michigan University in the Football Bowl Subdivision of Division I and the Mid-American Conference (MAC). Western Michigan has competed in football since 1906, when they played th ...

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