Counting down the days in the home stretch to Northwestern's New Years' Day Gator Bowl experience against the Mississippi State Bulldogs.

DAYS TIL BOWL: Five

GET OVERWHELMINGLY PUMPED UP VIDEO AND/OR THING: NUHighlights' 2012 highlight video, featuring 13 minutes of killdozer-level Northwestern ampage:

(The password is "NU2012")

Goooooooooood morning y'all! It's posting a crapton time! Bowl day's only five days away, and Sippin' on Purple will be here as we have this entire time, except with more stuff now that there's holidays in the rear view mirror.

Anyway, if you forget why Northwestern is the No. 20 team in the country and playing in a bowl game, this is why. Venric Mark doesn't care even a little bit about your defense, Kain Colter and Trevor Siemian are each capable of making big plays when they need to, and Northwestern's defense were ballhawks all day every day. Some might say a more apt summary of Northwestern's season would be the two or three plays that prevented this team from going 11-1, but those people can go get bent with rapidity. This team was 9-3, and don't you forget it.