By Jeremy Kahn

photo credit: 247 sports Nebraska head coach Mike Riley (right) preparing for Foster Farms Bowl on Sat Dec 26

SANTA CLARA–With the 14th annual Foster Farms Bowl commencing next Saturday night December 26, 2015 from Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, it would be nice to see who the Big 10 Conference would be sending to the Bay Area.

Despite a 5-7 record on the season, the Big 10 representative will be the Nebraska Cornhuskers, coached by former Oregon State Beavers head coach Mike Riley, who is in his first year with the Cornhuskers after replacing Bo Pelini.

This is actually Riley’s second trip to the Bay Area for the Foster Farms Bowl, as he brought his 2007 Oregon State team to AT&T Park, the former home of the bowl game and the Beavers returned to Corvallis with a hard fought 21-14 victory over the University of Maryland Terrapins. In his career as a college head coach in bowl games, Riley is 6-2.

Despite being their seventh trip to the State of California for a bowl game, this is the first ever bowl trip to the Bay Area for the Cornhuskers, and their 52nd trip to a bowl game overall, including going to bowl in 45 out of the last 47 years.

The Cornhuskers will be facing the UCLA Bruins, an opponent that they have 12 times prior to the meeting on December 26, and this will be the first ever meeting between the two schools in a bowl game. The series between the two schools stands tied at six wins apiece.

They are seven members of the Cornhuskers team with California ties, but only Tight End Matt Snyder out of California High School in San Ramon has ties to the Bay Area.