MOTOR CITY BOWL MAC's other top quarterback readies for national spotlight

Bowling Green's Josh Harris will lead his team against Northwestern.
DETROIT (AP) -- Among quarterbacks, Bowling Green's Josh Harris clearly plays second banana in the Mid-American Conference to Miami's Ben Roethlisberger.
That fact isn't making Northwestern coach Randy Walker sleep any better, though.
Walker's Wildcats face Harris and the Falcons in Friday's Motor City Bowl, and he's not looking forward to it.
"Josh is a great player -- he's too good for us to believe that we can stop him," Walker said. "All we can do is contain him and try to keep him from going crazy."
Record-holder
Harris has thrown for a school-record 3,427 yards and 24 touchdowns this season, and led conference quarterbacks with 762 yards rushing.
"We know just how important Josh is to our team," said Falcons coach Gregg Brandon. "If you look at our season and the games we won, he played great. When he didn't play great, we lost. Luckily, that only happened twice."
The Motor City Bowl will give Harris a chance to play in an NFL stadium, but even though he is now being talked about as a draft prospect, he's trying not to think about making a habit of playing in such arenas.
"You don't want to start thinking about the future and playing at the next level until you are done with this one," he said. "I'm just thinking about having a good last game and how much I'm going to miss my teammates. I'll worry about the rest of it later."
Harris also doesn't feel that he needs to earn respect for himself or his school.
"I don't think we need to prove anything any more," he said. "All we can do is play football and have fun. We've learned that we can't force the country or the media to give us any respect."
Past performance
He knows that he already has respect from the Wildcats. In 2001, the then-sophomore threw for 402 yards and three touchdowns and ran for two more in a 43-42 upset of Northwestern.
"That was a great game, but you can't rely too much on a performance from two years ago," he said. "They are a completely different team this season, and so are we. But I know they will have seen the films from that game, and they will be doing everything they can to keep us from repeating that performance."
Brandon also has fond memories about the Wildcats, but for a different reason.
He served as an assistant coach under Gary Barnett at Northwestern from 1992-98.
"It is kind of cool for me to go against Northwestern, but it really doesn't have anything to do with the game," he said.
"I left long enough ago that, while I know some of the people involved in the program, I don't know the kids."
Brandon's ties to this week's opponent shows up most obviously in the fact that both teams run the spread offense.
"They look a lot like us," he said. "They've got a great running back in Jason Wright and we've got a great quarterback in Josh Harris."
Linebacker Jovon Burkes thinks the similarities will help the defenses.
"We go up against the spread in practice every day," the Detroit native said. "They don't do things exactly the way we do, but it still makes things easier to recognize."