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NASHVILLE, Tenn.-Let’s get the clichés out of the way first.

All’s well that ends well. Hindsight is 20/20. To the victor go the spoils.

They are all true in this case.

Yes, Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald’s two fourth-down decisions in Friday’s Music City Bowl were highly, um, questionable, to say the least. But they ultimately led to a wild 24-23 win over Kentucky. So, in the grand scheme of things, they were successful.

Still, they deserve to be debated because Northwestern seemed to win the game in spite of them and not because of them.

A jovial Fitzgerald poked fun at himself in the post-game press conference about his two fourth-down calls. He can afford to after earning the second straight bowl win for the first time in school history, an eighth straight win to close the season and a 10th victory for the third time in the last six years. He even welcomed second-guessing.

So that’s exactly what we’ll do.

Fitzgerald’s first head-scratcher came on a fourth-and-1 at the Kentucky 2-yard line with Northwestern holding a slim 17-14 lead about halfway through the final period. The fact that the Wildcats went for the first down and not a short field goal wasn’t surprising – Fitzgerald has been a riverboat gambler all season, going for it on fourth down 39 times, more than any team in the Big Ten, and succeeding 22 times. The play call, however, was curious, to put it mildly.

Instead of handing the ball off to one of his two 100-yard rushers in the game – Justin Jackson won the MVP award after rushing for 157 yards and two touchdowns, and backup Jeremy Larkin ran for 112 – Fitzgerald opted for a little trickeration. The trick turned out to be on him.

Jackson flipped the ball to Riley Lees on a reverse. Then Lees, a former star high school quarterback, ceded about 20 yards to avoid a tackler, and, running out of room on the sideline, just threw a pass up for grabs in the general direction of Jace James in the end zone. It was batted down and fell incomplete, giving Kentucky the ball and leaving Northwestern without any points after Larkin had run 64 yards on a single burst to give the Wildcats a first down at the UK 11-yard line.

“It was my call,” said Fitzgerald. “We practiced the heck out of it, why not run it? Feel free to second-guess me all you like. Because I knew Kyle was going to get the pick-off the next series.”

Fitzgerald said that with his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek. Figuratively, anyway.

Two plays after that debacle, Northwestern safety Kyle Queiro made the play of the game, stepping in front of a Stephen Johnson pass on the sideline and returning it 26 yards for a touchdown with 7:49 left. It turned out to be the final and game-winning score for the Wildcats.

But the decision to call for an impossibly long-developing pass play will continue to be pondered. Northwestern wound up with 333 rushing yards and a run seemed like the most logical call in that situation, especially with a running quarterback like Matt Alviti under center.

Alviti, who came on in the second quarter after starter Clayton Thorson was injured, turned out to be the center of Fitzgerald’s next controversial call. It was a decision that had even Kentucky coach Mark Stoops perplexed and drew the full fury of Northwestern fans on Twitter.

“Did you say Twitter?” Fitzgerald remarked. “Who cares, man? They’re all Illinois grads. Are you kidding?”

It was a good line after a not-so-good decision.

Let’s set the stage. Northwestern faced a fourth-and-1 at its own 39-yard line, holding a 24-17 lead with just 2:36 left. Fitzgerald’s choices were: do the tried-and-true, conservative, Coaching 101 thing and punt the ball to pin Kentucky deep in its own end and force them to go 80-plus yards against a defense that has been the team’s strong suit all season. Or he could go for it and win the game right there with a first down, but also risk giving the ball back to Kentucky in NU territory if the his team didn’t make it.

Stunningly, he opted for Door No. 2 and Alviti was stopped for no gain on a quarterback sneak.

Even Stoops was taken aback.

“I was. I was,” said Stoops, when asked if the decision surprised him. Coaches don’t generally criticize other coaches, so Stoops waited a good long time before following up on his admission. “But guess what? He won’t have to answer that very much because they won. That will be over real quick.”

That’s where Stoops was wrong, as Fitzgerald faced several questions about the call.

“Why not go for the win?” said Fitzgerald, defending the call. Then, he took a shot at the officials who seemed to be on the wrong end of just about every controversial call they made throughout the game. “We got it, did you see the replay? I did.”

He looked at Alviti. “Yep,” said the QB, confirming that he reached the line to gain.

“It is what it is. Somebody had to make a play right there,” explained Fitzgerald. “Congratulations to their defense, they did a great job.”

An official review backed up the initial spot at the NU 39. Kentucky took advantage of Fitzgerald’s confounding decision four plays later, when Johnson scored on a 9-yard run to give UK one final and unexpected shot to win the game.

Not surprisingly, Jackson and Queiro defended their coach’s decision to go for the first down in crunch time.

“I always want to go for it on fourth down. That’s my mentality,” explained Jackson.

Queiro said that NU’s defense only gave up three points all season after the offense turned the ball over on downs, adding that the decision showed “the faith we have in our offense and our defense to come up with a stop, as we have all year.”

With just 37 seconds left, Stoops decided to go for two points and the win, but Johnson’s pass to Tavin Richardson fell incomplete in the end zone and Northwestern escaped. He could have kicked the extra point to go into overtime and took his chances in an extra session. Instead, he made the aggressive decision and went for two.

Fitzgerald said that he would have done the same thing as Stoops in that situation.

“I probably would have run a reverse-pass from the 1,” he joked.

It’s good that the coach can laugh at himself. But it wouldn’t have been a laughing matter if it wound up costing Northwestern the game.