David Braun is Northwestern's 2023 Sportsperson of the Year
The awards keep rolling in for Northwestern head football coach David Braun.
He was named the Big Ten Coach of the Year and the AFCA Region 3 Coach of the Year. Now, Wildcat fans picked the first-year head man as WildcatReport's 2023 Northwestern Sportsperson of the Year, too.
It's easy to understand why. In his first year as a head coach at any level, Braun took over a reeling Wildcat program that had won just four of 24 games over the previous two years and had just fired beloved head coach Pat Fitzgerald in the wake of an embarrassing hazing scandal.
Northwestern's preseason over/under was 2.5 wins, and Braun more than tripled that, leading the Wildcats to an impressive 8-5 record that included a 14-7 win over Utah in the Las Vegas Bowl on Dec. 23. And he did it all with humility, grace and a relentless belief in his players.
Braun beat an impressive list of candidates to be voted as the SOTY: star point guard Boo Buie, the first first-team All-Big Ten performer for Northwestern since 2012; Big Ten Basketball Coach of the Year Chris Collins; and Izzy Scane, a national champion and the winner of the 2023 Tewaaraton Trophy, the lacrosse equivalent of the Heisman.
WildcatReport published polls on X (formerly Twitter) and on our message boards.
On X, Braun took 53.2% of the 566 votes to win going away, beating out Buie and Scane, who had 21.9% and 21.4% respectively, and Collins, who had just 3.5%.
On WildcatReport, the results were much closer, as Braun edged Scane by a single vote. The final tally: Braun 35.6%, Scane 34.8%, Buie 23.9% and Collins 5.8%.
Recency bias probably played a role in the voting, as Braun's team played just nine days ago. But he deserved this honor just as much as he did the five-year contract he signed in November to be the program's permanent head coach.
Braun began 2023 as a defensive coordinator at North Dakota State. He ended it as the Big Ten Coach of the Year at Northwestern. In between he resurrected a football program that was in dire straits and produced a miraculous season.
This much is certain: Braun and Northwestern’s fans are going to remember 2023 for quite some time.