(AP) – The Wisconsin Badgers will play host to the Western Michigan Broncos at Camp Randall Stadium on Friday.

The game will air on FS1 at 8 p.m. According to BetMGM College Football Odds, Wisconsin is favored by 24.5 points.

In their series history, Wisconsin leads 4-1.

WHAT’S AT STAKE?

Wisconsin would love to show how far it has come, particularly on offense, after going 7-6 each of the last two seasons. Wisconsin is attempting to improve to 16-0 in night games at Camp Randall Stadium against unranked teams. Western Michigan is seeking to beat a Big Ten school for the first time since 2016 when the Broncos defeated both Northwestern and Illinois while putting together an undefeated regular season under current Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck. Western Michigan ended that season by losing to Wisconsin 24-16 in the Cotton Bowl, which represents the last meeting between these two teams.

KEY MATCHUP

Western Michigan’s offensive line vs. Wisconsin’s defensive line: Center Jacob Gideon and guard Addison West lead an offensive line that must avoid getting pushed around for the Broncos to have any chance of pulling the upset. Gideon has 35 career starts, and West has 24. Tedi Kushi also is back after making 10 starts last year. Wisconsin lost its most experienced defensive lineman when James Thompson Jr. underwent season-ending surgery for an upper-body injury.

PLAYERS TO WATCH

Western Michigan: RB Jalen Buckley rushed for 1,003 yards and 10 touchdowns on 189 carries as a redshirt freshman last season. He was named the Mid-American Conference’s freshman of the year and earned third-team all-MAC honors.

Wisconsin: QB Tyler Van Dyke, who transferred from Miami, is trying to bounce back from a 2023 season in which he struggled with injuries and threw a career-high 12 interceptions. The Badgers would love to see Van Dyke recapture the form he showed in 2021 when he threw 25 touchdown passes with only six interceptions and was named the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Rookie of the Year.

FACTS & FIGURES

Wisconsin is coming off back-to-back 7-6 seasons and enters the year outside the Associated Press Top 25 for the first time since 2016. That 2016 team went 11-3 and capped the year with that Cotton Bowl triumph over Western Michigan. … Western Michigan has a new offensive coordinator (Walt Bell), defensive coordinator (Scott Power), and special teams coordinator (Dan Sabock) after going 4-8 last year in head coach Lance Taylor’s debut season. … Western Michigan QB Hayden Wolff, who began his college career at Old Dominion, is working with his seventh different offensive coordinator in six seasons. … Wisconsin CB Ricardo Hallman had seven interceptions last season, tying Notre Dame’s Xavier Watts for the most by any Football Bowl Subdivision player.

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After a severe thunderstorm rolled through Michigan earlier this week, drone footage captured one home in Berrien County that was split in two by a falling tree.

The footage, taken by Nate’s Dronography in the southwestern Michigan community of Union Pier, shows the multi-story house sliced apart in two separate places by a large tree that was toppled during the intense thunderstorms. The two sections of the tree smashed through the roof and both floors of the house, which was fortunately unoccupied at the time.

Watch storm damage as tree slices home in half

Tropical storm tracker: Gilma expected to dissipate this weekend

Storms leave thousands without power

The storms, which swept across Michigan Tuesday evening, causing widespread power outages, flooding, and school closures the following day. More than 330,000 Michigan homes and businesses across Michigan were left without power on Wednesday morning by the storm, which meteorologists said was fueled by a wave of intense, record-breaking heat that has settled over the region this week.   

Cleanup and repair continued throughout August 28, with numerous school districts cancelling classes.

As of Thursday afternoon, there were still more than 92,000 power outages reported across the state, many of them in the greater Detroit metro area and further north in Gladwin, Ogemaw and Lake Counties.

On Wednesday, the Detroit Free Press, a part of the USA TODAY network, reported that utility repairs were expected to cost more than that $50 million, and that many customers would not get their electricity back until Friday.

Max Hauptman is a Trending Reporter for USA TODAY. He can be reached at MHauptman@gannett.com

Most of the guidance on election challengers provided by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is legal and can be used for the upcoming Nov. 5 presidential election.

That’s after a 4-3 ruling Wednesday from the Michigan Supreme Court, which decided along party lines that Benson was not required to use the full rules-making process to issue guidance on the credentialing of election challengers and the procedures by which challenges could be reported.  

Writing for the Democratic-nominated majority, Justice Kyra Harris Bolden noted Benson’s authority to set the guidelines.

“Under the Michigan Election Law, the secretary of state is the chief election officer of Michigan, and as such, the secretary has supervisory control over local election officials in the performance of their duties,” she wrote.

The decision brings to a close a legal battle that began in 2022 when a lawsuit was filed by two Republican legislative candidates and three Republicans who served as election challengers. They argued that new guidance issued by Benson violated Michigan election law by requiring polling places to have an election inspector designated as the “challenger liaison” through whom all challenges would be communicated. They further argued, among other issues, against a uniform credential form for challengers, and provisions permitting challengers to be ejected from polling sites if they fail to follow instructions. 

The plaintiffs, which also included the Michigan Republican Party and Republican National Committee, additionally argued that the rule changes had not gone through the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), which provides for “processing, promulgation, publication, and inspection of state agency rules.”

In October, the Michigan Court of Appeals had agreed, ruling that the Secretary of State “must follow the requirements of the Michigan Administrative Procedure Act and that under the state law a department can set new rules only after it has gone through the public notice and comment process.”

In its opinion, however, the majority overturned that decision, noting exceptions written into the law exempting from the rulemaking process “a form with instructions, an interpretive statement, a guideline, an informational pamphlet, or other material that in itself does not have the force and effect of law but is merely explanatory.”

In a dissent, Republican-nominated Justice Brian Zahra said the majority opinion that the revisions to the guidelines were merely explanatory did not square with the fact that challenges by credentialed election challengers would be “subject to the arbitrary whim of the newly designated challenger liaison who is vested by the Secretary’s new rules with authority to deem a challenge “impermissible.” The Secretary’s revisions to the manual are, in fact, ‘rules’ that must be followed and followed without a trace of public discussion, accountability, or transparency.”

Benson, in a statement after the opinion was issued, said she was grateful the court had recognized her department’s legal responsibility to issue guidelines to clerks. 

“As Michigan’s chief elections officer, the authority provided by the Legislature to issue uniform guidance to more than 1,600 clerks throughout the state is necessary to ensure every eligible voter can cast their ballot, while maintaining the security of our elections and the safety of our polling places,” said Benson. 

“As our guidance has consistently made clear, challengers have a right to participate in the election process and they play an important role. But election officials have a responsibility to maintain order in the polling place and ensure voters can cast a ballot without interference. This clarity will help election officials, poll workers, challengers, and voters alike as we prepare for the November General Election and beyond. As always, we are committed to following the law as we administer accessible, secure, and transparent elections for Michigan citizens.”