KALAMAZOO, MI -- Western Michigan fought to keep P.J. Fleck as its head football coach, there should be no doubt about that.

Broncos athletic director Kathy Beauregard said the college presented Fleck with a new contract to sign well before the football team's Cotton Bowl appearance.

"Western Michigan University had an incredible offer out to P.J. Fleck to continue to be our football coach," Beauregard said in a press conference Friday. "He's known that for probably a month and a half, if not more than that."

Beauregard said the university decided to push actual negotiations out as far as possible so it would not interfere with Cotton Bowl preparation.

"Conversations were very real about how and when that was all going to fall out," she said. "It was our choice to actually wait as long as we could possibly wait on that on behalf of our student-athletes. We did not want a change in a coach, a hiring of a coach, of negotiations of those things to step in the way of the process that being 100 percent concentration on our student athletes."