D'Amato: It's time to show these Wisconsin Badgers some respect

MADISON – Hey, pollsters. Hey, trollsters. Wake up and smell the cheddar.

Go ahead, swallow your pride and admit it. This Wisconsin football team — the one you’ve knocked for playing a soft schedule, the one with the quarterback who leads the Big Ten in social media critics — is pretty good.

Look around. How many other FBS teams are unbeaten? Three, and one of them, Central Florida, gets an asterisk because, well, it’s Central Florida.

You could argue that the 11-0 Badgers hadn’t really played anybody before beating Iowa last week and Michigan, 24-10, at Camp Randall Stadium on Saturday. The players might even agree.

“Well, we kind of hadn’t,” safety Joe Ferguson said. “We played good teams but we hadn’t played anybody who was ranked. So that was true.”

But now UW has won back-to-back games against teams ranked in the College Football Playoffs top 25 — Iowa was No. 20 and Michigan No. 24 — so that argument is toast.

Still, there will be snarky comments from those who think the sun rises and sets south of the Mason-Dixon line — and only when Nick Saban tells it to.

BOX SCORE:Wisconsin 24, Michigan 10 | Scoring summary

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NOTES:Biadasz and Dixon overcome injuries to provide big plays

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“Trolls, whatever,” Ferguson said. “I’m sure there will be half the people saying we didn’t blow (Michigan) out, or something like that. It is what it is. We won the game. People can think what they want about it.”

The Wolverines, with talent up and down the roster, a coach who gets more love from the TV cameras in one half than Paul Chryst gets in a year and a tradition of beating Wisconsin, presented the toughest test to date.

UW’s offense had a hard time getting on track and the Badgers fell behind, 10-7, midway through the third quarter before scoring 17 unanswered points.

Including the 3 minutes 5 seconds they were on the wrong end of the score, the Badgers have trailed for just 8:49 of 330 second-half minutes this season.

That speaks to the coaching staff’s ability to make halftime adjustments and the players trusting each other.

“A lot of the stuff in the first half they were getting us with, they were just attacking our (coverage) rules,” Ferguson said. “In the second half, there was only so much they could do. We made the adjustments and we came back out and everyone was really focused. The things they were getting us earlier we were picking up.”

Quarterback Alex Hornibrook, whose interception set up Michigan’s go-ahead field goal, made several big plays down the stretch, none bigger than his 24-yard touchdown pass to A.J. Taylor, a fastball threaded through two defenders that put UW up for good.

“I think you guys get more stressed about (interceptions) than I do,” Hornibook told reporters. “(I) just figure out what went wrong, figure out how to fix it and then not even think about it anymore.”

Hornibrook is a favorite target of Twitter trolls, who question everything from his mechanics to his arm strength to his decision-making to his choice of pizza toppings. He reminds me a bit of former Badgers quarterback Mike Samuel that way. All they do is win.

Then there’s Chryst, the anti-Jim Harbaugh. He’s as animated as an actuary on the sideline and a human form of Ambien in news conferences, but his players would run through a brick wall for him.

“We know he’s in it to make us better young men,” Ferguson said. “He’s not in it to capitalize off us. We want to do the same for him. It’s just the culture he’s kind of brought. Who knows? If he was more flamboyant and out there and doing crazy stuff, maybe (he’d get more recognition).

“Coach Chryst is himself. He doesn’t change.”

After the Badgers beat Minnesota next week – there is zero chance they will be unprepared – and if they get past Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game Dec. 2, they would be an unbeaten team from a Power Five conference.

Do we dare dream about the College Football Playoff semifinals and a shot at the national championship?

Like any good linebacker, a Badger fan’s reach should exceed his grasp.