Maybe after today they will believe.  Maybe after today, there is respect.  Maybe after today the country will understand.  The Bulldogs are for real.  After another week of  "Are they for real?", the Fresno State Bulldogs went into Camp Randall Stadium and beat the Wisconsin Badgers.  It wasn't easy.  In fact, Fresno trailed at the half by 10 points.  After the half, though, it was all Bulldogs:  22-0. 

They ran, they passed, they tackled, they blocked.  They did it all right in second half.

What did coach Pat Hill tell them at half time?  What was the spark?  Who knows?  It seems that the Bulldogs were a little sluggish in the first half, not unexpected given the 9AM Pacific starting time to the game.  They stayed close enough however, and started the second half with a bang. Bernard Berrian took the second half kickoff up the middle, cut to the left and was gone.  96 yards and all of the momentum had switched sides.

"We never seemed to recover after that," Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez said.

Two plays later Wisconsin quarterback Jim Sorgi threw an interception to defensive back Tierre Sams and four plays after that the Bulldogs were ahead to stay.

After the game Alvarez seemed to be a convert. "We were defeated by a team that played much better than us today," said Alvarez.

Maybe now the rest of the world will know. 

This Bulldog team has defeated three upper echelon BCS conference teams in three weeks.  Two of those have been on the road.  This team has outscored those three teams by an average of eleven points.  This team has gone out and demanded our respect.  It now deserves it.

For the past three years, poll voters were reluctant to vote for non-BCS conference teams because, they said, those teams didn't play any difficult non-conference teams.  In other words, they didn't have any difficult games en route to their gaudy records.  In a sense they were correct.  In this case, they have no excuses.  If any top name team had done what Fresno State has done, they would have vaulted to the top ten and been lauded for playing such a tough early schedule.  We shouldn't treat the Bulldogs any different.

Fresno will be in my top ten.  They have earned that right.  They have played the best teams.  The have played them on the road.  They have played them at odd times (two Sunday games and an 11 AM Central start).  They have won them all, the last two convincingly.

I can't ignore them any longer.

Later...