Badgers make every AP top-25 ballot, garner top-10 votes

Wisconsin’s schedule after two weeks of the college football season certainly hasn’t yielded the strongest of competition.

But the Badgers dispatched South Florida (on the road) and Central Michigan so thoroughly, it’s hard not to be impressed.

(Of course, UW is also in a lose-lose scenario: Crush teams like USF and CMU and it’s “oh, they’re just bad teams,” while if the Badgers don’t have a convincing win, eyebrows are raised.)

After two games, Wisconsin has yet to allow a point. And also after two games, every AP top-25 voter finally has the Badgers on their ballot, as the last holdouts have acquiesced.

In fact, every AP voter but two moved Wisconsin up on their ballot from the previous week with the exception of two who kept the Badgers in the same spot as in Week 2 (Pat Dooley, 13, and Josh Furlong, 19).

Wisconsin got its first top-10 votes of the season, six of them, including two placing the Badgers at No. 9.

As a result, Wisconsin moved up from No. 17 to No. 14 in the poll. No. 10 Michigan looms next in two weeks. There will be no schedule complaints after that.

Here’s how all the AP voters cast their ballots in Week 3 compared to Week 2 and Week 1/preseason (note – Nathan Baird took over in Week 2 for Doug Lesmerises, who voted in the preseason poll):

Dave Heller is the author of Ken Williams: A Slugger in Ruth’s Shadow (a Larry Ritter Book Award nominee), Facing Ted Williams – Players From the Golden Age of Baseball Recall the Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived and As Good As It Got: The 1944 St. Louis Browns