CHICAGO -- Ohio State coach John Cooper didn't mean any disrespect to Barry Alvarez or the Wisconsin football team, he just didn't understand. Then again, not many do these days.

Wisconsin, historically one of the Big Ten's weaker programs, turned heads last January when it became the first Big Ten team to win back-to-back Rose Bowls. But with all-everything back Ron Dayne and powerful tackle Chris McIntosh gone to the NFL, there's no way the Badgers can contend in 2000, right?

Wrong.

Word out of Madison is that the Badgers might actually be better than before, with preseason publications picking them as high as No. 4 in the country. Thus the confusion.

"I would have thought that you lose a guy like Ron Dayne, the Heisman Trophy winner, and you might not be as good," Cooper said. "But all of the sudden, (Wisconsin is a favorite), not only in the league, but in the national picture."

Much like Cooper's Buckeyes have done in the past, the Badgers are looking not to rebuild in 2000, but reload. It's a credit to Alvarez, who arrived in 1990 and has since transformed the Badgers from Big Ten doormat to league favorite. Alvarez has kept the state's top high school talent at home, landed key out-of-state recruits and instilled a never-before-seen confidence at Wisconsin.

"When I first got here, our goal was to be at the level of competition as the Penn States, Michigans and Ohio States," said Badgers center Casey Rabach, an All-America candidate from Sturgeon Bay, Wis. "Now, we want to set the standard of how to play in the Big Ten. That's the difference."

Alvarez's on-field blueprint is one that would make former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes proud: Drain the opposition by running the football on offense, stuff the run on defense and use your special teams to gain a hidden advantage.

	Barry Alvarez and the Badgers have their sites set on a national title run.

The results have been nothing less than stellar. Prior to Alvarez's arrival, Wisconsin reached six bowl games in 103 years. Alvarez doubled that number last year in Pasadena. He also became just the second Big Ten coach (Hayes was the other) to win three Rose Bowls. Hayes did it in 12 years, Alvarez seven.

In addition, Wisconsin's 21-3 record the last two years is the nation's fifth-best in that span, behind only Marshall, Florida State, Kansas State and Tennessee. His 5-1 mark in bowl games tied Georgia for best bowl winning percentage in the 1990s (.833), and he's one of just three coaches (Joe Paterno and Steve Spurrier the others) who have won four New Year's Day bowls since 1994. All this at a time when the Big Ten was arguably the toughest conference in the country.

Not sold yet? Check out the cover of the 2000 Wisconsin Media Guide, where Alvarez poses amidst three Big Ten championship trophies (1993, '98, and '99), three Rose Bowl championship trophies, and a Coach of the Year (1993) trophy. On the bottom right-hand corner of the page, the words, "The Alvarez Era" say it all.

"Once you have some success, you have to have a bounce or two here or there to try to turn the program around and that gives you confidence," Alvarez said. "Somewhere along the line, the players have to believe they can win. We were fortunate enough early in our tenure to have a large number of freshman and sophomores playing who were able to win some games. Then it snowballed."

Yet speak with Alvarez and you won't find the coach content, basking in the glory of his team's recent success. Instead, he's still out to prove his program belongs on the level of the Michigans, Penn States, and Ohio States of the college football world. Alvarez, as well as everyone else in the Big Ten, remembers Northwestern's rise to dominance lasted just two seasons. Then it was back to the bottom.

"It's our job now to sustain this success," Alvarez said. "Naturally for the past few years we could be mentioned in the same breath (as those teams), but you're talking about a long stretch of time that they've been good, and there doesn't seem to be much dip in their programs. That's our goal."

This year's cast will feature sophomore quarterback Brooks Bollinger, who went 8-0 as a starter in 1999, earning Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors. Bollinger will be asked to ease the pressure on speedster Michael Bennett, Dayne's replacement. Bennett won four Big Ten sprint titles in 2000 and will run behind yet another impressive Badger offensive line anchored by Rabach. Defensively, a pair of St. Louis natives, cornerback Jamar Fletcher, whom some consider the top cover man in the country, and lineman Wendell Bryant, who earned All-Big Ten honors last year, will lead the way.

But it's special teams, an area that often goes unnoticed when predicting success, which will again be Wisconsin's strength. Nick Davis is back as the school's all-time leading return man. Vitaly Piestsky booted 14 consecutive field goals last year. And Kevin Stemke's 43.1-yard career punting average is the Big Ten's eighth-best all time.

"If they're better than everyone else in the kicking game, that definitely gives them an advantage," Cooper said.

Off the field, little has changed in Alvarez's 11 years at Wisconsin. He's a stickler for details. Every summer he calls his assistants in for a meeting and reminds them of the nuts and bolts of how the program should be run. Pay attention closely and you'll see eerie similarities between Alvarez's coaching style and that of former Iowa head coach Hayden Fry.

That's because it was Alvarez, a successful high school coach at Mason City (Iowa) High, whom Fry plucked from the cornfields to join his first staff at Iowa in 1979. Alvarez said the experience of working with Fry and watching him lead the Hawkeyes to six straight bowl games after a 22-year postseason drought was immeasurable.

"I was very fortunate to coach at Iowa when Hayden got there," Alvarez said. "I learned that you teach winning 365 days a year and do things right everyday. It's not about X's and O's as much as how you run your daily business. From your secretaries and how they present themselves to anybody else who touches the program. You have to be thorough in every phase of it."

Thorough and detailed enough that Alvarez instructs his secretaries on how to answer the phone ("it should be like a professional office," he says) while showing the equipment men the proper way to treat the players.

"And when I have exit interviews with my players and I see a complaint with something, it's addressed right away," Alvarez said.

Apparently it's all working, because Wisconsin is quickly becoming the center of Big Ten football. Just last week, Rabach went to a Big Ten dinner with many of the league's top returnees, only to find his glaring Rose Bowl rings the center of attention.

"(Drew) Brees was wearing his Outback Bowl ring or something like that, and he had to put it in his pocket," Rabach said. "He was a little jealous. And everybody was taking a look at it, trying it on. It's something I take a lot of pride in. It took a lot of hard work, and I'm looking forward to another one."

Wayne Drehs is a staff writer at ESPN.com