COLLEGE FOOTBALL : Northwestern Looks Like the Real Thing : Big Ten: Wildcats assure themselves of first winning season in 24 years with 35-0 victory over Wisconsin.

These Wildcats are for real and they don’t have to prove it to anyone. Not any more.

“I don’t care what the country says. People thought we were Cinderella and sooner or later the glass slipper was going to come off,” Coach Gary Barnett said Saturday after Northwestern routed Wisconsin, 35-0, to clinch the school’s first winning season in 24 years.

“That didn’t look like Cinderella out there today,” he added. “If we play the way we did today, we’re hard to beat. I think given the people we have beaten that we would have a chance to play heads up against anybody.”

Even after victories at Notre Dame and Michigan, not everyone was convinced that Northwestern could sustain such success. The Wildcats, ranked 11th, entered Saturday’s game as a two-point underdog to the Badgers, who were 24th.

But Wisconsin had seven turnovers and Northwestern, for one season at least, shed its loser’s image and qualified for a bowl.

Thousands of purple-clad Northwestern students and fans, who’ve suffered for decades, mobbed the field after the final play in a homecoming celebration at a school known more for academics than athletic success.

“That’s the most meaningful win from the standpoint we are assured of a winning season. That’s what we came here to do,” said Barnett, who has produced a winner in his fourth season.

“If they don’t respect us now, I don’t know what it’s going to take for people to respect us,” linebacker Pat Fitzgerald said.

“We’re Northwestern. It wasn’t like this before and now all of a sudden we win a few ball games. . . . What has it been, 23 years since we had a winning season?”

Actually 24. But now no one will be counting.

There was reason to be excited.

Northwestern, 6-1 overall, got its first shutout since 1986, ensured its first winning season since going 7-4 in 1971 and earned the minimum number of victories to go to a bowl.

The Wildcats don’t want just any bowl, not with a 4-0 record in the Big Ten. They’re aiming for Pasadena, where in the 1949 the school made its only postseason appearance, beating California in the Rose Bowl.

“We’re not thinking about what happened 20 something years ago. We’re just thinking what has happened since we got here,” defensive tackle Matt Rice said.

The Badgers (2-3-1, 1-2) lost five fumbles and quarterback Darrell Bevell threw two interceptions.