Once again, Northwestern is an afterthought to the national media. Once again, the Wildcats will use that snub as motivation.

On Monday, the Associated Press released its first college football poll of the season, and the top 25 was very friendly to B1G, as seven teams cracked the rankings. Northwestern, however, wasn’t one of those.

That’s right, the returning B1G West champion was passed up by Wisconsin (19), Iowa (20) and Nebraska (21) out of the division. But the Wildcats don’t seem to mind the disrespect. They plan on proving the AP wrong by the end of the year.

After the poll was released on Monday, Northwestern had a pretty awesome response on Twitter:

As they say, it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish. Northwestern has become pretty good at that lately.

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The Wildcats open the 2019 season on the road against Stanford on Saturday, Aug. 31.