outside of forgetting about Amir Carlisle and having Cam McDaniel's position wrong he did a very good job.

I have no idea how he can crank these out for every team like he does. I can't even imagine how hard it is for teams that don't have tons of online resources for info.

One fun way to figure out where a team stands is to play the "How many ifs?" game. How many "Ifs" does it take to put a team at a certain level?

Top 15: If Golson avoids a serious slump, and if a young running back can provide some level of reliability, this should be a Top 15 team based solely on defensive potential and some decent big-play ability on offense.

Top 10: If Golson avoids a serious slump, if a young running back can provide some level of reliability, and if one of the freshman or sophomore DBs breaks through, this is likely a Top 10 team.

Top 5: If Golson avoids a serious slump, if a young running back can provide some level of reliability, if one of the freshman or sophomore DBs breaks through, and if one more receiver breaks through alongside Jones and Daniels, this is likely a Top 5 team.

This isn't an overt number of "ifs." Notre Dame broke into the Top 15 in 2011, then played like it in 2012. I think slight improvement is likely again, though another undefeated record in close games probably isn't. Against a slate the features seven teams projected in the Top 31 (four at home), the Irish will need a couple more breaks to again make the title game, but at this point one cannot question the program's trajectory: It's strong.

Really strong. Whether people saw it 12 months ago doesn't really matter; they see it now.

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Connelly's adjusted scores from last year (i.e. what the score would have been had we been playing an average team with an average number of turnovers and penalties):

Navy: W, 39-26
Purdue: W, 24-19
MSU: W, 29-13
Michigan: W, 25-20
Miami: W, 41-19
Stanford: W, 34-22
BYU: W, 51-19 (!!)
Oklahoma: W, 34-20
Pitt: W, 35-18
BC: W, 35-24
Wake: W, 44-17
SC: W, 37-26
Alabama: W, 42-33 (!!!!!!)