ND's lack of poise during crunch time was glaring last year. That's a lesson our guys have hopefully learned. In any event, I give you Coach Davis:

What do you think is the next step for the program in terms of getting it to where you want it to be...?

"Depth and experience. We took a look at the Orange Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the national championship game. All of the BCS championship games, one of the common denominators for most of those games ... most of them had somewhere between 17 and 23 seniors. That's one thing. Almost all of those programs, whether it was Southern Cal or Ohio State or Florida, LSU ... they had a significant amount of time within a system. Next year will be the third year the guys that are on the team, at least two classes of it, will have been in this system....

to be able to get over the hump to try to win some of those close games, you need leadership. You need veterans, you need guys that are experienced. You can't fabricate experience. There's no better learning experience. One of the reasons we won eight games was because of how close we were the year we won four games. They realized, 'Gosh, if we just eliminate these mistakes, these penalties, these turnovers, we can move that meter.' We moved it from four to eight.

It will be just as difficult to go from eight to more than eight. You've got to play better than you played to win those eight games. That's part of the process of building a program."