Well....against the spread at least. That means over the past five weeks we've beaten the performance expectations of the most unbiased and knowledgeable college football followers in the world....that would be the Vegas folks setting betting lines for each game. Given that we are SO good at beating the spread this season I've decided to write weekly on how we will beat the spread for the coming week.

Here are six reasons why we will beat the spread of 31 points against Notre Dame. I would say this, there are about 3.5 points worth of value on that line as it stands. I think we keep this game within 28 points. That's just my gut feeling looking at the two teams. Here are five reasons to be excited about the game this week:

1) Passing Offense. Our passing offense is now number 55 in the country and our QB is coming off the second best freshmen passing performance in the history of the school. His passer rating is the best we've seen since the Senior season of Alex Brink. This part of our offense looks as if it's got a pulse. We still aren't good enough to beat down good pass defenses….which is why it's awesome we are playing Notre Dame. Their pass defense is almost as bad as ours! There is actually 117th in the nation. That's really bad. We should be able to score points through the air on Saturday if we can keep Tuel upright.

2) Health. For the first time this season it looks as though we played a game without suffering a key injury. Of course, we lost Louis Bland in practice leading up to last week so that statement is sort of debatable but work with me please. Our offensive line looks like it might have the original starting five for the first time since Hawaii. Even running at 75% last week we were able to keep our QB's clean better than we have since SMU. We've got a lot of young or mediocre players right now but at least having them healthy keeps us from having to play REALLY young and crappy players.

3) Road Experience. None of our guys should be in awe of what they'll see in San Antonio. They've now played on the road against USC, Oregon and Cal. I can't imagine we'd see the same level of energy at this game on Saturday. We could even hope that the locals might start to root FOR us if we actually show some signs of life to start the game. Everyone loves an upset after all. The team is also hyper-aware of the slow starts they've experienced. They will also hopefully be hyper-motivated to make sure it doesn't happen again.

4) Freshmen Experience. Our key freshmen are becoming older. They're not getting bigger this season but the game should be slowing down a bit for them. Jeff Tuel will be over 100 pass attempts this season around halftime. Travis Long has seven starts, Gino Simone has five starts and this will be Carl Winston's third game carrying the rock. Lots of snaps for our new guys leading up to this game in imposing environments does hopefully mean that we'll be more competitive from the start of the game.

5) Previous Opponent Quality. Not much about Notre Dame will be better than what we've seen up to this point in the season. Their best attribute is their passing offense and it's a REALLY good passing offense. But if you look across the various passing stats you'll see Hawaii, SMU, USC, and even Stanford are similar to what we'll see. Now keep in mind, Notre Dame is by far the most efficient passing offense we'll see. They don't make many mistakes. That's why it will be interesting to see if we can actually pick some balls off. It will be a fantastic indication of whether forcing turnovers is a trait we can depend on the rest of the season with our defense. Let's hope that Clausen lives up to his prima donna persona on Saturday and gives us a couple of picks via lax play.

So, there you have it. I wouldn't go betting your house on us beating Notre Dame straight up. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure I'd bet a buck on that happening. However, there are lots of reasons to believe that we will perform better than Vegas thinks we will perform. Maybe that's not the sort of performance improvement we are looking for but it sure as heck qualifies as real progress given the youth and injuries plaguing this team.

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