For some godless reason, football seems particularly far away this year.  Because of this, fans of every team have way too much time to talk themselves into - and out of - their favorite's prospects this season.  The following is a typical conversation that goes on in the mind of a Notre Dame football fan as they get ready for the opener on September 5.

Hey there, how excited are you for Notre Dame football?!  Just over a week away!

You seem pretty excited considering how many times the Irish have ripped our heart out over the last few years.

Oh, but this year is going to be different! 

We've heard that before.  Why, exactly, is this year going to be different?

There's a ton of reasons!  18 returning starters, including Jimmy Clausen going into his junior season.  Do you remember Brady's junior year?  Golden Tate and Michael Floyd will make great replacements for The Shark and MoSto, and God bless D-Walk, but we've got running backs that can get to the second level in the blink of an eye.  All those craters Ty Willingham left in the depth chart have been smoothed over with four-star VHTs, and we've got competition going on in fall practice, not just the handing out of spots because we don't have anyone better to take them.

Oh, that is a pretty good reason, I guess.  Did Notre Dame get a lot of different starters at some point, because most of those eighteen gentlemen were involved in getting shut out by Boston College, losing to Syracuse at home and barely getting a first down against Southern Cal.  I'd hope so, because you seem pretty confident considering how awful we were for the entirety of November.

A year older and a year wiser!  Plus we've shuffled the offensive line and brought in a new coach for the hog-mollies, and Michael Floyd - maybe our best player - wasn't even playing in those later games.   When you think about it, this was really a nine-win team that had some bad luck, so getting to double digit wins isn't that big of a leap.  We could have easily won against Pitt, Syracuse and North Carolina-

Woah, hold on there.  Bad luck?  Or a lack of execution and conditioning down the stretch?  What about the fact we should have lost to San Diego State in week one?  Do you remember that, or did all of the drinking block it out?  Or the fact Stanford was too close for comfort at the end, as well as Navy?  It's not luck when you consistently put up sub-par efforts in the fourth quarter, it's just who you are.

Again, though, everyone has another year of experience, practice reps and body building!  The team is deeper, faster, better and more talented across the board.  Plus Coach Weis has been learning, too.  You keep forgetting he had never been a head coach or coordinator in college before, so there were a lot of first-time mistakes to have to correct.  He's done a great job this preseason of just keeping his mouth shut, and I really think the Hawai'I Bowl might have been a giant step in learning how to utilize all of these guys.  Ethan Johnson and Darius Fleming getting after the QB while Jimmy bombs away to Golden, Michael and Kyle.  It's as simple as that.

I'll believe in Charlie Weis' schematic advantage when I see it in place against an opponent that wasn't a .500 team in the WAC.  Boston College was a fine team last year, but we made them look like the '85 Bears.  I know the schedule isn't exactly stacked this year, but there are still a bunch of losable games.  Want to look at some clips of Colin Kaepernick?  Or how about the fact that Rich Rodriguez's teams take a leap in Year Two, and the game is in Ann Arbor?  Or that we haven't beaten Michigan State at home this decade?  Or that a reloading Southern Cal team is still a top four team?  Or that you don't want to play Diamond Dave Wannstedt on the road when you're supposed to win?  You're seeing an easy path to the BCS, I see a lot of potential toe-stubbings early followed by a couple drops along the way that put us around 7-5.  At that point, Charlie isn't going to have a lot of time to learn on the Irish sideline.

Listen, there is no way we're losing to Nevada, their defense is horrible and we can just bomb away all we want.  And Michigan still sucks, who is their starting quarterback going to be, a freshman or a walk-on who can't throw the ball?  Michigan State, Boston College and Southern Cal are all having down years and we get them all at home, and the next time I'm worried about playing Dave Wannstedt will be the first, last year was just a fluke, and the only reason they won is wading through PETA protestors to get into the locker room in Philadelphia.   We're going to be favored in nearly every game, we're going to have more talent in nearly every game and we're going to have more combined starts along the offensive line in nearly every game.  We're looking at double-digit wins and a trip to the BCS easy.

Okay, let's talk about this offensive line experience.  Will you allow me that Frank Verducci is probably not a miracle worker, but simply a good coach who has to work with the talent he's given, with no capacity of turning water into wine?

Okay, that seems fair...

And that the Notre Dame offensive line the last two years has bounced between "not great" and "cover-your-eyes bad?"

Yeah, I really can't argue with that...

Then our experienced offensive line in 2009 is going to be comprised of players who were either big parts of those crappy lines of the last two years, or weren't good enough to win a spot on those lines the last two years.  Or freshmen.  Okay, well, you've convinced me now.  Of course Jimmy will just magically have time to find receivers open deep when Brandon Graham and Everson Griffen are wheeling around his blind side with no one able to block them.  Unless you're the 2008 Pittsburgh Steelers and have a great defense and sexual deviant at quarterback, it's hard to win a lot of games - let alone any sort of championship -with a patchwork offensive line that doesn't allow you to run the ball with any effectiveness.

But those guys are all bigger, stronger and working harder because of the guys behind them who are talented enough to take their job, so Verducci doesn't have to work miracles, just coach them up from a C- effort to a B for this offense to be effective.  Go back and look at the tape of 2006; that offensive line was not great, but having experienced guys like Brady Quinn and Darius Walker in the backfield made up for it.  Jimmy Clausen, Robert Hughes, James Aldridge and Armando Allen are now those experienced guys, and instead of having Matt Shelton or David Grimes - again, God bless them - in the slot, we're going to have a freak like Duval Kamara or Shaq Evans.  Maybe Cierre Woods does to the running back position what Mike Floyd did to the wide receiver position and just take it to another level right away.   Plus, none of this is even taking into account our defense, which could be really, really good.

You know what, I'm actually pretty close to agreeing with you on that.  The secondary should be great and the linebacking crew is a nice mix of freakish talent and skilled experience, but you've got to be worried about the line.  If anything happens to Ian Williams plugging up the middle, heaven help us.

Or Omar Hunter.  Yeah, I really can't argue with you on that.  I think we've got the guys with the size and talent up front - Ethan, KLM, Kerry Neal, Mo Rich - to get after the quarterback, but we could have some trouble against teams that just want to punch it down our throats.  Thankfully, we couldn't ask for two better coaches on that side of the ball to help make adjustments and get our boys ready.  As bad as the offense looked at times last year, the defense played their asses off every game.  There's a reason people our excited for this season, and I'm not going to let you bring me down today.

I'm glad we were able to find some common ground, and while I appreciate your enthusiasm, all it's going to take is one interception thrown into triple coverage and a Kaepernick touchdown scramble to wipe all of those good feelings away by 4pm Eastern on the fifth.  I hope I'm wrong, but I have a sneaking suspicion you're setting yourself up for heartbreak.  2-1 or 1-2 seems like a likelier record after the first trio of games than 3-0

We'll just have to agree to disagree, because between the talent, returning starters, Clausen's maturity and Weis learning from two years of a lot of mistakes, the Irish football program is poised for a big leap this season.  I know it sounds crazy after going 10-15 the last two years, but I'm thinking it is BCS or bust, and it's not like there aren't neutral observers from around the country who are starting to see my side of things.

Let me just remind you how wrong those neutral observers often are.  But for both of our sakes, I hope that you -and them- are strangely prescient this time around.