Notre Dame’s loss to Stanford will define the season for the Fighting Irish.

Unless they run the table which is extremely unlikely there will be no bowl game for the Irish.

This is a very poor team. We could delude ourselves against Michigan and Michigan State that they were unlucky the past two weeks.

There was no luck involved against Stanford, except Andrew Luck the Stanford quarterback who ran the Notre Dame defense ragged with his pin point passing.

The game was probably lost in the first quarter when Notre Dame recovered a fumble on the Stanford 20 and Brian Kelly called a series of wildcat plays with Crist, pictured, parked wide as a receiver.

But Armando Allen is no Dennard Robinson and his inability to get the ball in the end zone meant the Irish lost their best chance to get a touchdown.

How the game would have turned out if they had will never be known, but it would be really tempting fate to say the Irish might have gone on to win.

They simply lack the defense and the offensive weapons to challenge a top 20 team and Stanford look like they could well be atop five side if they win their next few games.

Bill Parcels said your record is what is says you are. Notre Dame are a 1-3 team, heading to 1-5 now likely unless something dramatic changes.

This is worse than the Weis era.