Irish ascending, Part Deux

... in which the Blob officially says it's OK now to slowly -- slooooowly -- speed up the roll.

This after Notre Dame went to 6-0 with 45-23 night cruise past Virginia Tech, an easy win over a decent team in a tough place to win. Now the Irish are 6-0 for the first time since 2012, and they're up to No. 5 in the polls, and there's talk that if this keeps up they'll be in the playoff a couple of months hence.

Which is why the Blob is saying "Don't mash that throttle too hard just yet, Sparky. Take it easy."

The reason for this is not that Notre Dame isn't visibly getting better every week, especially since Brian Kelly found the right quarterback to drive the bus. It is getting visibly better. It's getting visibly better enough that it's no longer some wild Domer hallucination that the Irish could run the table, finish unbeaten and then ...

Well, what?

Win the national title?

You mean like they did in 2012?

Yes, let's return to those palmy days for a moment, if only for the object lesson they contain. Notre Dame went unbeaten that year, too, putting the Irish in the national title game against Alabama. That's when Domer Nation discovered there are various levels of unbeaten. There's the unbeaten that's not a mirage, and then there's the unbeaten that gets you crushed 42-14 by Alabama.

Notre Dame was the latter.

And now?

Well, now the Irish have six games left against opponents with an aggregate record of 17-16. The presumably toughest games (Pitt, Florida State and Syracuse, which nearly beat Clemson a couple weeks ago) are all at home. The others are Navy (which is having a down year for Navy at 2-3), Northwestern (also 2-3) and USC (3-2 but not particularly USC-ish this year.) Of those, Northwestern might be the most dangerous; the Wildcats lost at home to Akron, but beat Michigan State on the road by 10 Saturday.

So, yeah, maybe that's the one to watch out for. It's not like Northwestern hasn't spoiled things for Notre Dame before, after all.

Taken as a whole, there's just enough dangerous ground here to give pause, especially given Kelly's tendency to lose at least one game a year he shouldn't lose. Yet it's not dangerous enough ground, one suspects, to get the Irish into the playoff even if they run the table. If the four teams ahead of them -- 'Bama, Ohio State, Clemson and Georgia -- run the table themselves, or even if one of those teams loses a game, Notre Dame's strength of schedule will do it no favors.

The Irish have played one top-ten team (Stanford), and that top-ten team was so counterfeit it's no longer ranked in the top 25. Aside from that, they've played exactly one currently ranked team (Michigan at No. 12). None of their final six opponents is ranked.

So if, say, Georgia or Ohio State comes in with a loss, Notre Dame could still easily wind up on the outside looking in, unbeaten or not. This would no doubt cause a great outcry across Domer Nation.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, it's hard to envision an unbeaten Notre Dame team getting left out of the playoff, if only for its unmatched earning power. Notre Dame in the playoff makes the playoff much more attractive to the high finance types who bankroll big-time college football. That's a primary consideration for an entity that is, as the Blob constantly reminds, a business above all else.

In which case there would be a great outcry in Georgia and Ohio, no doubt.

In any event, next the Irish get 3-3 Pitt, at home. Pitt just squeaked past Syracuse. Onward.