Despite leading 20-2 at halftime, the prevailing mood in the Wisconsin locker room was rage. Coaches were throwing chairs. Players were screaming at one another to remember the past.

Remember that Wisconsin hadn't beaten Indiana in eight years. That it had managed only a 1-13 road record over the past three seasons. That they had carried a 20-point lead into the half just two years earlier, only to lose to the Hoosiers, 28-20.

	With a defense that remains its best offense, the Fighting Irish and their fans have grown to believe in miracles.

But the '93 Badgers were different. When Indiana cut the lead to 20-15 and was marching late in the game, safety Scott Nelson forced Indiana's Jermaine Chaney to fumble. The Badgers recovered, marched down the field, scored, and put the game away.

Afterward, when asked if the Badgers could win the Big Ten Conference, team captain Joe Panos said: "Why not Wisconsin? Why can't it be us? Why couldn't it be us?" The response was confident, cocky and brash enough that it sold head coach Barry Alvarez on an overachieving 4-0 team that nobody else believed in.

"That's when it hit me," Alvarez said. "Panos believed. The rest of our leaders believed. And everybody bought into it. We were on our way."

It's hard to put a finger on it. It's even harder to create it. But coaches and players know when they have the intangibles that go along with a college football team that can do no wrong. They call it "the zone." Wisconsin was there in 1993. Oklahoma two years ago. Maryland last year.

So far this season, it's Notre Dame.

"It's a hard thing to grasp," Oklahoma offensive coordinator Chuck Long said. "It's even harder to talk about. You just have to be a part of it and feel it. And even then, you can't explain it to others. It just sounds kind of corny."

		Friday, Oct. 25 When a team comes into a season with low expectations and then wins some early games there is a snowball effect. It happened to me in 1993 at Auburn, when we won our first six games of the year and went into the Florida game the following week. More...

Which makes sense -- they're intangibles. Things that can't be grasped. Things that are impossibly difficult to truly challenging to break down, explain, analyze. Yet beyond the X's and O's, beyond the pinpoint spirals and crucial interceptions, they are the critical and yet bizarre reasons why football teams overachieve.

How else to explain the case of Notre Dame, which has scored 13 offensive touchdowns this season, fewer than 112 of Division I-A's 117 football teams, yet is 7-0, ranked No. 6 in the country in both major polls and is No. 3 in the BCS standings?

Defense? Sure. Turnovers? Absolutely. But don't overlook the power of believing -- no matter how corny it may seem.

"I don't care how many All-Americans you have," Notre Dame assistant coach Buzz Preston said. "If you don't have honesty, respect, a willingness to sacrifice, all those intangibles, you're not going to be successful."

Which, luckily for Notre Dame, are Tyrone Willingham specialties. At Stanford, Willingham earned a reputation for squeezing the most out of relatively average talent. His 2000 Rose Bowl team featured only two seniors -- wide receiver Troy Walters and quarterback Todd Husak -- who went on to become NFL draft picks. And they went in the fifth and sixth rounds, respectively.

	Tyrone Willingham has had that winning feeling throughout his first season as Notre Dame's head coach.

"With Ty, it's always started with leadership," said Preston, who also was an assistant on that Stanford team. "Ty is not a guy that is on a big ego trip. His whole thing is 'No. 1, what does it take to win.' That's the big thing. Focus on winning. Not this or that or anything else. Focus on winning. And everything else will come."

Are the Irish overachieving this year? Possibly. But there's an explanation, no matter how ethereal it may seem. Leadership. Chemistry. Respect. Confidence. They are a handful of the ingredients that form the magic potion that head coaches are constantly trying to replicate.

"It's a rare thing," Long said. "Getting the perfect chemistry is very, very rare."

But it does happen. It might take the course of a season to develop, it might take four seasons, but at some point, some time, a successful team starts to believe it deserves to win. Believes it will win.

Consider the Irish, who last week against Air Force didn't jump up and down like they'd won the lottery after a key interception or touchdown, but rather pumped their fists, slapped high-fives and focused on the next play.

That feeling of invincibility that players, and even coaches, get in the pit of their stomaches is said to be more powerful than any bench press or faster than any 40-time. Two years ago, after Oklahoma pounded Texas, 63-14, Long said the Sooners had that feeling. And now he sees it in the Irish.

"They have a belief," Long said. "They have a belief that they can pull out any game at any time. And that's tough. That's a great thing to have has a unit. It's like you can't lose. You're not going to lose. It's the strongest emotion you can have as a football team."

There's always a turning point that leads to that. For Wisconsin, it was Nelson's forced fumble. For Oklahoma, it was the win against Texas. For Notre Dame, point to any one of three plays that have happened so far this season.

	Shane Walton and the surging Irish defense stifled Michigan earlier this season, giving Notre Dame its first win over a top-10 team since 1998.

In Week 2, there was Vontez Duff's game-winning, 33-yard interception return with 5:09 remaining that led Notre Dame to a 24-17 victory over Purdue. A week later, cornerback Shane Walton deflected Michigan quarterback John Navarre's two-point attempt, securing a 25-23 Irish victory. Then in the next game, there was backup quarterback Pat Dillingham's 60-yard touchdown pass to Arnaz Battle with 1:15 to play against Michigan State, giving the Irish a 21-17 victory.

"There's no substitute for confidence," said Preston, the Notre Dame assistant. "When you get in big games, make big plays and get those W's, that's irreplaceable. Then you have a belief system, when things go wrong, you don't panic -- you step up and make it happen."

Laugh if you must. Roll your eyes. Say it's a bunch of hogwash. But the people that matter will tell you: It takes talent. It takes execution. And it takes chemistry.

Last year, Ralph Friedgen had it with Maryland. The Terps hadn't played in a bowl game since 1990, hadn't had a winning season since 1995, but Friedgen, in his first year as head coach at his alma mater, led them to the ACC title and the Orange Bowl.

"You always try to build that bond," said Friedgen, the 2001 National Coach of the Year whose Terps lost to Notre Dame, 22-0, in this year's season opener. "It's something that I've seen on every good team I've ever been a part of. When you maximize your potential, play unselfishly and not worry about who gets the credit and who made what play, that's when good things happen. The confidence builds, the excitement builds and you feel unbeatable. And that's what (Notre Dame) has going."

When the Badgers got it going back in 1993, it barely stopped. Only a midseason loss to Minnesota put a blemish on Wisconsin's first winning season in 10 years. The Badgers hadn't been to the Rose Bowl since 1962, yet not only showed up in Pasadena, but defeated UCLA, 21-16.

Wisconsin's 10-1-1 record was its best in school history. And even today, Alvarez doesn't hesitate when talking about one of the big reasons why -- Nelson's forced fumble and the team-wide confidence it stirred.

"You win like that and everybody starts to believe," Alvarez said. "Then you can just sense it -- the snowball starts to build, it gathers momentum, gets nudged down the hill and takes on a whole life of its own.

"And you don't feel like anybody can stop it."

Wayne Drehs is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at wayne.drehs@espn3.com.