How many close losses are you willing to accept before you fire a coach for not being able to win?
Many of the games that we won in ND's history which led to successful years and NC's were because of close wins over excellent teams, which easily could have gone the other way.
This is a lame excuse to use: "Oh, but our losses were soooooooo close. If only we could rectify them some way, we could be undefeated this year, blah, blah, blah."