'Tis the season when everyone in bowls will speak of the "momentum" that can be carried into the following season with a victory, and how it can will be a "springboard" or "the first game of next year."

That is so wrong. You are what you are that season. It has nothing to do with what you are next season. For better or worse, bowl games generally don't define how the next season plays out at Notre Dame.

• We've seen Notre Dame get crushed in the 1973 Orange Bowl (40-6 to Nebraska) and 1988 Cotton Bowl (35-10) to Texas A&M - and then proceed to win the national title 12 months later. Sometimes bowl debacles can help you refocus, i.e., Oklahoma's 40-6 slaughter to Clemson last year. Not that I'm advocating the Irish getting crushed this year. They need to get the major bowl win gorilla off its collective back. Winning a major bowl against a program the caliber of Ohio State with a coach as esteemed as Urban Meyer would be at least as powerful as Notre Dame basketball winning the ACC Tournament last year and also advancing to the Elite 8.

• Notre Dame ended the 1970 and 1974 campaigns with epic upsets of No. 1-ranked Texas and Alabama, respectively - and a year later were so disillusioned with their results that the players voted not to accept a bowl invitation despite 8-2 and 8-3 records. Times were different back then.

• When the 6-5 Irish upset 9-2 Boston College, quarterbacked by Doug Flutie, in the 1983 Liberty Bowl, Irish head coach Gerry Faust vowed "this is the start of something great." Notre Dame opened the next season with a 23-21 loss to Purdue - which it crushed 52-6 a year earlier - en route to a 3-4 start.

• Head coach Charlie Weis' 2008 Irish team ended with an impressive 49-21 win at Hawaii to end 15 years without a bowl win. That didn't do him much good the ensuing season with a 6-6 finish that resulted in his ouster.

• The 33-17 win over Miami in the 2010 Sun Bowl was the cherry on top of a four-game winning streak and championship aspirations in 2011 - only to be foiled by a 0-2 start, including a 23-20 defeat at home to South Florida.

• Squandering a 14-point second-half lead in the 2011 Champs Sports Bowl to Florida State for another 8-5 finish was further evidence to many that "Brian Kelly doesn't haven't it" - yet the following season produced a 12-0 regular season ledger and No. 1 placement (even without "irreplaceable" game-changers such as receiver Michael Floyd or defensive lineman Aaron Lynch).

Personalities, chemistry and attitudes shift with each new year. The bowl result is merely a final page of a previous book. A new, blank manuscript begins thereafter.

Notre Dame's 17-17 all-time record in bowl games has experienced both the summit and Hades, but has been in between the past seven years.

At the end of the 1993 season, Notre Dame's 13-6 bowl record was the best bowl winning percentage (.684) in the NCAA by a team that had played at least 15 post-season outings. More astounding was that in 11 of those 19 bowls, the opponent was either unbeaten or ranked No. 1, if not both, and the Irish were 8-3 in such contests. All but two of those 13 wins came in a major.

However, from 1994-2006,Notre Dame lost an NCAA record nine consecutive bowl games. It won its next two, 49-21 versus Hawaii in the 2008 Hawaii Bowl and 33-17 against Miami in the 2010 Sun Bowl to get back to .500 with a 15-15 all-time record.

Now it's on a two-game winning streak again in bowls to even out at 17-17. Last year's 31-28 upset of LSU in the Music City Bowl snapped an 0-2 bowl record versus the Tigers after losing in the 1997 Independence Bowl (27-9) and the 2007 Sugar Bowl (41-14). LSU had joined Florida State and Oregon State as the three opponents to have a 2-0 record in bowl games against Notre Dame before last year's loss.

Ohio State also will attempt to be 2-0 versus the Irish in the postseason after its 34-20 victory in the 2006 Fiesta Bowl. Ohio State is technically 4-2 in the Fiesta, and won the 2002 national title there versus Miami. The 2007 BCS National Championship matchup also was played in Glendale, Ariz., but it wasn't the Fiesta Bowl. Florida, coached by current Buckeyes boss Urban Meyer, whipped OSU, 41-14, in that contest.

Notre Dame is 1-3 in the Fiesta, debuting with the national title win over West Virginia on Jan. 2, 1989. Since then it has floundered there, losing 41-24 to Colorado in 1995, 41-9 to Oregon State in 2001 and 34-20 to Ohio State in 2006.

After winning the 2013 Pinstripe Bowl against Rutgers (29-16) and last year's Music City Bowl against LSU (31-28), the current Notre Dame junior class is attempting to be 3-0 in bowls.

Four classes in Notre Dame history graduated with a 3-0-bowl record. The 1973, 1974, 1975 and 1976 recruiting classes all went 3-0 in bowls, with the Irish opting not to go after the 1975 (8-3 record) and 1979 (7-4) seasons.

No Notre Dame four-year graduating class has ever been 4-0 in bowls. The Irish were unbeaten in five straight bowls from 1973-78, but because the players voted not to go to a bowl in 1975, it was not in consecutive years.