If you haven’t figured it out for yourself yet, let me be the first to tell you. Unbelievable as it may seem, somehow, Stanford football is relevant again.

It used to be that you had to look very closely, maybe even squint a bit, if you hoped to see any sort of improvement out of the Cardinal football program. But now? Now you’d have to be blind not to recognize exactly what is happening.

Oh, true, the “whys” are still up in the air. Is it the miraculous touch of first-year coach Jim Harbaugh? Or is it maybe that his players are just so glad to finally have some hope for the season that they’re only now truly beginning to play up to their abilities? Or maybe the rings of Saturn have all aligned — really, the “why” is interesting but not so important.

The only thing that really matters is that the Cardinal, somehow, someway, looks to have a legitimate chance to win every game left on its schedule.

That doesn’t mean you should expect an 8-4 record, but consider: Two weeks ago, we wondered if Stanford might be able to muster three, or maybe even four wins on the season. Now, it seems like everyone thinks that bowl eligibility (i.e. six wins) is at the very least a possibility.

The reasoning is pretty simple, actually. When you can beat the Trojans, in their house, you’ve obviously got some talent. When you follow it up with an exciting game at home against an undeniably athletic TCU squad, it’s pretty clear that things have changed.

A glance ahead at Stanford’s remaining schedule reveals teams like Arizona, Washington State and the suddenly laughable Fighting Irish. Is the Cardinal better than these teams? Probably not, or at least not all of them. But aside from the season finale against Cal, there remains no game in which Stanford figures to be a significant underdog on paper.

Sure, a win over the Horned Frogs would have been quite a nice sign of more good things to come. But the important thing about the game is that the Cardinal was exactly what we hoped it would be after the win over USC. Fast and confident, smart and scrappy, Stanford was ultimately undone on Saturday by missed tackles, untimely (and sometimes questionable) penalties and a defense that seemed to wear down as the game went on.

Those are all problems that will need to be corrected. But we shouldn’t be surprised that the Cardinal still has its flaws. Remember that two weeks ago flaws were about the only thing anyone could find when they thought of Stanford football.

You see, this is how teams turn themselves around. Only when they get really, truly, overwhelmingly good do they cease to have some holes. The first sign that things are going well isn’t that you stop finding things that are wrong, but rather that you start to notice things that are right. And suddenly the Cardinal seems to have gotten plenty of things right.

From the cool quarterbacking of sophomore Tavita Pritchard to the improved play of the offensive line in front of him, Stanford has found stability on offense. Sophomore Richard Sherman is an undeniable deep threat, seniors Mark Bradford and Evan Moore provide some veteran stability and junior Anthony Kimble just turned in his best collegiate game at running back on Saturday against the Frogs.

Defensively, too, playmakers have emerged in 2007. From the pass-rushing talents of Clinton Snyder and Pannel Egboh to the pass defenders in the secondary who wreaked havoc against USC, the unit has a lot of big-play ability and a lot of depth.

But more importantly, the team has discovered an identity. A giant leap from the rampant conservatism of just a year ago under Walt Harris, the Cardinal is now playing with a take-no-prisoners, devil-may-care abandon on the field. This new demeanor suggests a team that has realized that it has nothing to lose — no one expects Stanford to win, so why worry about losing?

It’s that kind of attitude that keeps games interesting down to the wire. It’s that kind of mental toughness that can lead to conversions on fourth-and-twenty and scores on fourth-and-goal from the ten.

It’s that kind of attitude that might just bring football back to prominence on the Farm.

Denis Griffin is a senior who just might get to see his team play in a bowl for the first time. Wish him luck.