Throughout the season, I’ll be using this column to offer commentary, analysis and perspective that goes beyond our traditional football coverage. This week, let’s tackle a few actual questions students have asked me after watching their team suffer to an 0-4 start.

“Will the football team win a game?”

Maybe, but maybe not is becoming an increasingly real possibility.

It’d be quite a feat to pull off 0-12. I can’t even find the last time a Pac-10 team went winless, and I’ve checked each of the past 10 seasons, so thanks to any reader who has that information. But after blowing a 20-point lead to San Jose State, and getting demolished at home by Navy and Washington State, Stanford has lost three of the most winnable games on its schedule.

What remains? The Cardinal should be crushed at UCLA and, especially, at Notre Dame in the next two weeks. The same holds true with at Arizona State, versus USC and at Cal later in the season. That leaves Homecoming versus Arizona on Oct. 14, at Washington Nov. 11 and the home-finale versus Oregon State on Nov. 18 as the best shots. Of course, I thought we’d win four or five games heading into this season, so projections can change in a heartbeat.

“Why is the team so bad?”

In a broader, “Why did we last have a winning season in 2001?” sense, I’d start with the fact that Stanford football has admissions standards unlike any Division I-A school in the nation. Of the approximately 2,000 recruits who sign to play Division I-A football each year, those in the know tell me that only 40 are academically admissible to Stanford, and of those 40, we’ll sign about 20. That’s not much of a margin for error if five of those recruits don’t pan out.

In contrast, great academic institutions with great football programs like Berkeley, UCLA or Michigan have achieved their success by virtually eliminating their athletics admissions standards. They’ll recruit the vast majority of those 2,000 who have test scores, grade points averages or backgrounds that eliminate them from Stanford’s recruiting pool. Notably, Cal fueled their five-year turnaround from laughingstock to title contender with loads of transfers from junior colleges, 99 percent of who would be inadmissible to Stanford.

All told, it’s a lot easier for any other school to have both better players and more of them, and we’re certainly seeing the results of that on the field. The fact that Stanford football has stunk and that admission to Stanford has grown tougher for athletes and non-athletes alike in recent years exacerbates the problem of attracting talent.

The scourge of former coach Buddy Teevens (now struggling at lowly Dartmouth) and poor recruiting evaluations and talent development have not helped matters any either.

In an immediate, “Why are we 0-4 and getting embarrassed each Saturday?” sense, look no further than the most basic task in football: running the ball and stopping the run. An incredible run of injuries has also made Stanford one of the youngest, most inexperienced teams in the country.

“Okay, so how bad is the rushing game?”

The rush offense is among the worst in the conference, but it’s decent enough that it won’t single-handedly lose games, especially with freshman Toby Gerhart at tailback.

The same cannot be said for the rush defense. Maybe I’ll jinx us into a tackle, but right now this is the worst rush defense I’ve seen in watching ten years of college football. And with UCLA, Notre Dame, Arizona State, USC and Cal looming on the horizon, the worst is yet to come.

Currently, Stanford is allowing 312 rush yards per game, 52 more than anyone else in the country. Part of it is a talent discrepancy, but most of it seems to be sloppy execution — poor tackling, and players simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Are there any glimmers of hope?”

How about this: There’s no way the team is as devoid of talent as you would think from watching it right now, so the on-field product will improve with time. (Especially with Walt Harris and Bob Bowlsby, two proven winners, as coach and athletic director, respectively.) The question remains, however, whether that improvement will come this season or the next.