Chicago ? Hitting a hole-in-one on the putt-putt course, nailing the bull’s-eye with a dart at the bar or knocking down 10 bowling pins are as close to perfect sports performances as most ever will come.

Much fewer still can say they have achieved true athletic perfection at the highest level of competition.

By beating the Miami Dolphins, 28-7 on Sunday the New England Patriots improved to 15-0, a step closer to joining the 1972 Dolphins (17-0) as the only undefeated National Football League champions.

But the Perfect Club includes more members than the Dolphins … although Mercury Morris might say otherwise.

UCLA went 30-0 four times under coach John Wooden. Only 17 major-league pitchers have tossed perfect games. Heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano retired with a 49-0 record in the ring, saying, “I don’t want to be remembered as a beaten champion.”

Those athletes could understand what qualities the Patriots need – unity, poise and hunger – to become part of the elite society of sports perfectionists.

“I never thought I could be perfect,” said Nadia Comaneci, the pixie-like Romanian who in 1976 became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 at the Olympics. “If you start out with perfection in mind, you will only get frustrated.”

Unity

The locker room was a safe haven for Notre Dame’s undefeated football team in 1988.

“The idea of it was it was us against the world,” said Chris Zorich, the team’s All-American defensive tackle. “I remember not hanging out with a lot of guys in my dorm that year. It was an environment where there was so much pressure, guys were afraid to go out and do things on their own.”

Team chemistry had as much to do with the Irish compiling a 12-0 record and winning the national title as anything, Zorich said.

The Patriots have shown similar unity, banding together when the NFL fined coach Bill Belichick for illegally taping opponents and when Steelers safety Anthony Smith foolishly guaranteed a victory over them.

The Irish were forced to lean on each other, too. Before the regular-season finale against No. 2 Southern California, coach Lou Holtz suspended star running backs Ricky Watters and Tony Brooks for violating curfew.

Holtz did not let that deflate the No. 1 Irish. He urged his players to rely on each other before storming out of the locker room.

After senior players spoke, Zorich was ready to break through the walls of the Los Angeles Coliseum.

“It was like, ‘Oh my God. This is why I play football,’ ” Zorich said. “It sealed the deal as far as who we were.”

Notre Dame beat USC 27-10, then downed West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl.

Poise

When a pitcher is throwing a no-hitter, he typically keeps to himself. Not that he has much choice – teammates avoid him like a case of athlete’s foot.

Jim Bunning ignored superstition when he pitched a perfect game for the Phillies against the Mets on Father’s Day in 1964, the seventh in baseball history.

“I was talking constantly from the fifth inning on,” Bunning said. “Everyone kept trying to ignore me. They thought I was crazy.”

Bunning, currently a U.S. senator from his native Kentucky, followed an important rule in the pursuit of perfection: remaining poised.

“I just thought, ‘Well, this is unusual,’ ” he said.

Jeff Carter, a professional bowler from Springfield, has bowled a perfect 300 score 112 times. He recalled an entire alley stopping to watch him approach the lane.

“When you get that first one, you get that feeling it may be the only chance you’ll get,” Carter said. “I have a routine. I tell myself, ‘It’s not a big deal.’

“Like the Patriots think of each game at a time, I think each frame at a time. You can’t focus on the big picture.”

Bunning’s pressure ended in a bit more than two hours. Carter always can go again after 10 frames.

Teams chasing perfect seasons must withstand months of stress.

Opponents are overloaded with motivation to knock an unbeaten team from its pedestal, and media scrutiny intensifies.

The Patriots are constantly “SportsCenter’s” lead story, they have been on Sports Illustrated’s cover twice since Oct. 1 and have seen their media corps increase weekly.

When the Connecticut women’s basketball team beat No. 1 Tennessee in 1995 en route to a 35-0 national-championship season, a handful of local beat reporters suddenly were accompanied by national publications and television crews.

“The most important thing was we didn’t talk about it,” said Jamelle Elliott, a forward on that team and now a Connecticut assistant coach. “Coach (Geno) Auriemma was a father figure. If your parents are telling you you’re not doing enough every day in practice, it’s easy for you to stay grounded and not to listen to the outside.”

Hunger

Tom Brady, Randy Moss and Co.’s desire for winning is unmistakable. A tiny 14-year-old girl possessed that same hunger at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.

The scoreboard, unequipped to register a perfect score, flashed 1.00 when Comaneci finished on the uneven bars.

“Even when I got the perfect 10, I still knew I could do my routine a little better,” Comaneci said via e-mail.

She then scored six more 10s to prove it.

Others use past losses to keep them striving for perfection. Think the Patriots have forgotten about losing in the playoffs last year?

Connecticut fell short of advancing to the Final Four in 1994, making the team even more driven in 1995.

“We were hungry,” Elliott said.

No matter how big the win, the Huskies tried to improve each game.

“We weren’t playing against opponents,” Elliott said, “We were playing against the game of basketball. Everything we did, we wanted to do it 10 times better.”

Legacy

Comaneci won nine Olympic medals, but that’s not the topic fans like to talk about.

“That 10 has defined my career,” she said.

Bunning won 19 games in 1964. After a 17-year career, he had a 224-184 record with a 3.27 ERA. But he credits his perfect game as a big reason he was elected to the Hall of Fame.

Bunning keeps the ball and glove from the perfect game on the bar in his house.

“Who would think on Father’s Day I would go to the ballpark with my daughter and wife and pitch a perfect game?” he said. “It just kind of happened that day.”

Comaneci never dreamed of a perfect performance either.

When she returned to Romania, thousands of fans were waiting.

“That is when I knew things had changed,” she said.

In one week, she appeared on the covers of Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and Time, which ran the headline “She’s Perfect.”

Comaneci owns a television company with her husband, former U.S. gymnast Bart Conner, called Perfect 10 Productions.

Even when her son Dylan was born 18 months ago, the nurses made a special sign for him.

“Perfect 10,” it read. “Way to go, Dylan!”