Candidates for UCLA, Virginia Tech openings (and, no, not Coach Prime)

Think (Jonathan) Smith, not Sanders, for UCLA. Deion Sanders best stay at Colorado.
Could Dan Mullen get a wandering eye with UCLA and Virginia Tech open? The Hokies make sense.
Marcus Freeman admits he doesn’t have the answer to Notre Dame’s woes. Uh-oh.

Everything we thought we knew about college football is wrong.

Arch Manning is mid. Notre Dame’s defense stinks. All that returning production for Clemson meant very little. Vanderbilt is a wrecking crew.

Just like we drew it up in August, yeah?

Three weeks into the season, the coaching carousel already has shifted into gear, with more firings to come.

Here are four questions left on my mind after college football’s Week 3:

Would Deion Sanders consider UCLA?

Coaching searches begin (on the internet, at least) with the hot boards filled with white whales. Fans want their school to force the wish-list candidates to say no, in hopes of getting an improbable yes.

But, seriously, why would Coach Prime say yes to a UCLA job Chip Kelly wanted to leave so badly, he bolted for a coordinator position? Kelly’s successor performed so badly, he lasted just 15 games. UCLA’s program looks a mess within the Big Ten.

Sanders has built a little kingdom at Colorado. Nobody interferes with his operation. Colorado allows him to bring in his own video crew, turning Buffaloes football into an informercial for Prime. Sanders recruits without ever leaving campus, and, at Colorado, he’s not traveling to play road games at Ohio State.

In a vacuum, a Big Ten job is a better job than a Big 12 job. In this instance, I fail to see the upside of Sanders coaching at UCLA, in Southern California’s shadow, and leaving his Boulder fiefdom behind.

UCLA plays home games miles away from campus, a couple of towns over, in front of sparse crowds. Reported budgetary concerns don’t make for a great sales pitch, either. Neither does playing road games three time zones away against Big Ten powers.

Likewise, UNLV’s Dan Mullen will have other, better opportunities than UCLA, as long as the wins keep coming for his Runnin’ Rebels. Mullen’s name surfaces on speculative candidate lists for UCLA, but I wouldn’t see that as a smart move for Mullen, who did his best work in Starkville, Mississippi.

If I’m running UCLA’s search, I’d peek at Tulane’s Jon Sumrall. He’s thriving at the erudite school in “The Big Easy.” Sumrall’s Green Wave are in contention for the Group of Five’s playoff bid. He previously excelled at Troy.

Sumrall played at Kentucky, and he’s spent most of his career in the South. A move to the left coast would be a shift, but he’s bound for a “Super Two” job eventually. UCLA’s best move could be nabbing a rising, proven coach before someone else in the Big Ten or SEC snaps him up.

Another intriguing name: Former Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald. If you can win at Northwestern, you can win at UCLA.

Northwestern fired Fitzgerald after a player hazing scandal surfaced. After the firing, Fitzgerald took Northwestern to court, and he reached a legal settlement with his former employer last month. He’s maintained he had no knowledge of the hazing within Northwestern’s program. The school, in a statement announcing the settlement, said it uncovered no evidence that Fitzgerald condoned the behavior or that any player reported the conduct to the coach.

In sum, the findings and legal settlement could make Fitzgerald hirable.

One more … would Pasadena, California, native Jonathan Smith leave Michigan State in favor of a SoCal homecoming? UCLA should find out. Think Smith, not Sanders.

Dan Mullen for Virginia Tech? That’d be interesting

I mentioned Mullen’s best work occurred in Starkville, and I’ve always said Blacksburg, Virginia, is the Starkville of Appalachia.

Well, I’m saying that now, anyway.

Mullen is a good coach whose career got sidetracked by the LS-Shoe game, followed by one bad season at Florida. He’s got a mind for X’s and O’s, and he proved at Mississippi State he can develop three-star prospects into four-star talents.

North Carolina should have hired Mullen instead of experimenting with Bill Belichick. UNC’s mistake can become an opportunity for ACC rival Virginia Tech.

Mullen, in his first season coaching UNLV, is 3-0 and piling up points with transfer quarterback Anthony Colandrea, a former Virginia Cavalier.

Mullen won in the SEC’s West Division at the height of its power. He’d win in the ACC.

Marcus Freeman says dreaded ‘E’ word

Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman wants us to believe “it’s not the (play) call, it’s the execution,” after the Irish got gutted for a second consecutive game under new defensive coordinator Chris Ash.

Ah, the dreaded ‘E’ word. Execution. Coaches who bemoan their team’s execution usually wind up with an average product on their hands, because it’s often easier to fix play-calling than it is to eradicate bad execution.

In truth, Notre Dame’s abysmal defensive performances in losses to Miami and Texas A&M are a combination of questionable calls and shaky execution.

Notre Dame’s hesitancy to blitz Carson Beck in Week 1 became a head-scratcher. The Irish didn’t apply enough pressure on Aggies quarterback Marcel Reed, either. They have one sack through two games after amassing 40 sacks last season under coordinator Al Golden, who’s now in the NFL. Freeman’s experiment to incorporate more zone coverage has failed, too.

“I don’t have the answer for you right now,” Freeman said of his team’s defensive woes.

No answers, faulty execution and questionable calls tend to result in the dreaded ‘M’ word: mediocrity.

Kirby Smart gets (oddly) philosophical

After Georgia’s comeback overtime victory at Tennessee, Kirby Smart took a shot at nebulous naysayers, who, apparently were “whistling by the graveyard.”

“I don’t mean this directed at Tennessee, but I told our players, there’s a lot of whistling by the graveyard,” Smart said. “A lot of people don’t know what that saying means, but there’s a lot of whistling by the graveyard, and that ain’t who we are.’

“We’re not going to go down without a fight,’ he added.

I don’t think Smart knows what that saying means, either.

Whistling past the graveyard means acting upbeat and unafraid in a dire situation, to distract yourself from the reality of doom. I fail to comprehend how it applies to Georgia and the supposed naysayers.

Perhaps, Smart meant to say Georgia’s enemies ought to know better than to “dance on the grave” of the Bulldogs, a different adage that would better fit this situation.

Georgia looked to be on the ropes in the first quarter at Neyland Stadium, but it came very much alive in the second half and overtime.

As Georgia Tech learned last season, the final shovel of dirt onto an upset of Georgia can prove to be the heaviest lift.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.