Three and out, and it’s only Week 3

Let’s just call this a “weak three” roundup:

1: Notre Dame is 0-3 for the first time since Bob Davie blew whistles there, and the offense has failed to score a touchdown. The combined record of Notre Dame’s next five opponents is 13-1. It would have been 14-0 had the Fighting Irish’s Oct. 6 foe not walked into tinderbox Utah wearing their “gunpowder blues.”

Notre Dame’s motto this year is “Tradition Never Graduates” . . . but you can now add to that “. . . but Tyrone Willingham’s players did.”

Third-year Irish Coach Charlie Weis, we know what you said last summer:

This was the second question asked at media day in early August: “What do you think you’ve accomplished in your first two years here?”

Weis: “I think that we have a stable program. I think that when I got here, one of the biggest issues I had is I felt that the program was a bit unstable.”

That must have been one turbulent August.

“Obviously, after three games, this team is headed in the wrong direction,” Weis said after Saturday’s 38-0 whitewash at Michigan.

It doesn’t help anyone who fancies the boys in green that Urban Meyer, the man Notre Dame so desperately wanted to hire from Utah that it fired Willingham after three years, has already won a national title at Florida and is maybe inching toward another.

Florida?

Oh yeah, those guys.

A jogged memory recalls the Gators’ winning something called the newly NCAA-renamed “national football split-level, subdivision championship bowl.”

We got so caught up in the argument over which team was better -- USC, Louisiana State or Oklahoma -- that Florida got pushed aside for a couple of weeks.

That changed Saturday when the Gators routed Tennessee in Gainesville and jumped Oklahoma into the No. 3 spot in the media and coaches’ polls.

Meyer is 20-0 in games played in the state of Florida and unbeaten against the Gators’ three biggest rivals: Tennessee, Georgia and Florida State.

With Tim Tebow at quarterback, Meyer is moving toward the kind of spread-offense system he worked at Utah with Alex Smith, except now he has bigger and better players.

Who knows, maybe Meyer made the right decision in choosing Florida over Notre Dame.

Maybe, eventually, he’ll get something done down there in Gainesville.

2: UCLA, what a mess.

Athletic Director Dan Guerrero, we know what you said last spring.

“I am very appreciative that Karl [Dorrell] came in and reestablished order in the program in a lot of ways. . . . He rebuilt the foundation that I felt needed to be fixed in a lot of ways. . . . He came in and healed the program.”

Dorrell after UCLA’s loss on Saturday: “Do we have enough time to discuss all the issues we have?”

Dorrell may have restored order off the field, but what about on it?

A sidebar in Sunday’s Salt Lake Tribune neatly summed up the Bruins’ effort in a 44-6 loss to Utah:

“They committed six false starts -- five in critical third-down situations -- coughed up a sure touchdown, fell down in key pass coverages and failed to defend a fake field-goal attempt they had worked all week to stop.”

Yeah, but other than that . . .

3: Auburn, you Tigers have to be kidding. Picked to finish second behind LSU in the Southeastern Conference’s rugged West Division, Auburn lost its second straight home game on the Plains. One week after South Florida pulled the Tigers by the tails, lowly Mississippi State escaped Auburn with victory.

“We are not going to panic,” Coach Tommy Tuberville said after watching his team fall to 1-2.

Tuberville is right. Auburn gets New Mexico State next week. There will be plenty of time to panic at Florida in two weeks and at LSU on Oct. 20.

Weekend wrap

* Hawaii may be this year’s jittery stock-market team. The Warriors dropped five spots in the Associated Press poll last week after an overtime win at Louisiana Tech but gained five spots back this week after a 49-14 win at Nevada Las Vegas.

Hawaii (3-0) also moved up four spots, to No. 18, in the USA Today coaches’ poll. Hawaii is trying to join Boise State in becoming the second straight “non-BCS” school to gain an automatic bid to a major bowl.

The Warriors need to finish No. 12 or better in the final BCS standings. They can also get the bid if they finish ranked higher than a champion from a BCS conference that is No. 16 or worse. In this week’s AP poll, the worst-ranked school from a major conference is Boston College at No. 14.

* What’s the problem? Eight of this year’s 23 first-year coaches are still undefeated: Dennis Erickson (Arizona State), Nick Saban (Alabama), Troy Calhoun (Air Force), Bill Lynch (Indiana), Jeff Jagodzinski (Boston College), Mark Dantonio (Michigan State), Todd Graham (Tulsa) and Brian Kelly (Cincinnati). Also unbeaten is Joe Paterno, Penn State’s 42nd-year coach.

* “Get out UCLA, we’re pulling you for Oregon!” That’s basically what the pollsters said Sunday when they essentially subbed UCLA out of the rankings and anointed Oregon as the third Pacific 10 Conference team to watch behind USC and California.

Oregon parlayed a 52-21 win over Fresno State into an eight-spot rise to No. 13 in the coaches’ poll. Oregon is also No. 13 in the AP index.

More poll monitoring: One anonymous-for-now coach yanked his No. 1 vote away from Oklahoma this week. He must not have been impressed with the Sooners’ 54-3 win over Utah State.

* Good thing UCLA doesn’t play Tulsa, right? The Golden Hurricane amassed 595 total yards in a 55-47 win over Brigham Young. A week before, UCLA could dent BYU for only 27 points and 236 yards.

* Quotable: Utah Coach Kyle Whittingham on what he told his injury-racked team before taking on heavily favored UCLA: “We asked them to step up. We said, ‘We need some heroes.’ ”

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com

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Play it forward

1 After two crushing road losses to Big Ten opponents, 0-3 Notre Dame returns home to absorb its first crushing home loss to the Big Ten on Saturday when Michigan State comes to South Bend. Or, maybe this is the week the Irish become less offensive by scoring their first offensive touchdown of the season?

2 Not as exciting as the arrival of your new phone book, maybe, but the first Harris poll debuts next Sunday. And this is important because . . . ? Well, the Harris poll is one of three components involved in the Bowl Championship Series standings.

3 Washington plays UCLA at the Rose Bowl in what could well be the only matchup of African American coaches this season at the major college level. For the record, there are six among the 119 schools: Tyrone Willingham (Washington), Karl Dorrell (UCLA), Sylvester Croom (Mississippi State), Ron Prince (Kansas State), Randy Shannon (Miami) and Turner Gill (Buffalo).

4 South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier takes his Gamecocks to No. 2 Louisiana State this week to try to muck up another national championship dream. Last year, eventual national champion Florida had to block a last-second field-goal attempt to avoid defeat to South Carolina in Gainesville.

5 Duke, known until now as Dixie’s doormats, looks to extend its winning streak to two this week at Navy. The Blue Devils ended a 22-game losing skid Saturday with their win over Northwestern, which once owned the longest losing streak in Division I-A history at 34 games.

-- Chris Dufresne