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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
Inspirational thought of the week:
There’s a house honey, way across town
People coming from miles around
Put on your pretty red dress
Let’s go see about this mess
That’s it, baby let’s git
And go way far upon the hill
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun
We gonna greet the risin’ sun
All night long we gonna ball
Until we hear yo mama call
That’s it, baby let’s git
And go way far upon the hill
There’s a thrill upon the hill
Let’s go, let’s a-go, let’s go
— “Let’s Go” Hank Ballard and The Midnighters
Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, currently stowed away in a storage container on the freighter ship carrying Desmond Howard’s pocket squares to Ireland for “College GameDay,” we are ready to be resurrected from our winter/spring/summer football hibernation. Now let’s hope the teams on the list you are about to receive are ready to do the same.
Same. That’s a word that we won’t use much during the 2024-25 (like, way into ’25) college football season. Realignment has bankrupted Rand-McNally. The transfer portal has been like a merry-go-round hooked up to Max Verstappen’s RB20, the spring model. And when December arrives, it will bring with it a 12-team College Football Playoff that is designed to finally make everyone happy and will likely make no one happy.
That’s why the arrival of the Bottom 10 feels like a warm hug from your grandma. It’s still the same it’s always been. It’s familiar. It’s soft. It smells a little like eggs. But in a world that feels as unsettled as Tim Legler in an L.A. earthquake, it is also the anchor we need … even if the teams who brought it to us always forget to pull that anchor off the bottom of the ocean before attempting to sail. Y’all better get going. Dez needs his squares.
With apologies to Napoleon McCallum, John Paul Jones and Steve Harvey, here are the preseason Bottom 10 rankings for 2024.
Ty Pennington’s alma mater joins the ranks of FBS and thusly adds its name to the prestigious Annowls, er, Annals of Bottom 10 Owls, taking their head-turning perch on a dry-rotted tree branch alongside Temple, Rice and FA(not I)U.
The Warhawks bring in new head coach Bryant Vincent, who immediately felt a draft in his office. When he traced the air leak into the locker room, he discovered a transfer portal exit tunnel hidden behind a Louisiana-Monroe schedule poster, almost like he was the warden in “The Shawshank Redemption.”
The Golden Flashes, winners of one game in 2023, will spend three of their first four weekends traveling to Pitt, Tennessee and Penn State. The good news is the school will receive large checks for those trips. The bad news is it will end up spending most of that money on BenGay and Band-Aids.
Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but Akron travels to Kent State on Nov. 19 for what could be the Bottom 10 Pillow Fight of the Century of the Year. So, go on and circle it. In crayon.
Apparently, it wasn’t enough for the Wolverines to win the national title or even to dominate the box office alongside “Deadpool.” Instead, Go Blue has decided to go all-in on a public thumbing of their collective Big House noses at the NCAA, whether it be departed head coach Jim Harbaugh at the news conference podium in Los Angeles or the decision to defiantly invite him back for the season opener after he’d been handed a show-cause by the folks in Indianapolis. I’m no expert on thumbing one’s nose, but I am a bit of an expert on the Wolverine, and no one should ever thumb their nose using adamantium claws.
The Minutemen will play their last season as an independent before moving to #MACtion in 2025. But wait just a, well, minute here. If you’re a Minuteman, isn’t fighting for independence like your whole thing?
The second flock of Owls in our rankings will play former Bottom 10 stalwart-turned-bowl regular R.O.C.K. in the UTSA during Week 13. Why is that significant? Because UTSA hosts Kennesaw State in Week 1 … visits Rice in Week 7 … and welcomes FAU in Week 8 … which means in 2024 the Roadrunners will go beak-to-beak with all four FBS Owls. So, do they have to play all those games at night?
New Minors head coach Scotty Walden led a winning program in FCS at Austin Peay, where the for-real school cheer is “Let’s go Peay!” Now he’s going to be walking around the Sun Bowl shouting, “Let’s go U-T-E-Peay!” which sounds like a condition one might need to take to their urologist.
This spot came down between a pair of #MACtionites in Baller State and the Buffalo Bulls Not Bills. The Cards have been in the Bottom 10 deck ever since 2015, the last of Pete Lembo’s five seasons in Muncie. Now he’s head coach at Buffalo. The teams play Nov. 12. Until then, the Bottom 10 status of both will likely be in, yes, Lembo.
The prodigal Panthers return. Back in 2014, this team was the first champ of a Ryan McGee-chosen Bottom 10. However, they eventually turned the Atlanta street corner and became semi-annual bowl visitors under head coach Shawn Elliott, including last season’s 7-6 squad that won the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. But Elliott shockingly left the team two days into spring practice and his Georgia State roster jumped into the portal like it was a Six Flags Over Georgia waterslide. So, who did State Not Southern hire to take over? Dell McGee. Are we related? No. Are we family? Now we are, yes.
Waiting list: Charlotte 3-and-9ers, EC-Yew, Buffalo Bulls Not Bills, Sam Houston we have a problem, Fa-La-La-La-La Tech, State of New Mexico and New Mexico State, UCan’t, maps … all of them.