Bottom 10: USC left longing for the good ol' Pac-12
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
Inspirational thought of the week:
When the chips are down
Back against the wall
Got no more to give
‘Cause we gave it all
Seems like going a distance is unrealistic
But we’re too far from the start
We’re halfway there
We’re looking good now
And nothing’s gonna get in the way
We’re halfway there
And looking back now
I never thought that I’d ever say
We’re halfway there
— “Halfway There,” Big Time Rush
Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, located in the private investigator’s van full of lie detector machines that Sean McDonough takes on the road with him to sniff out poorly acted fake injury flops, we are crashing into the halfway point of the college football season like me driving my mom’s Olds Delta 88 into the corner of the DMV building during the parallel parking portion of my driver’s license test.
Halfway means there is still time to turn things around. Just enough pages left on the refrigerator calendar to ensure you can save the season and become the opposite of “The Matrix: Resurrections,” which started amazingly awesome and then turned into a science lecture.
Halfway there means you can still put enough distance between yourself and where you came from to make that raging dumpster fire of September vanish over the horizon in your rearview mirror until it becomes a distant, thin pillar of smoke rising from where you were as you emerge to where you’re going.
Just make sure you don’t keep staring into that mirror and forget to keep your eyes on the road. Lest you drive your Bottom 10 family truckster off the road and into the tar pits, a slowly sinking season left to be uncovered years later by archaeologists.
“Dr. Grant! Are these the bones of a velociraptor?”
“No, these appear to be the remains of an Aggie.”
“New Mexico State or Utah State?”
“Both.”
With apologies to John Hammond, Michael Crichton, Boston College wide receiver Dino Tomlin and Steve Harvey, here are the post-Week 7 Bottom 10 rankings.
The Golden(plated) Flashes lost last weekend’s edition of the Pillow Fight of the Week of the Year, falling 37-35 at home to Ball State, who entered the game 1-5. It was merely the first stanza of a #MACtion banana peel gauntlet that will see Kent slide through an upcoming schedule that includes 2-4 Boiling Green, 2-4 My Hammy of Ohio and a Nov. 19 pre-Thanksgiving Turkey Bowl against 1-6 Akronmonious, who occupied this very top/bottom spot just a few weeks ago. I have already started calling “College GameDay” about that weekend, but apparently they have blocked my number.
The Minors fell to the Western Kentucky Red Blobs and embark on a Seabiscuit-style chase for the target they see lumbering through the turn up ahead, aka Kent State, via their very own wacky Bottom 10 obstacle course. It begins this weekend against 2-4 FI(not A)U, followed by dates with three other teams currently in these rankings: Fa-la-la-la-la La-la-la-Tech, Meh-dle Tennessee State, and …
The New Owls on the Block (NO²TB) enjoyed their bye week like all owls do, seeing how far around they can spin their head and using their night vision to try to see through the walls that surround the practice field of their Tuesday night opponent, Meh-dle Tennessee.
Alas, they flew into that wall, falling to the ground — and falling to the Blues Raiders by the rather absurd score of 14-5.
The good news for UAB head coach Trent Dilfer is that no one is paying attention to the fact that he permanently looks like Anger from “Inside Out” because down in Athens, Georgia, player-shoving Kirby Smart makes Dilfer look like Joy from “Inside Out.”
Note to USC and heck, UCLA, too: If you’re going to turn college football on its ear and inside out because you spent 2021 frustrated with the state of Pac-12 football, then the least you could do in return is, oh, I dunno, stop playing 2021 Pac-12 football.
TU, Temple University, plays UT, the University of Tulsa, at home this weekend in PA, where the M.O. is to yell at SC, aka Santa Claus, “FU!”
These days it’s the cool thing for minor league baseball teams to take on temporary mascot names for a few weekends each season. The Minuetmen seem to have employed that strategy last weekend, becoming the Massachusetts Chiropractors, because they welcomed Missouri into Amherst and gave the former top-10 team coming off a brutal loss at Texas A&M all the right adjustments to get their season stride back on track.
The Other Other Aggies provided that same Relax The Back service to unLv, which sought a bounce back from its only loss of the year, and received said bounce, 50-34. Now the OOAs face former Bottom 10 member Whew Mexico Not Whew Mexico State before girding their loins ahead of what looks to be a candidate for Pillow Fight of the Week of the Year, a trip to face Wait Lister Why-OMG-ing, just in time for Halloween. For that, I would dress up like an Aggie, but I’m still not sure what one is.
The great news is that the Blues Raiders won for the first time since Week 1 against FCS foe Tennessee Tech. The not great news is that they beat third-ranked Kennesaw, which isn’t an FCS foe, but was an FCS foe like 10 minutes ago and is still such a new FBS foe that they have yet to beat another FBS foe, or FCS foe for that matter, this season. But hey, fly that “w”! Yes, lower case.
BUT … at the witching hour Tuesday night another Conference USA team, the Bulldogs, snatched defeat from the jowls of victory, falling to Whew Mexico State in double overtime and falling off the Waiting List and into these standings. La Tech beat MTSU one week ago but began a three-week stretch of Tuesday night matchups with their NMSU defeat, and next Tuesday they face … second-ranked UTEP. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some C-USA, but these people have no regard for my live viewing of “Dancing With The Stars.”
Waiting list: Minute Rice, Kansas Nayhawks, Pur-don’t, UCLA Boo-ins, Flori-duh State Semi-No’s, Baller State, Southern Missed, Whew Mexico State, Whew Mexico Not Whew Mexico State, Miss Sus Hippie State, My Hammy of Ohio, Akronmonious, Why-OMG-ing?, Troy Bolton State, shoving players.
