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Ryan McGee, senior editor at ESPN
Inspirational thought of the week:
There’s a house, darling, at the other end of town
People who come from far away
Put on your pretty red dress
Let’s tackle this mess
That’s it baby, let’s go
And go far up the hill
We will have a lot of fun
We will greet the rising sun
We will dance all night long
Until we hear your mom calling
That’s it baby, let’s go
And go far up the hill
There is a thrill on the hill
Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go
– “Let’s Go” by Hank Ballard and The Midnighters
Here at Bottom 10 HQ, currently stowed in a storage container on the cargo ship that’s transporting Desmond Howard’s “College GameDay” pocket squares to Ireland, we’re ready to wake up from our winter/spring/summer football hibernation. Now, we hope the teams on the list you’re about to receive are ready to do the same.
Same. That’s a word we won’t be using much during the 2024-25 college football season (well into 2025, that is). The realignment bankrupted Rand-McNally. The transfer portal was like a carousel attached to Max Verstappen’s RB20, the spring model. And when December comes, it will bring with it a 12-team college football playoff that is supposed to finally make everyone happy and probably won’t make anyone happy.
That’s why the arrival of the Bottom 10 feels like a warm hug from your grandmother. She’s still the same as she always was. She’s familiar. She’s soft. She smells a little like eggs. But in a world that feels as unsettled as Tim Legler in an LA earthquake, she’s also the anchor we need… even if the teams that brought her to us always forget to pull that anchor from the ocean floor before they try to sail away. They’d better get going. Dez needs his skewers.
With apologies to Napoleon McCallum, John Paul Jones and Steve Harvey, here are the preseason rankings of the last 10 for 2024.
Ty Pennington’s alma mater joins the ranks of the FBS, adding its name to the prestigious Annowls, er, Annals of Bottom 10 Owls, where it takes its eye-catching place on a rotting branch alongside Temple, Rice and FA(not I)U.
The Warhawks bring in new head coach Bryant Vincent, who immediately sensed a draft in his office. When he investigated the air leak in the locker room, he discovered a transfer portal exit tunnel hidden behind a Louisiana-Monroe schedule poster, almost as if he were the principal in “The Shawshank Redemption.”
The Golden Flashes, winners of a single game in 2023, will spend three of their first four weekends traveling to Pitt, Tennessee and Penn State. The good news is that the school will receive generous checks for those trips. The bad news is that it will spend most of its money on BenGay and Band-Aids.
Not to get too far ahead of yourself, but Akron travels to Kent State on November 19th for the pillow fight of the final 10 of the century. So, circle it. With a colored pencil.
Apparently, winning the national title or dominating the box office alongside Deadpool wasn’t enough for the Wolverines. Instead, Go Blue decided to publicly take a stand against the NCAA, whether it was against outgoing head coach Jim Harbaugh on the podium at the Los Angeles press conference or the decision to defiantly invite him to the season opener after he got a showcase from the folks in Indianapolis. I’m no expert at thumbing my nose at anyone, but I am a bit of an expert on the Wolverines, and no one should ever thumb their nose at adamantium claws.
The Minutemen will play their final season as an independent before joining #MACtion in 2025. But wait a minute. If you’re a Minuteman, is fighting for independence not your thing?
The second Owls group in our rankings will play former bottom 10 star and eventual bowl regular ROCK at UTSA in Week 13. Why does this matter? Because UTSA hosts Kennesaw State in Week 1, visits Rice in Week 7 and welcomes FAU in Week 8, meaning the Roadrunners will go head-to-head with all four FBS Owls in 2024. So do they have to play all those games at night?
New Minors head coach Scotty Walden led a successful FCS program at Austin Peay, where the real school cheer is “Let’s go Peay!” Now he’ll run around the Sun Bowl chanting “Let’s go UTE-Peay!” which sounds like a condition you might want to see a urologist about.
This spot was contested between two #MACtionites in the Baller State and the Buffalo Bulls Not Bills. The Cards have been in the bottom 10 since 2015, the last of Pete Lembo’s five seasons in Muncie. Now he’s the head coach in Buffalo. The teams play on November 12th. Both will likely be in the bottom 10 by then, yes, Lembo.
The spendthrift Panthers are back. In 2014, this team was the first champion of a bottom 10 selected by Ryan McGee. But under head coach Shawn Elliott, they finally made it to Atlanta and became semi-regular bowl visitors, including last season’s 7-6 squad that won the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. But Elliott surprisingly left the team two days into spring practice and his Georgia State squad jumped into the portal like it was a Six Flags Over Georgia water slide. So who did State Not Southern hire to take over the team? 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, Cards… all of them.
