Inspirational thought of the week:
We’re taking the train to Happy Valley
Won’t you come along there too
It’s beautiful there in Happy Valley
With wonderful things to do
The sun shines brightly the whole day long
Every bird sings a different song
There’s no need to worry, there’s joys untold
In Happy Valley you’ll never grow old
— “Happy Valley,” Rodd and The Cavaliers
Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, located behind the giant lake of frying grease that is held in a secret location in metro Dallas until the State Fair of Texas starts and it’s time to cook balls of butter and funnel cake burgers, we used to roll our eyes at the term “unprecedented times.” Why? Because we once believed that all times are precedented. As William Shakespeare once wrote, “Past is prologue.” And as my Uncle Willie once said to me, shaking a spear of asparagus, “Don’t get all worked up, Ryno. Ain’t nothing gonna happen that ain’t never happened before.”
So, what changed our mind? Penn State went to the Rose Bowl Not The Rose Bowl Game to play UCLA.
So, what do we do now? A Coveted Fifth Spot team that earned that Coveted Fifth Spot by losing an OT game to a top-5 team, so we know the team isn’t actually that bad, turns right around and loses to a Bottom 10 team that we know is actually that bad. Does that mean that team should be back in the Coveted Fifth Spot because it isn’t actually that bad … or does it graduate from the Coveted Fifth Spot into the actual Bottom 10 because it is actually that bad? And what about the team that was definitely bad but beat that team? Does it graduate out of the Bottom 10 … or does it stay in the Bottom 10 because perhaps the team that we thought wasn’t bad is actually bad?
To quote Cal Naughton Jr., the NASCAR driver who thought he was bad only because teammate Ricky Bobby wouldn’t let him win, thus keeping him thinking he was bad: “My head’s all tied up like a pretzel. I got a pretzel in my head!”
And you know where they make the best pretzels? Pennsylvania.
With apologies to former SMU wide receiver Happy Nelson, former Florida State running back Happy Fick, current Kentucky D-lineman Nic “Happy” Smith and Steve Harvey, here are the post-Week 6 Bottom 10 rankings.
The Bearkats were krushed by New Mexiko State and now, after zero home kontests in September, kan kruise through most of Ocktober in the friendly konfines of Huntsville, Teksas.
The Beavers are the nation’s only six-loss team after traveling 4,477 miles round trip to lose a heartbreaker in Boone, North Carolina, to Appalachian State. Now they host Wake Forest, which will make a 4,624-mile round trip from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to Corvallis and back. FWIW, Wake and App State are separated by 86 miles. The Beavs should have just stayed in North Carolina and spent the week in the foothills eating barbecue, drinking moonshine and watching the fall foliage turned orange and black, both the colors of Oregon State and the colors that your liver turns after drinking real Carolina moonshine.
It was the actual Minutemen who were perched on Bunker Hill, holding steady atop Boston as the British marched closer and closer, but refusing to engage because they had been ordered by their commanding officer, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” That was us throughout the first six weeks of the season, as we waited not so patiently for Saturday’s Pillow Fight of the Week of the Year of the Century Mega Bowl, pitting UMass against …
“Don’t fire until you see the Golden Flashes of their eyes!”
“But, sir, we can’t see their eyes!”
“Why not?”
“Because their eye sockets and cheeks are so bruised and swollen from their trips to Florida State and Oklahoma!”
So, the answer to the question that we started with “So” in the intro to these rankings is that, yes, you can be a back-to-back Coveted Fifth Spot team. And all you Texas Longhorns fans can make your thank-you checks out to the Ryan McGee Key West Retirement Fund.
Last week I failed to have the Woof Pack in these rankings and I heard from a lot of folks in Reno about that, angry that their hometown team wasn’t included. But they didn’t see the comments I received during the weeks prior from folks upset that they were included. One of them was tied around the neck of a horse’s head that was in my bed, signed by someone named “Tahoe Tommy.”
I have also heard from a lot of people in central Tennessee, wondering why I haven’t had the Mob from Murfreesboro in these rankings more, especially since their only win of the year was over Nevada, and that was by only one point. One of those notes was tied around the neck of a possum’s head that was in my bed, signed by someone named “Chevy Tahoe Tammy.”
Oklahoma State’s leading passer, rusher and receiver have all combined for exactly zero touchdowns. The last time there was this little scoring in Stillwater was when I visited town for a Beanie Babies resale convention.
Let’s give credit to the Niners, who have played games on seemingly every day of the week but Saturday to get national TV exposure. It’s the perfect Halloween horror programming.
The Emus barely edged out Northern Ill-ugh-noise in a #MACtion showdown for the Not So Coveted Tenth Spot. But that was merely a virtual showdown. This weekend they will meet in an actual showdown, kicking off 1½ hours before the UMass-Kent State game. Let’s call it the Throw Pillow Fight of the Week, because it’s the slightly smaller pillow we have to move to get to the actual pillow.
Waiting list: UCLA Boo-ins, Northern Ill-ugh-noise, UTEPid, Bah-stan Cawledge, UNC Chapel Bill, Georgia State Not Southern, Stanfird, My Hammy of Ohio, South Alabama Redundancies, Give Me Liberty Or Give Me 1-4, the definition of a catch.