Bottom 10: Things go south for Clemson and its South
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Citizen WriterSep 6, 2023, 07:00 AM ET Close Senior writer for ESPN The Publication and ESPN.com 2-time Sports Emmy winner
- 2010, 2014 NMPA Author of the Year
Inspirational idea of the week:
I can’t see the future but I understand it’s coming quickly
It’s not that tough to wind up knee deep in the past
It’s come a lot of Mondays
Since the phone cubicle that first night
Through years and miles and tears and smiles
I want to get it right
From the bottom of my heart
Off the coast of Carolina
After a couple of false starts
I think we discovered our stride
— “The Coast of Carolina,” Jimmy Buffett
Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, situated at the base of the trash chute where Pat McAfee discards all of the sleeves that he cuts off his t-shirts, we went into Week 1 with our eyes focused on the horizon ahead and our hands securely twisted around the ship’s wheel as the wind of actual football filled our sails and pushed into the season. With fins to the left, fins to the right, since yes, it’s been rather a summer season with rent-a-cars and westbound trains, and … OK, complete disclosure, we do not listen to a great deal of Jimmy Buffett in our HQ. We’re more of a hopeful marching band and drumline coming down into a sad country separation tune sort of office.Editor’s Picks
1 Related But Saturday morning, as I took the phase to co-host “Marty & McGee” from Nashville, Tennessee, developed squarely in the center of Lower Broadway, a guy in a parrot-covered shirt was asleep on the sidewalk outside Buffett’s Margaritaville. He unexpectedly leapt up, ran over to the railing and said, “McGee, Jimmy is dead, and I do not feel so good myself. The last time I saw him was here in Nashville, and that exact same weekend, I enjoyed Vanderbilt lose by a hundred indicate South Carolina. Jimmy liked South Carolina. Not the group. The state. It’s unfortunate.” And he went back to sleep.At the time, I chuckled it off. Then, as I thought about it more, I was sad too. Jimmy Buffett was certainly gone. And he did certainly love South Carolina. He wrote tunes about South Carolina. He sailed off the coast of South Carolina. He had played a lot of sellouts all over South Carolina. Later that night, in Charlotte, North Carolina, I saw South Carolina quarterback Spencer Rattler spend the evening running for his life as the Gamecocks lost to UNC 31-17. Throughout a second-half timeout, the PA system began blasting”Margaritaville “as the jam-packed arena sang along.Another guy in a beachy dress shirt, a lot more sober than the very first– at least at that
point in the evening– tapped his baseball cap with a Gamecocks logo design and said,”They’re playing the wrong song. “He indicated Rattler, on the bench as his beleaguered O-line awkwardly sat next to him, quiet and ashamed.” They must be playing,’Nobody Talks To the Captain No More.'” With apologies to the Earliest Internet User on the Beach, the Child of a Boy of a Sailor and Steve Harvey, here’s
the 2023 Week 1 Bottom 10.
1. Arkansaw State Fightin’ Butches (0-1)
After allowing Oklahoma to squeak by 73-0, Red Wolves coach Butch Jones said, “I believed they out-athleted us.” He’s not wrong. His team likewise was outscored, outrushed, outpassed and out-ed as the runaway early favorite to take home the Bottom 10 title.
2. #Kentergy(0-1)The Golden Flashes opened their season by decreasing to UCF. Like, actually. They lost 56-6 and had the 35-point spread covered faster than my brother-in-law slathering Nation Crockery and strawberry jelly on a homemade biscuit. Now they go to Arkansaw Not Arkansaw State, where they are a 38-point underdog and where head hog Sam Pittman (a longtime friend of the Bottom 10, so he understands I say this in jest) most likely just consumed among those exact same biscuits. Or six.
3. North by Northworstern(0-1) You understand when Northwestern put this 2023 schedule together, they believed, “Are you kidding? We get In-A-Rut-gers Week 1 and after that Dook Week 3?” Well, they just got Sonny-at-the-toll-booth’ed in New Jersey, 24-7, while Duke did the exact same to Clemson, 28-7.
4. No-Braska(0-1)Those same conversations were most likely happening in Lincoln, where the Cornhuskers saw season-opening trips to Minnesota and Colorado and believed, “Hey, this isn’t bad. We almost beat the Gophers in 2015, and the Buffaloes are the protecting Bottom 10 champions!” Then the Cornhuskers blew a second-half lead and lost to Minnesota, much like in 2015, and the Enthusiasts are led by Deion Sanders, who invested Week 1 being blessed as the best coach in the history of football.5.
The Palm(in the face)etto State
There are 3 FBS schools in the state of South Carolina– Coastal Carolina, South Carolina and Clemson– and they all lost over the weekend. There are six FCS schools in the state of South Carolina. They went 2-4, but among those wins was by Charleston Southern over North Greenville, among the Palmetto State’s seven Division II schools– which went 3-4 over the weekend, consisting of in a head-to-head matchup. So your final record for the Sandlapper schools was 5-11, with two of those wins coming head-to-head, topped by Clemson’s orange crush of a loss at Duke. I right away texted my best friend from high school, now a highly embellished high school history teacher in Lexington, South Carolina, to ensure the following tweet (or X or whatever we’re calling it) was okay. He hung up on me. He’s a South Carolina alum. #toosoon
Clemson L
SC L
N Greenville L
Wofford L
The Citadel L
Coastal Carolina L
SC State Lx2
Presbyterian L
Erskine L
The last time the state of South Carolina had a weekend this bad was because of Sherman.— Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) September 5, 2023
6. San No-sé State(0-2 )Much is being made of the truth that the mangy fugitive fleet called the Pac-12, quickly to be the 2Pac, has yet to lose a game. It hasn’t injure that two of the league’s best teams have played San José State, with USC and Caleb Williams winning the Trojan-Spartan War 56-28 and Oregon State rolling 42-17. The amazingly and creepily precise FPI informs us the Spartans ought to be 1-4 entering mid-October when they go to …
7. Whew Mexico (0-1 )The No-Bos opened the season with a brutal yet economically beneficial journey to College Station, Texas, where they gave up numerous points and backyards that they asked brand-new A&M offensive organizer Bobby Petrino if they could obtain his neck brace for their journey back to Albuquerque. After hosting Tennessee Tech in Week 2, the No-Bos remain at University Stadium to invite in …
8. Whew Mexico State (1-1)The Other Aggies stunned the Week 0 world when they were run over by the preseason top/bottom-ranked UMess Minutemen like they were the Redcoats pulling away on the road back to Boston. Sure, the Other Aggies rebounded with a 58-21 win over the FCS Western Illinois Leathernecks. But now they make a pilgrimage to Jamey Chadwell’s Liberty prior to heading up Interstate 25 to go to the No-Bos– one week before taking a trip to existing 0-2 Huh-Why-Yuh.
9. My Hammy of Ohio (0-1)In spite of losing 38-3 to the Hurricanes in the Battle of My-Hammys, the RedHawks are a touchdown favorite this weekend as– speaking of UMass– they make the trip east to face …