Bottom 10: USC left yearning for the great ol’ Pac-12

• Ryan McGee, ESPN Elder WriterOct 16, 2024, 09:40 AM ET Close Senior author for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com
• 2-time Sports Emmy winner
• 2010, 2014 NMPA Author of the Year

Inspirational idea of the week:

When the chips are down
Back against the wall
Got say goodbye to give
‘Cause we gave all of it
Appears like going a distance is unrealistic
However we’re too far from the start

We’re midway there
We’re looking excellent now
And absolutely nothing’s gon na get in the way
We’re halfway there
And recalling now
I never ever believed that I ‘d ever say
We’re midway there

— “Halfway There,” Big Time Rush

Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, situated in the private detective’s van filled with lie detector devices that Sean McDonough takes on the roadway with him to ferret out improperly acted fake injury flops, we are crashing into the halfway point of the college football season like me driving my mommy’s Olds Delta 88 into the corner of the DMV structure throughout the parallel parking portion of my driver’s license test.Halfway indicates

there is still time to turn things around. Simply enough pages left on the refrigerator calendar to ensure you can save the season and become the reverse of “The Matrix: Resurrections,” which started exceptionally awesome and then became a science lecture.Editor’s Picks

Halfway there means you can still put enough range in between yourself and where you came from to make that raving dumpster fire of September vanish over the horizon in your rearview mirror until it ends up being a far-off, thin pillar of smoke rising from where you were as you emerge to where you’re going.Just make sure you do not keep gazing into that mirror and forget to keep your eyes on the roadway. Lest you drive your Bottom 10 family truckster off the roadway and into the tar pits, a gradually sinking season delegated be uncovered years later on 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 pass 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 went into the game 1-5. It was simply the very first verse of a #MACtion banana peel gauntlet that will see Kent slide through an approaching 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 inhabited this really top/bottom spot simply a couple of weeks earlier. I have actually already begun calling”College GameDay “about that weekend, but obviously they have actually obstructed my number. The Minors was up 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 crazy Bottom 10 barrier course. It starts this weekend against 2-4 FI(not A)U, followed by dates with three other teams presently in these rankings: Fa-la-la-la-la La-la-la-Tech, Meh-dle Tennessee State, and … The New Owls on the Block( NO ² TB)enjoyed their bye week like all owls do, seeing how far around they can spin their head and utilizing their night vision to attempt to see through the walls that surround the practice field of

their Tuesday night opponent, Meh-dle Tennessee.Alas, they flew into that wall, being up to the ground– and falling to the Blues Raiders by the rather ridiculous score of 14-5. The bright side for UAB

head coach Trent Dilfer is that no one is taking notice of the fact that he completely looks like Anger from”Inside Out “because

down in Athens, Georgia, player-shoving Kirby Smart makes Dilfer appear like Delight 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 disappointed 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, in the house this weekend

in PA, where the M.O. is to chew out SC, aka Santa Claus, “FU!” These days it’s the cool thing for minors baseball teams to take on temporary mascot names for a couple of weekends each season. The Minuetmen seem to have employed that strategy last weekend, becoming the Massachusetts Chiropractors, due to the fact that they invited Missouri into Amherst and gave the previous top-10 team coming off a ruthless loss at Texas A&M all the ideal changes to get their season stride back on track. The Other Aggies offered that same Relax The Back service to unLv, which sought a recover

from its only loss of the year, and received said bounce, 50-34. Now the OOAs deal with former Bottom 10 member Whew Mexico Not Whew Mexico State before girding their loins ahead of what seems a candidate for Pillow Fight of the Week of the Year, a trip to deal with Wait Lister Why-OMG-ing, just in time for Halloween. For that, I would dress up like an Aggie, however I’m still unsure what one is. The fantastic news is that the Blues Raiders

won for the very first time since Week 1 against FCS foe Tennessee Tech. The not excellent news is that they beat third-ranked Kennesaw, which isn’t an FCS enemy, but was an FCS opponent like 10 minutes ago and is still such a new FBS enemy that they have yet to beat another FBS opponent, or FCS opponent 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, nabbed defeat from the jowls of victory, being up to Whew Mexico State in double overtime and falling off the Waiting List and into these standings. La Tech beat MTSU one week ago however started a three-week stretch of Tuesday night matches with their NMSU defeat, and next Tuesday they face … second-ranked UTEP. Don’t get me incorrect, I love me some C-USA, but these individuals 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.