Inspiring thought of the week:
We take the train to Happy Valley
Won’t you come there too
It’s beautiful there in Happy Valley
With wonderful things to do
The sun shines all day
Each bird sings a different song
There is no need to worry, there are unspeakable joys
In Happy Valley you will never grow old
— “Happy Valley”, Rodd and the Cavaliers
Here at Bottom 10 headquarters, located behind the giant lake of fry grease that sits in a secret location in the Dallas metro area until the State Fair of Texas starts and it’s time to cook butterballs and funnel-shaped burgers, we used to roll our eyes at the term “unprecedented weather.” For what? Because we once believed that all time was precedent. As William Shakespeare wrote: “The past is prologue.” And as my Uncle Willie once said to me while shaking a spear of asparagus: “Don’t get upset, Ryno. Nothing will happen that hasn’t happened before.”
So what made us change our minds? Penn State traveled to the Rose Bowl Not The Rose Bowl Game to play UCLA.
We try to go through the #Bottom10 Media guide to see if before today, a coveted 5th place team, which isn’t supposed to be actually bad, has ever lost to a Top 10 team. But the pages are glued together. pic.twitter.com/eJf6vwnbbh
– Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) October 5, 2025
So, what do we do now? A coveted fifth place team that got that coveted fifth place by losing an overtime game to a top 5 team so we know the team isn’t really that bad, turns around and loses to a top 10 team that we know is actually that bad. Does that mean this team should be back in the coveted fifth place because they’re actually not that bad… or are they falling from the coveted fifth place to the current top 10 because they’re actually that bad? And what about the team that was definitely bad but beat that team? Does it fall out of the Top 10… or does it stay in the Bottom 10 because maybe the team we thought wasn’t bad is actually bad?
To quote Cal Naughton Jr., the NASCAR driver who thought he was bad only because his teammate Ricky Bobby wouldn’t let him win, thus making him think he was bad: “My head is all tied up like a pretzel. I’ve 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 bottom 10 rankings after Week 6.
The Bearkats were beaten by New Mexico State and now, after no home games in September, they can go through most of October in friendly Huntsville, Texas.
The Beavers are the only national team with six losses after traveling 4,477 miles round trip to lose a heartbreaker in Appalachian State’s Boone, North Carolina. They now 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 86 miles apart. The Beavs should have stayed in North Carolina and spent the week in the foothills eating barbecue, drinking moonshine, and watching the fall foliage turn orange and black, both the state colors of Oregon and the colors your liver turns after drinking real Carolina moonshine.
These were the real Minutemen who were perched on Bunker Hill, standing firm atop Boston as the British closed in, but refusing to engage because their commander ordered them not to fire until they saw the whites of their eyes! This was us throughout the first six weeks of the season, as we not-so-patiently awaited Saturday’s Mega Bowl of the Week of the Year pillow fight, pitting UMass against…
“Don’t shoot until you see the golden flashes from 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 we started with “So” in the introduction to these rankings is that, yes, you can be a coveted back-to-back fifth-place team. And all you Texas Longhorns fans can write your thank you checks to the Ryan McGee Key West Retirement Fund.
Last week I failed to get the Woof Pack in this ranking and I heard from a lot of people in Reno about it, upset that their hometown team wasn’t included. But they didn’t see the comments I received in previous weeks from people upset at being included. One was tied around the neck of a horse’s head that was in my bed, signed by someone named “Tahoe Tommy.”
I’ve also heard a lot of people in Middle Tennessee wondering why I don’t have the Murfreesboro Mob higher in these rankings, especially since their only win of the year was against Nevada, and it was by a single point. One such note was tied around the neck of the head of an opossum that was in my bed, signed by someone named “Chevy Tahoe Tammy.”
Oklahoma State’s best passers, runners and receivers all combined for exactly zero touchdowns. The last time there was this little score in Stillwater was when I visited town for a Beanie Babies resale convention.
Credit the Niners, who played games seemingly every day of the week except Saturday to get exposure on national television. It’s the perfect horror lineup for Halloween.
The Emus barely edged out Northern Ill-ugh-noise in a #MACtion showdown for the not-so-coveted tenth place. But it was only a virtual confrontation. This weekend, they will meet in a real showdown, which will begin 1.5 hours before the UMass-Kent State game. Let’s call this the pillow fight of the week, because it’s the slightly smaller pillow that we have to move to get to the pillow itself.
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.
