America loves underdogs, even if they are by probability, mainly losers.
The Bottom Ten (College Football Teams)
The Chicago Tribune credits the idea to Los Angeles sportswriter Steve Harvey approximately 30 years before ESPN began using the term. On Sept 6, 1972, the Los Angeles Times introduced the Bottom 10 as follows: "This season The Times will keep football fans up to date on the bad as well as the good in football with (Steve) Harvey's irreverent feature, The Bottom 10". [8] ESPN now publishes the rankings "With apologies to Steve Harvey."[9] In 2008, Harvey resumed his "Bottom 10" columns for college and NFL football in the Los Angeles Times.[10]
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Ryan McGee: I have a southern accent. I grew up in the South. I learned football standing on the sidelines of ACC stadiums and I co-host a TV show on the SEC Network. But I don't hate the Big Ten. I never have. I never will. The greatest thrill of my job in recent years has come as I have finally visited the press boxes of legendary midwestern stadiums that I'd never seen before. Places such as Wisconsin, Nebraska and Purdue.
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Football season is thankfully nearly over, and pitchers and catchers will be reporting soon (we’re actually in the heart of Biathlon season (soon doing the US swing in Utah)). But there are some topics that should be mentioned before we can leave the land of concussion.
I don’t watch the Marty “Party” Smith and Ryan McGee television program on ESPN because it’s mainly a paean to Southern sports culture, but one of the hosts (McGee) does interest me because of The Bottom Ten column he writes. It should be its own TV program, because the national consciousness is obsessed with losers like Mango Mussolini.
Ryan McGee has taken the mantle once held by (not that Steve Harvey) Steve Harvey the LA-based sportswriter for The Bottom Ten, the satirical treatment of the worst sports teams in any week, mainly in college football.
The Bottom Ten is a lot more entertaining than listening to the daily hype of teams at the top, probably because it often pisses off university Sports Information Directors and even college presidents. There’s even a version for the bottom ten Law Schools, since Michael Cohen went to the perennial cellar-dweller: Western Michigan.
You might get lost in the trivia below. However, I unfortunately have connections to not a few of the members of these lists, and writing about the bottom ten would be my preferred job (even better if I worked for ESPN), except that it can applied to so many other sports. How so much more interesting for anti-capitalism would it be to discuss non-Premier League soccer teams and their corrupt owners during losing seasons)
The Bottom 10 (officially, ESPN.com's Bottom 10) is a week-by-week regular season "ranking" of the worst ten college football teams in the NCAA Division I FBS.[1][2][3] ESPN.com writer Ryan McGee currently writes the column each week and is the sole determiner of the teams that are listed.[4]
One of the running gags of the Bottom 10 is the "highly coveted Number 5 spot". This spot is typically reserved for "the top BCS blunder of the week" – a normally strong football team that found itself on the wrong end of an upset the prior week; an example would be the Bottom 10 of September 7, 2011, which featured Oregon State at the #5 ranking after its upset loss to Sacramento State, a Division I FCS program that had previously never beaten an FBS team in its history.[5]
In 1945, Deke Houlgate also initiated his selections for the Futility Bowl matching the two worst college football teams in a fictional football game to be played in Death Valley.[7]
His annual picks for the Futility Bowl included: (1) Worcester Polytechnic Institute and College of Wooster in 1945;[7] (2) Kansas State and Carnegie Tech in 1947; (3) Kansas State and Montana State in 1948;[8] (4) BYU and Rhode Island State in 1949;[9] and (5) Davidson and Montana in 1951.[10]
en.wikipedia.org/...
These are the worst football teams
For decades now, the teams of the Bottom 10 Cinematic Universe have aggressively scheduled each other or one another, er, whatever, in an effort to influence their standing on our end of the college football world.
How else could one explain 2016-17's legendary 20,000-mile home-and-home between UMass and Hawaii? Or the Pacific Coast Conference turning into the Big West, which folded into the WAC, which scattered into the Mountain West, Sun Belt and Conference USA, moves that ultimately guaranteed us an annual matchup between Rice and UTEP.
Today, the beat goes on. The teams of the Bottom 10 continue to schedule one another or each other, er, whatever, aggressively. Sure, they still don't win much. But that doesn't matter. Because the real winners are the rest of us.
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Here’s a sampling:
With apologies to Froggy Williams, Brian Natkin and Steve Harvey, here's the Bottom 10 for Week 9.
1. UTEPID (0-8)
I will actually be in Texas on Saturday, but on the wrong side of the republic. I will be in Lubbock, which is nowhere near Houston. In fact, Lubbock is nowhere near anywhere. My first thought was that I wish someone had invented a portal so that I could beam myself back and forth through a wormhole that can bend space and time. Then I remembered that UTEP brought Mike Price back to coach at the end of last season, so maybe it does exist!
2. Minute Rice (1-8)
In the slim chance that I could make it all the way over to Houston, I called the Rice ticket office and asked what time Saturday's game kicks off. They informed me that I've been wrong this whole time and that the game is at UTEP. Embarrassed, I called the box office in El Paso and asked them what time the game started. They replied, "What time can you get here?"
3. U-Can't (1-6)
UConn lost to UMass via two fourth quarter touchdowns, including the winner with 3:39 remaining. Head coach Randy Edsall could not be reached for comment because he was going through his incentive-laden contract to see if there was a "carried a lead into the fourth even though we lost" bonus check coming. On Saturday night, the Huskies host the postgame party when they host 1-7 Living on Tulsa Time.
4. Boiling Green State (1-7)
In a sly move, #MACtion will try to undercut the impact of all of the above, when the Falcons host fellow 1-7 State of Kent on Tuesday night, fittingly, Halloween Eve. Then, like the Great Pumpkin, they will emerge from the darkness of that game to face another likely one-time winner, the Central Michigan Chippy-was.
5. Colora-duh (5-3)
Less than a month ago the Buffa-noes were 5-0 and talking about pulling off the impossible by crashing the College Football Playoff party. Now they are 5-3 and in the Coveted Fifth Spot after accomplishing something even more impossible: blowing a 28-point lead and surrendering Bottom 10 stalwart Oregon State's first Pac-12 road win in four years.
Happy Groundhog Day eve or for those so disposed: the eve of woodchuck hunting.
How to Cook a Groundhog. Most recipes recommend parboiling the groundhog as Step One. Then it can be prepared it in any of the following ways: Put it in a pot with potatoes and carrots and onions and simmer into a delicious stew. Bake it in the oven in a brown paper bag, which will absorb the grease and seal in the juice. Add sweet potatoes to the sack if you wish.
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