The Bottom Ten/Preseason Q&A
By Gaylon Kent – America’s Funniest Guy™
With college football still starting a week before the Week 1 survey, your Bottom Ten pollsters dusted off their bar tabs a week early to bring you the now-traditional Bottom Ten Preseason Q&A.
Q: How long before major division NCAA college football collapses and itself becomes a legitimate Bottom Ten entry?
A: It might take a while, but the idea is not preposterous. Consider this: every element of major college football and basketball – coaches, players, schools, conferences, and networks – are in this for the same reason: to make as much money as possible. There is no common element that bonds everyone except strafing the marketplace for every possible dollar. It will eventually crush itself.
Q: How do you see the College Football Playoff structure ending up?
A: You’ve got to be kidding; your Bottom Ten pollsters don’t do predictions, only post-mortems. We will say this, though: the inmates are running the asylum now, with the Big Ten and SEC ultimately responsible for coming up with something, which is kind of like letting the Yankees and Dodgers select who makes the baseball playoffs every year.
Honestly, Bottom Ten pollsters are “pretty sure” the CFP can do whatever it wants as long as the national championship game is played on New Year’s Day at the Rose Bowl, a plan so wonderful and logical it has zero chance whatsoever of ever happening. Unless it can guarantee everyone a pile of cash, then everyone will be for it.
Q: Are you going to continue to pick on winless smaller schools?
A: Of course we are! The Continental Cup – issued to the team with the longest all-division losing streak in NATO – remains a coveted piece of Bottom Ten hardware.
Q: Are you going to continue to pick on the service academies?
A: Of course we are! The Sgt Bilko Trophy – symbolic of service academy lousiness – remains a coveted piece of Bottom Ten hardware.
Q: Is Don Criqui returning for another season of This Is Don Criqui Reporting, highlighting the second-worst NFL matchup of the week?
A: Of course he is! Long a homage to a Hall of Fame announcer and personal favorite of your Bottom Ten pollsters, the This Is Don Criqui Reporting leadline is ready for duty.
Q: Have the title sponsors for the college and NFL championship trophies onboarded for this season?
A: Yes, indeedy, and there have been no changes. The ESPNCup will still be awarded to the collegiate Bottom Ten champion, and Dan Henning still graces The Dan Henning Trophy, symbolic of NFL ineptitude.
Q: How’s the NFL race shaping up this year?
A: Six (6) teams finished with four (4) or fewer (fewer) wins last season, a third of them from the AFC South. So you’ve got to figure any of those four (4) teams will make a run at Bottom Ten glory this year. Or, as likely as not, all four (4). Also, this could be the year the Cincinnati Bengals shed the moniker of the Worst Team Never To Win the Bottom Ten Title. Also, toward the end the season, Bottom Ten pollsters “strongly suspect” there will be one or two teams within shouting distance of both Bottom Ten glory and an NFL playoff berth.
Q: You didn’t put much work into that, did you?
A: No, no we didn’t. But if the years covering the dregs of the NFL have taught us anything – and they may very well have not – it’s that you exclude the Bengals and the AFC South at your peril.
Q: Is Jaguars owner Shad Khan still holding coaching staff families hostage?
A: No, the coaching staff family members he was holding pending a finish on the coveted Bottom Ten medal stand have all been released. Khan has announced that 2025 is “fresh slate” and expressed hope the Jaguars will earn a medal stand berth without having to resort to hostage taking.
Editor’s Note: the Week 1 NCAA and NFL surveys will move next week.
