The Daily Dose/December 16, 2025
By Gaylon Kent – America’s Funniest Guy™
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience.
HUT, HUT, HIKE: Today, the NCAA Bottom Ten Team of the Quarter Century column moves. As you will read more than once, it’s a column 25 (or 26) years in the making, coinciding nicely with how long we’ve been writing this column.
Like Sands Through An Hour Glass: Twenty-five years is a long time and a lot has happened during those two decades, but nothing has affected the NCAA Bottom Ten. The Daily Dose has taken long stretches off, The Diary of a Nobody has taken some days off, too, and even the NFL Bottom Ten has taken the occasional bye week, but nothing has gotten in the way of the college Bottom Ten: it has run every week, every season, since 2000, though all columns prior to 2016 have been lost.
A Warm, Personal Remembrance: We go way back with The Bottom Ten, to the original, by a Los Angeles Times columnist named Steve Harvey, and we can still remember reading it with Dad. Perhaps because we were a smart-ass kid, terms likes Error Force and Texas at El Intercepted Paso resonated with us, and years later, when we were working for an internet company and needed to produce moderately entertaining content, we started doing our own.
In The Beginning: The seeds for the Team of the Quarter Century column were sown in 2010, when we ran the Team of Double Aughts column – won by Duke – which, tragically, has been lost to the ages. We weren’t moved to do a column at the end of the second decade of the century, but longtime readers of this crap know we’ve been noting teams making pitches for team of the quarter-century honors for several years.
The Bottom Line: So here we are, two-and-a-half decades after the first one, still writing NCAA and NFL Bottom Tens for no other reason than we enjoy it. A lot. As we like to say, there are two (2) parts to a year, the time when we are writing The Bottom Ten and the time when we are not, and only the first part is worth a damn. We don’t anticipate being around for a Team of the Half Century column, so please, enjoy this one.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – Sparrow goes to the hotel’s holiday party. Today’s Diary.
It was the classic Yay/Boo situation at the hotel Christmas party tonite: Boo for not setting the alarm and showing up 90 minutes late…Yay for netting $150 out of the deal…
The Bottom Ten/NCAA Team of the Quarter Century – The column 25 (or 26) years in the making.
Zips were only fair-to-middling B-10 program until filing Notice of Intent for Team of Quarter Century run with three (3) consecutive one (1)-win seasons at start of last decade…
Black Knights of Confusion hampered all century by Defense Department regulation requiring Cadets – to better simulate changing of the guard in the field – to shout sentry general orders instead of audibles in game action.
Quakers responsible for Line of the Quarter Century, too, from the 2017 Week 9 column: “Team so bad squad has Nike logo on jerseys even though they are sponsored by Under Armour”.
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On This Date
Extra, extra, read all about it.
In 1773 – Members of the group the Sons of Liberty disguise themselves as Indians and board a ship in Boston Harbor and dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston Harbor. The protest was against British taxes without colonial representation in Parliament and the East India Company’s monopoly on tea. History refers to the incident as the Boston Tea Party and the exact location of the tea party remains a mystery.
In 1945 – The Cleveland Rams win the NFL title, defeating the Washington Redskins 15-14 at Cleveland Stadium. It was first of four NFL/Super Bowl titles for the Rams and their second in Cleveland, and was the third of five NFL second-place finishes for the Redskins, to go along with five titles. The temperature of -8° F held attendance to 32,000, and the Rams moved to Los Angeles the following season.
In 1989 – Billy Joel is at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the second and final week with We Didn’t Start the Fire. The song also peaked at #7 in Great Britain, was Billboard’s 35th-biggest hit of 1990, and won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. The song was from the album Storm Front, which was in its only week at #1 on Billboard’s album chart. The song was the third and most recent #1 for Joel.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
There is not much sense in setting one’s foot upon the road and not traveling the fullest possible distance.
James Madison
Answer To The Last Trivia Questions
Knowledge is power.
Billboard’s #1 song for 1975 was Love Will Keep Us Together by the Captain and Tennille, which spent four weeks at #1.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
Which team won the first NFL title? – Answer next time!
