Inspirational Thought of the Week:
Keep your hopes up my friend
It's easy to say
But if your hopes disappear
Just pretend you can build them again.
Look around
The grass is tall
The fields are ripe
It's spring in my life
The seasons change along with the landscape
Time of weaving in a tapestry
Won't you stop and remember me?
Look around
Leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
– “Winter's Misty Shadow” by Simon and Garfunkel (or The Bangles, depending on how old you are)
Here at the bottom ten's headquarters, located behind a telephone box used to raise money for the Free Marty Smith of Oxford fund, we take another look at the calendar and realize that it's conference championship weekend, which means it's time for the bottom 10 to do like Lane Kiffin and run for the exit in a shower of boos and middle fingers.
#Bottom10 The selection committee is currently meeting to determine the final rankings for the 2025 class, which will be announced Wednesday morning. pic.twitter.com/WdIvj25gNW
— Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) December 2, 2025
Thanks to an unprecedented coaching carousel that was so crazy we renamed it “Coaching Tilt,” the list of candidates for this year's “Top 10 Worst” Selection Committee grew faster than Brian Kelly's legal billable hours. The final lineup: myself, my father, Captain Morgan (aka my stepfather), Mike Gundy, current Northwestern Oklahoma defensive coordinator Jerry Glanville and former Texas State Armadillos head coach Ed “Straight Arrow” Gennero. As our voting began, we were joined by Sam Pittman, who pulled up to our meeting spot, a truck stop behind the Gaylord Texan Hotel where the CFP Fashion Jokes Committee was meeting, driving a shoebox Winnebago, blowing up a Skynyrd and towing a pontoon boat with the name “SS YESSIR” airbrushed on it.
We again relied on our FPI formula for the bottom 10 performance. No, it's not the ESPN Football Power Index, it's the Faux Pas Index. Because everyone loves math. (Editor's note: Except us. An earlier version of this ranking had a math error that has been corrected.)
Teams receive one point for each win, minus one point for each loss, minus one point for each loss on their longest losing streak of the year, plus a minus-10 bonus if that longest losing streak is currently active. We also subtract the number of points they gave up in the season from the number of points they scored, subtract or add points based on their difference in season turnover, and subtract their Weakness of Schedule (WoS) rating. If a team fires its head coach, 50 points are deducted, which is the Randy Edsall bonus for firing a coach.
Divide all of this by the number of games played and you get the 10 worst FPI scores. Since these are exact numbers, the results are undeniable. By hard numbers we mean that we've made the formula so complicated that it's too hard to challenge because it's not worth the effort.
With apologies to Tennessee wide receiver Deon Hardin, Mizzou running back Ahmad Hardy, Rice running back D'Andre Hardeman Jr. and Steve Harvey, here are the final rankings of the 2025 final 10 spots.
Victories: +0
Losses: -12
Longest losing streak: -12 (current -10)
Point differential: -330 (133 for, 463 against)
Turnover margin: -7
VoS: -91
Bonus for fired coach Randy Edsall: N/A
General: -450
Games played: 12
Summary index of the 10 most recent errors: -37.5
The Minuetmen made wet hay in the barn a full week early, playing their final game of the season on the Tuesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. As soon as they put this hay in the barn, they remembered that the Salem witch trials were taking place in Massachusetts and immediately burned the barn in an attempt to exorcise their 10 lower demons.
Victories: +1
Losses: -11
Longest losing streak: -9 (current -10)
Point differential: -264 (172 for, 436 against)
Turnover margin: -8
VoS: -70
Bonus for fired coach Randy Edsall: N/A
General: -371
Games played: 12
Summary index of the 10 most recent errors: -30.9
Niners officials approached the Bottom 10 committee to see if they could get bonus cool points for the fact that their record was 1-9 when Georgia paid them $1.9 million to play between the hedges. We told them no, but only after we approached UNCC math professors who assured us that the laws of natural numbers would not allow us to add something called “cool points” to something called the “oversight index.”
Victories: +2
Losses: -10
Longest losing streak: -8
Point differential: -241 (213 for, 454 against)
Turnover margin: +2
VoS: -104
Bonus for fired coach Randy Edsall: N/A
General: -359
Games played: 12
Summary index of the 10 most recent errors: -29.9
The Bearkats had a two-win campaign but were still completely outclassed by opponents who only had one win. How did they do it? Due to crappy skeleton strength and defenses that were attacked too often.
Victories: +1
Losses: -11
Longest losing streak: -11 (current -10)
Point differential: -230 (170 for, 400 against)
Turnover margin: -5
VoS: -30
Bonus for fired coach Randy Edsall: -50
General: -346
Games played: 12
Summary index of the 10 most recent errors: -28.8
A lot of people in the Stillwater area have told me I don't own the Cowboys, uh, sorry, the Cowboys rank pretty low. When we calculated the FPI, it supported the complainers with the same strength as their team.
5. Strip train
Marty said that if Kiffin hadn't taken the coveted fifth place again this week, he would have hit me over the head with the turkey he couldn't eat with his family on Thanksgiving because he had to go to Oxford and hold the microphone instead.
Victories: +1
Losses: -11
Longest losing streak: -9 (current -10)
Point differential: -217 (237 for, 454 against)
Turnover margin: -11
VoS: -66
Bonus for fired coach Randy Edsall: N/A
General: -323
Games played: 12
Summary index of the 10 most recent errors: -26.9
Just as arithmetic hurt OSU, it helped GSU, which jumped/fell from 2nd to 6th. It may not seem like much of an achievement, but for a team that last won a game over 80 days ago, you'll take any good news you can get.
Victories: +2
Losses: -10
Longest losing streak: -6 (current -10)
Point differential: -148 (222 for, 370 against)
Turnover margin: -4
VoS: -90
Bonus for fired coach Randy Edsall: -50
General: -316
Games played: 12
Summary index of the 10 most recent errors: -26.3
Easy, the loudest “How can we not get into the rating?!” #Bottom10 The 2025 lobbying crowd was Rams Nation. And when we did the math, they were right: Colorado jumped like a ram off the cliff from the waitlist into the canyon of nearly the top five and bottom. Now they've hired bottom 10 rehab pro Jim Mora, who has completely ruined what used to be the Chiefs vs. Eagles, “UMess vs. U-Can't” version of the game, inexplicably turning the Huskies into winners.
Victories: +2
Losses: -10
Longest losing streak: -7
Point differential: -135 (218 for, 353 against)
Turnover margin: -11
VoS: -60
Bonus for fired coach Randy Edsall: -50
General: -271
Games played: 12
Summary index of the 10 most recent errors: -22.6
The Beavers seemed to spend the entire season in a bizarre Beavers vortex. One of a pair of 2Pac Conference members, Oregon State beat its only league counterpart, Warshington State, in Week 10, but then promptly lost to Sam Houston. Then all the Beavers had to do was beat Wazzu again to leave the rankings for good, but they lost 32-8. Now they will do like all beavers and spend the winter not hibernating, but crammed into a clay hut along with other beavers, shaking and seeing who will have to swim out through the ice for food. In related news, we members of the Top Ten Selection Committee have been doing the same thing this week. We sent Mike Gandy out to get some food because his hair looks a lot like a beaver cut.
Victories: +2
Losses: -10
Longest losing streak: -5 (current -10)
Point differential: -85 (280 for, 365 against)
Turnover margin: -12
VoS: -109
Bonus for fired coach Randy Edsall: N/A
General: -229
Games played: 12
Summary index of the 10 most recent errors: -19.1
Representatives from the Minors crashed our committee meeting to remind us that while they understand they will likely need to be ranked, no matter what the math says, they should be ranked above or below Sam Houston because they beat the Bearkats head-to-head. But we didn't hear any of this, because when we say they disrupted our meeting, they literally disrupted our meeting. Paydirt Pete had to use his pick to pull the converted UTEP van from where it crashed into Pittman's pontoon boat trailer.
Victories: +2
Losses: -10
Longest losing streak: -10
Point differential: -88 (305 for, 393 against)
Turnover margin: -9
VoS: -54
Bonus for fired coach Randy Edsall: N/A
General: -169
Games played: 12
Summary index of the 10 most recent errors: -14.08
The Golden Beagles finished in a bottom-10 peloton that was more reminiscent of that scene in Oklahoma a few weeks ago when the Sooners got lost in the smoke outside the stadium and fell on top of each other, piling up like winter firewood. In the end, Arcanso and Pur-don didn't get too much of a Power 4 WoS boost, while Muddled Tennessee and No-vada both had the guts to win two of their last three games, reaching the 3-win Raise Hell Praise Dale mark and exiting the race. We started calculating FPIs for several other teams, but when our Texas Instruments calculator ran out of batteries, Coach Pittman, relieved that his former Hogs had missed the final cut, announced, “I'm going to the store, not to buy batteries, but to buy beer.” The meeting has been postponed.
Waiting list: Arkansaw battles former Petrinos, No-Wada, San No-Se State, Pur-Don, Tangled Tennessee State, Northern Ill-pah-noise, ULM (pronounced “Ulm”), conference tiebreakers requiring logarithmic rules.
