College football Bottom 10 after Week 9: Hot seats getting hotter
Inspiring thought of the week:
Take this job and push it
I no longer work here
My wife left
And I took all the reasons
I worked for
You better not try to embarrass me
As I walk out the door
Take this job and push it
I no longer work here
— “Take this job and push it,” Johnny Paycheck
Here at Bottom 10 headquarters, located behind the wall of industrial-sized fans used to keep Pete Thamel’s phone and laptop labeled “Coaching Carousel News Breakers” from overheating and exploding like the Death Star, we follow what seems like a good plan for anyone with even the smallest line of intersection with the college football Venn diagram: wear helmets and hide under our desks while everyone around us screams “Timber!” as another FBS head coach goes down.
No fewer than eight Power 4 coaches have been relieved of their duties as of this week’s rankings. This figure even reaches a dozen if we include the jobs lost in the Gang of 6 Leagues, as we always do here.
It’s fitting that this all culminates right before Halloween. Because a year ago I dressed up as a college football coach, circa 2007 “I’m a man! I’m 40!” Mike Gundy. That night, I was a little overserved and didn’t realize that I had placed my metal folding chair directly over a steaming fire pit and ended up burning my butt off Cowboy Orange because, yes, as Mike Gundy, I was unknowingly in a hot seat.
Oklahoma State and Brian Kelly have the chance to do the funniest thing ever pic.twitter.com/SFab173DGe
– Arrogant Nation✌🏻 (@FightOnRusty) October 27, 2025
With apologies to Ball State receiver Trey Firestone, former UCLA kicker Joseph Firebaugh, Syracuse defensive lineman Kevin Jobity and Steve Harvey, here are the bottom 10 rankings after Week 9.
The Minuetmen took a break from their Pillow Fight of the Week marathon, losing to five-win Central Michigan. Now they hit a two-game stretch that in preseason looked like a surefire PFOW doubleheader, but Akronmonious had the Akrondacity to win three games. However, the next opponent, Northern Ill-ugh-noise, has been bouncing back and forth between the bottom 10 and bottom 10 all season, even earning us a mention in a recent article about the team’s woes since the win over Notre Dame, which happened on September 7, 2024, but with the Huskies’ record at 8-11 since then, it feels more like September 7, 1924.
Speaking of pillow fights, with all due respect to the Bearkats’ upcoming Halloween costume contest with the Kajun-speaking Louisiana parents, our focus is already on next weekend’s Western Cruise to rival…
The Beavs spent their bye week celebrating their Week 8 win over the Lafayette Leopards and resting up for Phase 1 of their season-long home-and-home matchup with fellow 2Pac member Wazzu. But between those two matches are matchups with Sam Houston and another Top 10 flirt, Livin’ on Tulsa Time.
The Woof Pack’s last six games have been lost by margins of 1, 15, 3, 34, 2 and 21, so expect this weekend’s trip to Utah State to be a single-digit loss and next week’s visit to San No-sé State to be a double-digit loss. It’s the best roller coaster in Reno since the one my parents put me and my brother on at the Circus Circus Hotel & Casino in 1979, while Mom ran to the floor to play the new Burt Reynolds-themed slot machines.
After spending more than a decade working tirelessly to successfully repair his former public image of Notre Dame being as cuddly as a cactus, last summer Brian Kelly hired an image consultant to help him take his efforts to the top. Unfortunately, he was a former NASCAR PR guy from the late 2000s. It’s like hiring one of the guys from the Titanic’s observation tower to help you steer your yacht out of the sales dock.
Georgia State Not Southern lost back-to-back pillow fights of the week, against Georgia Southern Not State and South Alabama Redundancies. It was the first time a Top 10 team accomplished such a feat since…check notes…Penn State last month.
I love this time of year on cable TV because all the networks are starting to do mid-week Halloween night marathons. Like Hulu showing all the Alien movies. Or AMC broadcasting the Friday the 13th series. Or the ESPN networks broadcasting Charlotte 49ers football.
Speaking of things that come out of the dark and scare us, be sure to carry a flashlight into the shadows in Week 13. That’s when MTSU hosts Sam Houston State.
If Wake Forest can play North Carolina and NC State can play Virginia as non-conference games against in-conference opponents, then why can’t we add a #goacc sanctioned non-ACC Bottom 10 Mega Bowl in mid-December between the BC Headache Powders and the 2-5 UNC Chapel Bills? I imagine a group of New Englanders, beginning their Sam Adams-fueled winter hibernation, might have some things they’d like to say to Coach Belichick if he came to Newton for the holidays.
Full disclosure, we were going to put Livin’ on Tulsa Time at this location after Tulsa lost to Temple, a month after losing to Tulane, meaning TU lost to both TU and TU, the runner-up in OT. But then we remembered that one of TU’s TWs (two wins) came at OSU, which just lost to TTU by 42.
Waiting list: Live on Tulsa time, Colora-duh State, Can’t-ucky, Arkansaw, South Alabama Redundancies, San No-sé State, UTEPid, Worst Virginia, Northern Ill-ugh-noise, EMU Emus, Wisconsin Bad-gers, Akronmonious, UNC Chapel Bill, the end of the USC-Notre Dame series.
