College football in 10th place after Week 9: The hot seats are getting hotter
Inspirational idea for the week:
Take this job and pay it
I don’t work here anymore
My woman did the left
And he took all the reasons
I was working for
You better not try to stand in my way
While I’m out the door
Take this job and pay it
I don’t work here anymore
– “Take this job and pay it,” Johnny Beach
Here at Bottom 10 headquarters, tucked behind the wall of industrial-sized cooling fans used to keep Pete Thamel’s phone and a laptop labeled “Coaching Carousel News Breakers” from overheating and exploding like the Death Star, we’re following what seems like a good plan for anyone and everyone with even the tiniest line of intersection in a college football Venn diagram: Put on a hard hat and hide under our desks while everyone around us screams, “Timber!” With another FBS coach down.
At least eight Power 4 coaches have been relieved of their duties as of this week’s rankings. This number reaches into the dozens when you include the missing jobs in the 6-parsec gang, as we always do here.
It’s fitting that this all comes to a head right before Halloween. Because a year ago, I dressed up as a college football coach, circa 2007. “I’m a man! I’m 40 years old!” Mike Gundy. That night I was a little exhausted and didn’t realize I had placed my metal folding chair directly over a blazing fire pit and ended up burning my Cowboy Orange ass because, yes, I as Mike Gundy was inadvertently on a hot seat.
Oklahoma State and Brian Kelly have a chance to do the funniest thing ever pic.twitter.com/SFab173DGe
– Arrogant nation ✌🏻 (@FightOnRusty) October 27, 2025
With apologies to Ball State wide receiver Trey Firestone, former UCLA player Joseph Firebaugh, Syracuse defensive linemen Kevin Jobity and Steve Harvey, here are the post-Week 9 rankings from the bottom 10.
The Minuetmen took a break from their pillow of the week marathon, losing to Central Michigan by five wins. Now they hit a two-game stretch, which in the preseason looked like a surefire doubleheader in PFOW, but Akronmonious had Akrondacity to win three games. However, the next opponent, Northern Ill-ugh-noise, has been hovering between the top ten queue and the actual top ten all season, even earning us Reference in the last writing About the team’s woes since its win over Notre Dame, which happened on Sept. 7, 2024, but with the Huskies’ 8-11 record since then, it seems more like Sept. 7, 1924.
Speaking of pillow fights, with all due respect to the Bearkats’ upcoming Halloween costume contest with their Cajun-speaking Louisiana relatives, our focus is already on next weekend’s trip west to compete with…
The Beavs spent their bye week celebrating their Week 8 win over the Lafayette Leopards and resting up for their first home-and-home of the season with fellow 2Pac member Wazzu. But in between those two games are showdowns with Sam Houston and another top-10 flirtation, live on Tulsa time.
The Woof Pack’s past six matches 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 defeat and next week’s visit from SNO 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 and Casino in 1979 while my mom ran across the floor playing the new Burt Reynolds-themed slot machines.
After spending more than a decade working tirelessly to repair his public image at Notre Dame one day somewhat successfully, Brian Kelly last summer hired an image consultant to help him get his efforts to the top. Unfortunately, he was a former public relations executive at NASCAR from the late 2000s. This is like hiring one of the men from the control tower on the Titanic to help you steer your yacht off the sales dock.
Non-state Georgia lost back-to-back pillow battles this week, to non-state South Georgia and surplus labor South Alabama. It was the first time a top-10 team had accomplished such a feat since…Checks Notes…Penn State last month.
I love this time of year on cable TV because all the networks start running their nightly Halloween marathons midweek. Like Hulu, which shows all the alien movies. Or AMC showing Friday the 13th. Or ESPN showing Charlotte 49ers football.
Speaking of things that jump out of the dark and scare us, be sure to carry a flashlight into the shadows of 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, why can’t we add a mid-December non-AC, 10-penalized #goacc Mega Bowl between the BC Headache Powders and the 2-5 UNC Chapel Bills? I imagine a group of New Englanders on the verge of their Sam Adams-fueled winter slumber might have some things they’d like to say to Coach Belichick if he came to Newton for the holidays.
Full disclosure, we would have put Livin’ on Tulsa time in this spot after Tulsa lost to Temple, one month after it lost to Tulane, meaning TU lost to both TU and TU, their second loss in OT. But then we remembered that one of TW’s two wins for TU came at OSU, which had just lost to TTU by 42.
waiting list: Live in Tulsa Time, Colo-Doh State, Kan-Aki, Arkansaw, South Alabama Duplicates, San No-C State, UTEPid, Worst Virginia, North Ill-oh-Noys, EMU Emus, Wisconsin Bad-Gars, Akronmonius, UNC Chapel Bill, End of Series USC-Notre Dame.