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Inspirational thought of the week:

There’s a house honey, way across town
People coming from miles around
Put on your pretty red dress
Let’s go see about this mess
That’s it, baby let’s git
And go way far upon the hill

We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun
We gonna greet the risin’ sun
All night long we gonna ball
Until we hear yo mama call
That’s it, baby let’s git
And go way far upon the hill

There’s a thrill upon the hill
Let’s go, let’s a-go, let’s go

— “Let’s Go” Hank Ballard and The Midnighters

Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, currently stowed away in a storage container on the freighter ship carrying Desmond Howard’s pocket squares to Ireland for “College GameDay,” we are ready to be resurrected from our winter/spring/summer football hibernation. Now let’s hope the teams on the list you are about to receive are ready to do the same.

Same. That’s a word that we won’t use much during the 2024-25 (like, way into ’25) college football season. Realignment has bankrupted Rand-McNally. The transfer portal has been like a merry-go-round hooked up to Max Verstappen’s RB20, the spring model. And when December arrives, it will bring with it a 12-team College Football Playoff that is designed to finally make everyone happy and will likely make no one happy.

That’s why the arrival of the Bottom 10 feels like a warm hug from your grandma. It’s still the same it’s always been. It’s familiar. It’s soft. It smells a little like eggs. But in a world that feels as unsettled as Tim Legler in an L.A. earthquake, it is also the anchor we need … even if the teams who brought it to us always forget to pull that anchor off the bottom of the ocean before attempting to sail. Y’all better get going. Dez needs his squares.

With apologies to Napoleon McCallum, John Paul Jones and Steve Harvey, here are the preseason Bottom 10 rankings for 2024.


Ty Pennington’s alma mater joins the ranks of FBS and thusly adds its name to the prestigious Annowls, er, Annals of Bottom 10 Owls, taking their head-turning perch on a dry-rotted tree branch alongside Temple, Rice and FA(not I)U.


The Warhawks bring in new head coach Bryant Vincent, who immediately felt a draft in his office. When he traced the air leak into the locker room, he discovered a transfer portal exit tunnel hidden behind a Louisiana-Monroe schedule poster, almost like he was the warden in “The Shawshank Redemption.”


The Golden Flashes, winners of one game in 2023, will spend three of their first four weekends traveling to Pitt, Tennessee and Penn State. The good news is the school will receive large checks for those trips. The bad news is it will end up spending most of that money on BenGay and Band-Aids.


Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but Akron travels to Kent State on Nov. 19 for what could be the Bottom 10 Pillow Fight of the Century of the Year. So, go on and circle it. In crayon.


Apparently, it wasn’t enough for the Wolverines to win the national title or even to dominate the box office alongside “Deadpool.” Instead, Go Blue has decided to go all-in on a public thumbing of their collective Big House noses at the NCAA, whether it be departed head coach Jim Harbaugh at the news conference podium in Los Angeles or the decision to defiantly invite him back for the season opener after he’d been handed a show-cause by the folks in Indianapolis. I’m no expert on thumbing one’s nose, but I am a bit of an expert on the Wolverine, and no one should ever thumb their nose using adamantium claws.


The Minutemen will play their last season as an independent before moving to #MACtion in 2025. But wait just a, well, minute here. If you’re a Minuteman, isn’t fighting for independence like your whole thing?


The second flock of Owls in our rankings will play former Bottom 10 stalwart-turned-bowl regular R.O.C.K. in the UTSA during Week 13. Why is that significant? Because UTSA hosts Kennesaw State in Week 1 … visits Rice in Week 7 … and welcomes FAU in Week 8 … which means in 2024 the Roadrunners will go beak-to-beak with all four FBS Owls. So, do they have to play all those games at night?


New Minors head coach Scotty Walden led a winning program in FCS at Austin Peay, where the for-real school cheer is “Let’s go Peay!” Now he’s going to be walking around the Sun Bowl shouting, “Let’s go U-T-E-Peay!” which sounds like a condition one might need to take to their urologist.


This spot came down between a pair of #MACtionites in Baller State and the Buffalo Bulls Not Bills. The Cards have been in the Bottom 10 deck ever since 2015, the last of Pete Lembo’s five seasons in Muncie. Now he’s head coach at Buffalo. The teams play Nov. 12. Until then, the Bottom 10 status of both will likely be in, yes, Lembo.


The prodigal Panthers return. Back in 2014, this team was the first champ of a Ryan McGee-chosen Bottom 10. However, they eventually turned the Atlanta street corner and became semi-annual bowl visitors under head coach Shawn Elliott, including last season’s 7-6 squad that won the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. But Elliott shockingly left the team two days into spring practice and his Georgia State roster jumped into the portal like it was a Six Flags Over Georgia waterslide. So, who did State Not Southern hire to take over? Dell McGee. Are we related? No. Are we family? Now we are, yes.

Waiting list: Charlotte 3-and-9ers, EC-Yew, Buffalo Bulls Not Bills, Sam Houston we have a problem, Fa-La-La-La-La Tech, State of New Mexico and New Mexico State, UCan’t, maps … all of them.

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Sources: Red Sox deal Devers to Giants in stunner

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Sources: Red Sox deal Devers to Giants in stunner

The San Francisco Giants are acquiring All-Star slugger Rafael Devers from the Boston Red Sox, sources confirmed to ESPN’s Jeff Passan on Sunday evening.

The Giants are sending starter Jordan Hicks and 23-year-old lefty Kyle Harrison, among others, to Boston in exchange, sources said.

Devers, 28, is in just the second season of a 10-year, $313.5 million contract he signed to stay in Boston in January 2023, however his relationship with the team suffered a significant blow after the star third baseman was reportedly blindsided by a move to designated hitter in the spring.

Tensions flared again last month after Devers refused an offer from the team to move him to first base after starting first baseman Triston Casas was ruled out for the season with a knee injury.

It reached a point where Red Sox owner John Henry met with the disgruntled star, making a rare trip to meet the team on the road and smooth things over after Devers’ pointed comments about the request to switch positions again.

Hicks and Harrison give a pitching-starved Red Sox team more depth on their staff while Devers provides a huge boost to a middling Giants offense.

Devers has more than 200 career home runs to his name and has a .894 OPS for Boston this season.

The deal was first reported by Fansided.

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Ohtani’s pitching return might be coming soon

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Ohtani's pitching return might be coming soon

Shohei Ohtani‘s pitching debut for the Los Angeles Dodgers might be quickly approaching.

Manager Dave Roberts told reporters Sunday that Ohtani would throw another simulated game in the coming days that could “potentially” be his last one, and a source told ESPN’s Buster Olney that Ohtani should join the Dodgers’ rotation “sooner rather than later,” potentially within the week.

Ohtani took a big step forward during his most recent simulated game at Petco Park on Tuesday, throwing 44 pitches over the course of three innings against a couple of lower-level minor league players. Ohtani’s fastball reached the mid- to upper-90s, and he exhibited good command of his off-speed pitches in what amounted to his third time facing hitters. Afterward, Roberts said there was a “north of zero” chance Ohtani could join the rotation before the All-Star break.

Because of his two-way designation, the Dodgers can carry Ohtani as an extra pitcher, which means he can throw two to three innings and have someone pitch after him as a piggyback starter. At this point, it seems that is the Dodgers’ plan.

The Dodgers’ pitching staff has again been plagued by injury, with 14 pitchers on the injured list, including four starting pitchers the team was heavily counting on for 2025 — Blake Snell, Tony Gonsolin, Roki Sasaki and Tyler Glasnow.

If Ohtani returns in July — the likely outcome at this point — he will be 22 months removed from a second repair of his ulnar collateral ligament.

The update isn’t as optimistic for Sasaki. He paused his throwing program and is set for a lengthy layoff. Sasaki has not pitched in a game since May 9 and is not part of the team’s long-term pitching plans this season.

“I think that’s what the mindset should be,” Roberts said. “Being thrust into this environment certainly was a big undertaking for him, and now you layer in the health part and the fact he’s a starting pitcher, knowing what the build-up [required to return] entails … I think that’s the prudent way to go about it.”

Sasaki, 23, went 1-1 with a 4.72 ERA in eight starts after joining the Dodgers from the Pacific League’s Chuba Lotte Marines, averaging less than 4⅓ innings per start. He walked 22 and struck out 24 in 34⅓ innings, and his fastball averaged 95.7 mph, down 3-4 mph from his average in Japan.

Roberts said Sasaki was pain free when he resumed throwing in early June, but the pitcher was shut down after feeling discomfort this past week. Sasaki recently received a cortisone injection in the shoulder; Roberts said no further scans are planned.

“I don’t think it’s pain,” Roberts said. “I don’t know if it’s discomfort, if it’s tightness, if he’s just not feeling strong, whatever the adjective you want to use. That’s more of a question for Roki, as far as the sensation he’s feeling.

“He’s just not feeling like he can ramp it up, and we’re not going to push him to do something he doesn’t feel good about right now.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Judge 1-for-12 as NY swept: Got to swing at strikes

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Judge 1-for-12 as NY swept: Got to swing at strikes

BOSTON — Aaron Judge blamed himself for swinging at pitches outside the strike zone as the New York Yankees were swept in a three-game series against the Boston Red Sox.

“You got to swing at strikes,” Judge said after going 1-for-12 in the series, which Boston completed with a 2-0 victory on Sunday.

Judge struck out three or more times in three straight games for only the third time in his major league career.

“That usually helps any hitter when you swing at strikes,” Judge added. “Definitely some pitches off the edge or off the edge in, you know, taking some hacks just trying to make something happen.”

Judge had a tying solo homer in the opener Friday night but struck out nine times as the Yankees were swept in a series for the first time this season.

New York scored only four runs in the three games, matching its fewest in a three-game series at Fenway Park, on June 20-22, 1916 and on Sept. 28-30, 1922.

“It’s very hard,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said of facing Judge. “He’s so good at what he does. We used our fastballs in the right spots, we got some swing and misses.”

“Throughout the years we’ve been aggressive with him,” Cora added. “Sometimes he gets us, sometimes we do a good job with that. It’s always fun to compete against the best, and, to me, he’s the best in the business right now.”

Judge’s major league-leading average dipped to .378.

“I don’t think much of it,” teammate Ben Rice said. “If I could have that guy hitting every single at-bat even if he’s not at his best, I would do it. I’m sure he’ll bounce back. He’ll be all right.”

Judge faced Garrett Whitlock with two on in the eighth Sunday and bounced into an inning-ending double play.

“He’s one of the greatest hitters in the world,” Whitlock said. “It’s special to watch him play and everything. We tried to execute and had some execution this weekend.”

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