The Bottom 10 Inspirational Thought of the Week:

I thought things had changed

I thought things looked plain

I thought I could see the light

I just could not decide

and all my shots went wide

I'd waited for that light so long

But now, now I know

I saw the distant glow

I heard a distant whistle blow

-- "The Light at the End of the Tunnel is a Train" by Whitey

Here at Bottom 10 headquarters, located in the humidor where Rece Davis stores his Andy Griffith Show VHS tapes, we've entered that time of the season where we feel a little bit like Ricky Bobby.

We don't know what to do with our hands.

As Thanksgiving weekend wraps up and the college football regular season nears its close, we aren't unlike the support crew at your local Turkey Day 10K road race. The winners crossed the finish line hours ago. But here we still stand, knowing that while thousands may have headed home long ago, there are 10 participants still out there on the course. Sure, we want to start packing things up, but we also don't want to be disrespectful to the people moving along at a crawl, knees swollen and a little bit of snot dripping from their noses. They run, limp and crawl toward the light they see up ahead, hoping it is the end of the tunnel, but knowing it's probably the Number 3 train headed in the opposite direction ... or Alabama.

As they finally drag themselves across the finish line, what do we do? Clap? Hug them? Call the paramedics? Dig a discarded participation ribbon out of the trash and pin it to their T-shirt? Or do we just yell, "Damn, y'all, it's about time! You're holding up shopping traffic!"

With apologies to John Stephen Akhwari and Steve Harvey, here's this week's Bottom 10.

As I've stood at that 2016 finish line, I have not been alone. This season we have picked up multiple Bottom 10 Section 13 field reporters eager to keep us here at Bottom 10 HQ abreast of the situation at our member schools. This weekend we heard from Twitter bud @SJCsouthpaw, who was in the stands for our Pillow Fight of the Week between the States of San Jose and Fresno.

The scene at Fres-no State for @ESPNMcGee's "Pillow Fight of the Week". Assuming the crowd is late arriving. pic.twitter.com/C6GIyLG4Lq — SJCsouthpaw (@SJCsouthpaw) November 26, 2016

Thankfully, those ominous leaning towers were just stadium lights and not War of the Worlds tripods attacking Bulldog Stadium. By the end, Southpaw went total Jim Cantore, braving the elements to bring us this final report.

Bottom 10 Pillow Fight update: Fres-no fumbles on 4th and ballgame at its own 15, loses 16-14. @ESPNMcGee pic.twitter.com/TcVKfYh8Rm — SJCsouthpaw (@SJCsouthpaw) November 26, 2016

As of Monday afternoon, he hadn't tweeted since. Dang, maybe those were tripods ...

Former Big East member Rutgers lost to former ACC member Maryland in the Yes, This Is Actually A Big Ten Conference Game And Not The Belk Bowl Classic.

The hay is in the barn for most of our Bottom 10 teams, but the Arma ... er, Bobcats still have one game remaining. They are riding seven straight losses, including five in which they've surrendered 40-plus points and three defeats to current or former 2016 Bottom 10 teams. A convincing defeat at home to Arkansas State might be enough to continue their meteoric fall. Do Bobcats eat hay?

All three directional Michigan teams are actually pretty good. My Hammy of Ohio is bowl eligible. Bowling Green and Northern Illinois are not. But just when I think the MAC has become a place I no longer recognize, I look at Buffalo, and I'm like Linus with his blanket.

5. The SEC Least

I once attended a rather redneck party where the main activity was to get everyone drunk, grease up a pig and then have us all chase the poor porker through a mud bog until someone finally caught him. The dude who won was named Earl. I'll never forget him standing there smiling with a front tooth chipped during the hog chase and his Diamond Rio T-shirt torn and soaked in what I hope was mud. Congratulations, Florida. You're Earl.

At the start of the season, I started a countdown in this space that would take us to what I believed at the time might be the Pillow Fight of the Millennium: the Minutemen's visit to Hawaii. Then Hawaii went and won six games and fouled that up. UMass, however, has held up its end of the deal.

The Nayhawks lost (won?) the 2015 Bottom 10 championship in a tiebreaker. This year they weren't able to make another run (fall?) at the title. Why? According to Chapter 13: Article X: Order 66 of the Bottom 10 rulebook, you only receive Fired Coach Bonus Points for getting your own coach fired, not getting Texas' coach fired.

Remember my story about chasing the greased pig? Well, an hour after we were done, we realized there was a guy that who had been mashed into the mud during the scramble and was so covered up we hadn't noticed him. It took two chains hooked up to my pickup truck to get him out. His name was Lonnie. If the winner of the SEC East is Earl then the last-place finisher in the ACC Coastal is Lonnie.

As I was writing this, I was thinking that former ECU head coach Ruffin McNeill, whose firing is still wildly unpopular in Pirate Nation, is sitting somewhere and laughing like Jack Sparrow. Then I realized he's at Virginia.

I keep hearing from Big Ten fans bragging about the possibility of having two teams in the College Football Playoff. Oddly, they aren't bragging about the possibility of having three teams in the Bottom 10. The Illini's 34-31 loss to Purdue on Oct. 8 is our version of Ohio State losing to Penn State.

Waiting list: Pur-don't (3-9), Ucan't (3-9), Rice (3-9), FA(not I)U (3-9), Marshall Blundering Herd (3-9), State of Kent (3-9), blaming the officials for ruining your Thanksgiving.