Inspirational thought of the week:

Now the race is on
And here comes pride up the backstretch
Heartache's going to the inside
My tears are holding back
They're trying not to fall
My heart's out of the running
True love's scratched for another's sake
The race is on, and it looks like heartaches
And the winner loses all
- "The Race is On" by George Jones

Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, located in same room as the computer server that houses all the drafts of Lane Kiffin's reserve supply of clapback tweets, we are up on the wheel with a lead foot in the throttle like Ross Chastain at Martinsville Speedway. There's only one lap remaining in the race that is the 2022 college football regular season, and the white flag is out.

For those of you who don't follow NASCAR, we must explain that the white flag doesn't mean surrender, it means the end of the race is imminent and the next flag shown will be the checkers. In other words, there's one week left before we declare a champion. But this also isn't the Valleydale Meats 500, is it? It's the Bottom 10. And in this world, everything is a surrender flag, no matter how hard any man -- even a 12th man -- might try to disguise it as something else.

With apologies to Cornelius Tacitus, E. King Gill, former Tennessee State defensive end Joe "Turkey" Jones and Steve Harvey, here are the post-Week 12, pre-Thanksgiving Bottom 10 rankings.

1. UMess (1-10)

The Minutemen lost their second consecutive Pillow Fight of the Week, following up the heartbreak of their near win at Arkansas State with a solid showing in front of tens of fans at Kyle Field, losing to Texas A&M 20-3 after trailing by only 10 points for most of the second half. This despite at least two of their players spending the entire game unable to hear anything because the Corps of Cadets decided to reenact the Battle of Lexington and Concord during the pregame.