ESPN - No less than eight Power 4 coaches have been relieved of their duties as of the writing of this week’s rankings. That count hits an even dozen when you include the jobs lost in the Gang of 6 leagues, as we always do around here.

1. UMass (0-8)

The Minutemen 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 felt like a surefire PFOW doubleheader, but Acrimonious had Akron to win three games. However, the next opponent, Northern Illinois has hovered between the Bottom 10 Waiting List and the actual Bottom 10 all season, even earning us a mention in a recent write-up about the team’s woes since beating Notre Dame, which happened on Sept. 7, 2024, but with the Huskies’ record sitting at 8-11 since then, it feels more like Sept. 7, 1924.

2. Sam Houston (0-7)

Speaking of Pillow Fights, with all due respect to the Bearkats’ upcoming Halloween costume contest with the Cajun-speaking kin of Louisiana, our focus is already on the next weekend’s cruise west to compete with ...

3. Oregon State (1-7)

The Beavs spent their bye week celebrating their Week 8 win over the Lafayette Leopards and resting up for Phase 1 of their in-season homeand- home with fellow 2Pac member Wazzu. But in between those two games are matchups with Sam Houston and another Bottom 10 flirt, Livin’ on Tulsa Time.

4. Nevada (1-7)

The Woof Pack’s past six games were 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 San Jose 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 down to the floor to play the new Burt Reynolds-themed slot machines.

5. LSU (5-3)

After spending more than a decade working tirelessly to somewhat successfully repair his onetime Notre Dame public image of being about as huggable as a cactus, last summer Brian Kelly hired an image consultant to help him get his efforts over the top. Unfortunately, it was a former NASCAR PR exec from the late 2000s. That’s like hiring one of the guys from the lookout tower of the Titanic to help you steer your yacht out of the sales dock.

6. Georgia State (1-7)

Georgia State Not Southern lost back-toback Pillow Fights of the Week, to Georgia Southern Not State and the South Alabama Redundancies. It was the first time a Bottom 10 team had accomplished such a feat since ... checks notes ... Penn State last month.

7. Charlotte (1-7)

I love this time of year on cable television because all the networks start running midweek nighttime Halloween marathons. Like Hulu showing all the Alien movies. Or AMC showing the Friday the 13th series. Or the ESPN networks showing Charlotte 49ers football.

8. Tennessee State (1-6)

Speaking of stuff jumping out from the dark and scaring the bejesus out of us, make sure you carry a flashlight into the shadows of Week 13. That’s when MTSU hosts Sam Houston State.

9. Boston College (1-7) If Wake Forest can play North Carolina and NC State can play Virginia as nonconference games against in-conference opponents, then why can’t we add a mid-December non-ACC, Bottom 10-sanctioned #goacc Mega Bowl between the BC Headache Powders and the 2-5 UNC Chapel Bills? I imagine a bunch of New Englanders at the front end of their winter’s Sam Adams-fueled hibernation might have some things they’d like to say to Coach Belichick if he came to Newton for the holidays.

10. Oklahoma State (1-7)

Full disclosure, we were going to put Livin’ on Tulsa Time in this spot after Tulsa lost to Temple, one month after losing to Tulane, meaning that TU lost to both TU and TU, the second in OT. But then we remembered that one of TU’s TW’s (two wins) came at OSU, which just lost to TTU by 42.

Waiting List: Livin’ on Tulsa Time, Colorado State, Kentucky, Arkansas, South Alabama, San Jose State, UTEP, West Virginia, Northern Illinois, EMU, Wisconsin Badgers, Akron, UNC Chapel Hill, the USC-Notre Dame series ending.