The Penn State Nittany Lions opened the 2025 common season because the No. 2 staff within the Related Press ballot and one of many prime contenders to win the nationwide championship. Going into Week 7, they aren’t even going to be ranked.
Penn State fell fully out of the top 25 after its second consecutive loss on Saturday, dropping a stunning 42-37 decision to a UCLA staff that was enjoying with an interim teaching employees and gave the impression to be at an actual threat of going 0-12 this season earlier than that win.
Penn State’s rating drop is surprising, however justified
Going from No. 2 to unranked in a span of six weeks is essentially unprecedented in faculty soccer, however it’s actually onerous to argue in opposition to it for this Penn State staff.
When the Nittany Lions misplaced their first recreation of the season per week to Oregon, it was regarding solely as a result of it was Penn State following its standard narrative: Win the video games it ought to win, lose to no matter prime staff it’s enjoying.
It continued head coach James Franklin’s incapability to beat the kind of top-tier groups it must beat with a view to lastly break by and win a championship. We have seen this from Penn State for just about all of Franklin’s tenure.
The idea was that Penn State would preserve profitable the subsequent few video games in opposition to UCLA, Northwestern and Iowa earlier than dropping the Ohio State recreation after which closing out the season with wins in opposition to everyone else to go to 10-2. That’s what Penn State does. That’s the narrative.
However dropping to UCLA busted that narrative. Now, Penn State can’t even say it’s profitable the video games it’s speculated to win. And now, each recreation on the schedule appears to be up for grabs. How may you assume in any other case?
How may you additionally presumably give this staff a prime 25 vote if you’re an AP voter? Penn State goes into Week 7 of the season and has not overwhelmed a single Energy 4 program. It sleep walked by a laughably mushy non-conference schedule, is 0-2 in opposition to Energy 4 colleges and simply misplaced to arguably the worst FCS staff (amongst all conferences, not simply Energy 4) within the nation. And to prime it off, UCLA solely had two days to follow its new recreation plan.
Ignore the preseason rankings. Ignore the hype. Ignore the expectations. What about that precise resume is deserving of a spot within the prime 25?
The reply is completely nothing. That’s the consequence they acquired. It’s the consequence they’ve earned. It’s as much as them to show they’re deserving of enjoying their means again in, and it ought to take much more than a win in opposition to Northwestern this week.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘1324276914788316’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
