It was smooth sailing for Penn State to get to 3-0 with a glorified preseason schedule against non-power conference opponents, and with so many ranked teams losing ahead of them, the Nittany Lions rose to No. 13 in the country after Week 3.
Conference play brought rough seas for Matt Campbell’s operation, falling in his Big Ten debut 24-20 to Wisconsin, despite a pick-six and a +2 edge in the turnover department. It was an ugly loss and could lead to a free fall all the way out of the AP Top 25 when it is released on Sunday afternoon.
Penn State deserves to fall out of the AP Top 25
It’s rare to see a team fall from the brink of the top 10 all the way out of the poll. From Week 2 to Week 3, Texas A&M slid from No. 10 after a loss to Kentucky, but was backstopped at No. 23. However, the Aggies had a higher starting point for their fall and had a power conference win over Arizona State on their resume.
According to Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings heading into Week 4, Temple is the highest-ranked team of Penn State’s three wins, and the Owls are No. 95 of 138 FBS teams. Wisconsin was No. 55, and a loss to the Badgers is probably the most compelling data point on the Nittany Lions' resume. That’s rough. That team doesn’t deserve to be ranked. It doesn’t deserve to receive any votes.
Penn State might still be a top-25 team. This roster is probably somewhere around the 20th-best in the sport, especially with Koby Howard healthy. But from a strict resume viewpoint, there is nothing to latch onto there.
Matt Campbell’s group can easily change that, especially with a soft schedule in the Big Ten. They can climb back into the Top 25, but it’d be really hard to have them there right now.
The Nittany Lions’ only hope is that voters are too married to their priors
The only case for Penn State to stay ranked is that enough voters believed in this roster before the season. That probably isn’t the case because the team began the year at No. 18, not as a top-10 team. Still, those preseason opinions can loom large for many voters early in the season.
Most AP voters simply reorder from the week before, rather than entirely reevaluating and re-ranking. The fact that Penn State was at No. 13 gives a bit of a cushion for this fall to still land inside the top 25, especially considering that seven teams from the Week 3 top 25 lost on Saturday, and the No. 26 team, Washington, lost to Minnesota at home.
To have a top 25, you just have to rank 25 teams, and many voters may not feel comfortable with the selection they have. However, all of the other top 25 teams that lost in Week 4 have a Power Conference win on their resume already. Penn State is the only team in that group still lacking one, so the Nittany Lions are theoretically the easiest cut for teams like Oklahoma State, Kentucky, Boise State, and Virginia Tech, which are likely to jump into the mix.
Penn State has no business in this week’s top 25 with a 3-1 record and wins over Marshall, Temple, and Buffalo. Even Wisconsin, despite its lopsided defeat to Notre Dame in Week 1, objectively has a stronger resume than the Nittany Lions with the same record. The voters may throw Penn State a bone for one more week, but I don’t see it.
Prediction: Unranked
Add us as a preferred source on Google