The Penn State Nittany Lions opened the 2025 regular season as the No. 2 team in the Associated Press poll and one of the top contenders to win the national championship. Going into Week 7, they are not even going to be ranked.
Penn State fell completely out of the top 25 after its second consecutive loss on Saturday, dropping a stunning 42-37 decision to a UCLA team that was playing with an interim coaching staff and seemed to be at a real risk of going 0-12 this season before that win.
Penn State’s ranking drop is shocking, but justified
Going from No. 2 to unranked in a span of six weeks is largely unprecedented in college football, but it’s really hard to argue against it for this Penn State team.
When the Nittany Lions lost their first game of the season a week to Oregon, it was concerning only because it was Penn State following its same old narrative: Win the games it should win, lose to whatever top team it is playing.
It continued head coach James Franklin’s inability to beat the type of top-tier teams it needs to beat in order to finally break through and win a championship. We’ve seen this from Penn State for pretty much all of Franklin’s tenure.
The assumption was that Penn State would keep winning the next few games against UCLA, Northwestern and Iowa before losing the Ohio State game and then closing out the season with wins against everybody else to go to 10-2. That is what Penn State does. That is the narrative.
But losing to UCLA busted that narrative. Now, Penn State can not even say it is winning the games it is supposed to win. And now, every game on the schedule looks to be up for grabs. How could you think otherwise?
How could you also possibly give this team a top 25 vote if you are an AP voter? Penn State is going into Week 7 of the season and has not beaten a single Power Four program. It sleep walked through a laughably soft non-conference schedule, is 0-2 against Power Four schools and just lost to arguably the worst FCS team (among all conferences, not just Power Four) in the country. And to top it off, UCLA only had two days to practice its new game plan.
Ignore the preseason rankings. Ignore the hype. Ignore the expectations. What about that actual resume is deserving of a spot in the top 25?
The answer is absolutely nothing. That is the result they received. It is the result they have earned. It is up to them to prove they are deserving of playing their way back in, and it should take a lot more than a win against Northwestern this week.
