Their wins: over 1-3 Nevada, over 2-3 FIU, who lost today to Connecticut 51-10, over 3-2 1-AA Villanova, who lost 51-33 at Monmouth.
Their losses: at home to no. 2 Oregon, at one of the consensus most awful teams in major conference football, previously winless, dysfunctional UCLA, who fired their coach two weeks ago.
PSU is ranked seventh. They will be ranked when AP's new top 25 comes out tomorrow. They will be ranked tomorrow based on precedent. It's just about unheard of for the pre-season no. 2 and current 7 to fall completely out of the top 25. AP's voters are the crème de la crème, the fairest, the most honored, the most knowledgeable. The choosers are the chosen. There are only 66 of them in the land. Besides conservative precedent, besides "We just don't do that" probity, besides human meekness in confessing error--put aside all of those things, as they really should, for those of this elite 66 who vote Penn State tomorrow, what passes before their all-seeing eye and passes the eye test, what specific articulable qualities, in play, for it cannot be in wins, do they see in PSU's body of work through five games that justify their vote?