Sports media is of course being stupid about the Heisman. Penix poor performance means little. Yes, it looks bad since it was against a bad opponent. But that's not how the Heisman works. You can stink against bad teams as long as your team still wins, if you have great performances against good teams that are on primetime TV.
USC defense is god-awful but if he throws for 6 TDs against them, the dumb media will be salivating all over him.
McCarthy and Harrison have no shot if Penix stays undefeated and has Oregon type performances against the ranked teams on UW schedule - unless one of them goes absolutely insane during The Game.
Unfortunately, Harrison already missed out on going crazy against ND because the media will always pay attention to that (see Desmond Howard)