Pollspeak has learned that Mike DiRocco inadvertently turned in the wrong ballot for the 'week 3' AP Poll.  He tried to send a corrected ballot afterwards, but it wasn't counted.  The AP Poll ran on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011 with the mistakes included.

Mike DiRocco, an AP Voter and sportswriter for the Florida Times Union in Jacksonville, Florida, mistakenly turned in his week three AP College Football Poll ballot with some mistakes.  The most notable is that he ranked Missouri over Arizona State.  He was the only AP voter (out of 60) to do this, and this is what led Pollspeak to catch the mistake.  On Saturday, the Sun Devils had beaten the Tigers 37 to 30 in overtime.  Not only did DiRocco rank Missouri over Arizona State, but he ranked Missouri highest in the nation at No. 15 and didn't rank Arizona State at all.  You can see his complete ballot as it was published on Sunday HERE.

Pollspeak contacted DiRocco, and he said, "Posting error, but partly my fault. I had written the asu-mizzou score down wrong in my notes. I realized the mistake after I sent the ballot so I re-did it and sent it again.  I sent them (AP) the corrected ballot and they confirmed the got it."

However, it seems the AP either received it too late or still posted the old ballot by mistake.  We are still awaiting a response from the AP.  Pollspeak learned about the discrepancy in DiRocco's ballot by comparing his AP ballot to what he thought was his ballot in his BLOG.   We'll post both ballots below as well.  By comparing to the one used in the AP, you can see the main differences are:

1. Missouri was supposed to be No. 24 instead of No. 15.
2. Arizona State was supposed to be No. 19 instead of unranked.
3. USC should have been Unranked instead of No. 24.

There are some other minor changes, and this would have made some small shifts in the final AP Poll, but the most notable is that Missouri would have received 14 points in the AP instead of 23.  However, there would have been no major shifts in the top 25.  So the mistake was relatively harmless, although embarrassing to DiRocco.  As he wrote, "Great. So I made a national screw up."

Since we broke this story (about 10 minutes ago), the AP has updated DiRocco's ballot online to his new ballot.  However, the AP Poll was still released with the mstaken ballot calculated in.  We are waiting to hear from the AP if they will be releasing an updated version of the AP Poll.

Mike DiRocco's intended Ballot:

1. Oklahoma

2. Alabama

3. Boise State

4. LSU

5. Florida State

6. Stanford

7. Wisconsin

8. Nebraska

9. Oklahoma State

10. Virginia Tech

11. Texas A&M

12. Oregon

13. Arkansas

14. South Carolina

15. Ohio State

16. Baylor

17. Michigan State

18. TCU

19. Arizona State

20. Florida

21. Michigan

22. Mississippi State

23. West Virginia

24. Missouri

25. Texas

Mike DiRocco's Ballot as it Appeared in the AP Poll:

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