Brett McMurphy blasts AP voter for USF botch: ‘Somebody should lose their vote over this’

Earlier this week, USC beat writer Haley Sawyer had an oopsie filling out her AP Top 25 ballot. She elevated Florida to No. 14 in her poll, up two spots from her previous week’s ballot. She also omitted South Florida, who entered the AP Top 25 for the first time in seven years after beating the Gators last weekend.

Clearly, she missed the result of that intrastate clash. Whatever, it happens. AP voters make mistakes all the time and we move on.

But Sawyer didn’t really own up to the clear botch after it happened. Instead, she skirted around her mistake, telling a USC podcast, “I don’t want to go too much into my process or logic,” before mentioning, “There’s tons of people that vote on the AP poll. It’s not a perfect system, but at the end of the day, no matter who you pick, it does even out, because there’s so many people that vote.”

Well, that’s one way to say you don’t take your job as an AP voter too seriously. Obviously, the Sawyer situation has gained plenty of traction online. And Brett McMurphy, a national college football writer and AP voter himself, joined the You Better You Bet podcast to explain why Sawyer made her situation much worse by not owning up to her mistake.

“Someone should lose their vote over this.”@Brett_McMurphy shares his frustration with AP Top 25 voters not taking the poll seriously enough with @TheKostos & @FemiAbebefe. pic.twitter.com/qHiXYqKebn

— You Better You Bet (@YouBetterYouBet) September 10, 2025

“Just to blatantly act like [being an AP voter] is a joke, you shouldn’t be voting,” McMurphy said. “I mean, I don’t want to say somebody should lose their over this, but somebody should lose their vote over this. I would’ve had more respect if they had just said, ‘Look, it was a mistake. I didn’t realize USF won the game.’ Whatever, that happens. … It’s hard to keep track of everything going on. It’s why the coaches poll isn’t done by the coaches, it’s done by their PR directors.”

McMurphy goes onto mention that he knows other voters that have made egregious errors in the past, like leaving Ohio State off their ballot entirely when they were a consensus top-5 team in the country. No one came after them, because they owned the mistake and apologized.

The problem is suggesting the vote was intentional based on “process” or “logic.” It’s one thing to make a silly error in your ballot, it’s another thing to double down on it. And for that, Brett McMurphy believes there should be consequences.