Rutgers beat reporter Brian Fonseca left Miami completely off of his Top 25 ballot and there hasn't yet been any explanation as to how, or why, that happened.
The AP Top 25 kept Miami at No. 7 on Tuesday, one spot behind Oregon, after a 45-6 win at Stanford. The gap between the Ducks and the Hurricanes was 17 points: Oregon had 1,422 and Miami had 1,405.
Naturally, two questions have come from this: If Miami wasn't left off, would the Hurricanes have went up in the rankings... and why would anybody leave them off their ballot in the first place?
All AP ballots: pic.twitter.com/xqCLQXM5IA
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) September 8, 2026
AP voter leaves Miami off their Top 25 ballot with no explanation
Last week Fonseca ranked Miami at No. 6, which makes this entire situation even more confusing. A sixth-place vote is worth 20 points on an AP ballot, where first is 25 points and 25th is 1 point (you get the idea). In theory, if you add those 20 points to this week's total, Miami sits at 1,425, which would be three points ahead of Oregon, and would slot the Canes into the No. 6 spot in the AP Poll.
Even an eighth-place vote would have been enough to pass the Ducks and a ninth-place vote would have tied them.
I think I found why Miami didn’t move up at all and is still at #7.
— CFB Kings (@CFBKings) September 8, 2026
AP voter Brian Fonseca has the Canes unranked in this week’s ballot.
He had them #6 last week and likely just forgot to include them.
The omission kept Miami at #7. If they were included in that ballot and… pic.twitter.com/Byt3ODsewh
If the sixth-place ranking he used last week is the one he meant to use again, that would have genuinely changed the rankings entering Week 2. The CFP rankings are the standard in college football nowadays, but this still means something. And with no explanation, fans are going to question if he should still hold his vote.
Fonseca has not publicly said he meant to leave Miami out, but after having the Hurricanes ranked No. 6 a week ago, and considering that they won by 39 on the road, there really isn't any other reasonable explanation than that he must have forgotten.
There were some instances last year where journalists had simply made mistakes due to filling out their ballots well into the early morning (if they were on the East Coast). In that case, the ballot would be submitted at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. and follow a 16-hour workday covering college football. Mistakes happen. But they must be acknowledged, and they can't happen twice.
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