The game hasn’t even started yet, but score one for the Sun Devils, apparently.

When The Daily Wildcat’s editorial leaders realized that we’d been essentially “punk’d” with a fake story — one that admittedly did appear both online and in print — planted by a crafty quartet of Arizona State University students, our initial reaction was one of frustration, disappointment and, well, embarrassment.

We pursued a story about a made-up “Proposition 200,” which allegedly would have let Mexican students go to the UA and pay in-state tuition. Unfortunately, that story was completely false, right down to our laughable misspelling of one of the supposed students’ fake names in the photo caption.

We dropped the ball on this one. Sure, the ASU students who started the prank gave us fake information, but really it is on the staff of the Daily Wildcat to do the single most important job in journalism — verify. We failed miserably.

As a result, we are taking a close look at our reporting and editing processes to make sure this doesn't happen again. We removed the story from our website because, frankly, it was false.

We screwed up. Yes we're ashamed, but we aren't going to hide it. Rather, we applaud the ASU students who pulled this off. A proposition to give the UA back to Mexico — signed by UA students — probably would be pretty funny (if only we were ASU fans).

Here's hoping a big win on Saturday will settle the score. Go Cats!