Trying to do a Sun Devil of a job

Erickson vows to build ASU back up the 'right' way

By kerry eggers

The Portland Tribune, Mar 3, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

JED JACOBSOHN / GETTY IMAGES

Dennis Erickson says he knew Arizona State might struggle last season, and the Sun Devils did. But he expects the football program to turn around soon.

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TEMPE, Ariz. – The view from Dennis Erickson’s office on a Saturday morning shows clear blue skies above the expanses of Sun Devil Stadium.

It’s an impressive scene that gets better as Erickson takes a visitor through the football offices and meeting and video rooms and a medical unit with a full-time doctor and nutritionist. And then finally, down to the weight-lifting and workout areas and the players’ lounge and the newly renovated locker room.

Combine that with the bubbled indoor facility across the way and the other first-class athletic venues and the school’s tradition and the glorious weather in the Valley of the Sun and it paints a perfect picture – perfect, that is, until you consider Arizona State’s record last season.

The Sun Devils were 5-7 overall and 4-5 in Pac-10 play in Erickson’s second season at the ASU helm.

It was a rude awakening after Erickson took his first team to 10-3 mark and a share of the Pac-10 championship and won conference coach-of-the-year honors.

Many on the Arizona State message boards were less than forgiving with the team or its coach last season, which caused Erickson to lose very little sleep.

“I don’t pay any attention to those chat boards,” says Erickson, proving his point with the fractured nomenclature of the computer-challenged. “They’re so ridiculous. Some of my assistants look at them, and the stuff people write ... I tell them, ‘Why would you guys ever read those things? Those people don’t count.’

“That stuff doesn’t bother me. It never has and it never will. People are going to say what they want to say, but we have a plan. I’ve been around a long time and have been pretty successful. We have great boosters here and a real solid alumni group that knows what we’re doing and is very supportive.”

Nobody was more unhappy about Arizona State’s 2007 campaign than its coach. A losing season is unacceptable to Erickson under any circumstances.

“Haven’t have very many of those,” he says.

Just three in 20 seasons – 3-7-1 at Washington State in 1987, 5-6 at Oregon State in 2001 and 4-8 at Idaho in 2006.

The overall ledger shows a career record of 163-75-1, a pair of national championships at Miami and a reputation as a coach who makes things better in a hurry wherever he sets down.

So when Erickson’s first Arizona State team started 8-0 and wound up sharing the Pac-10 crown with Southern Cal, expectations hit the sky for a 2008 team that returned quarterback Rudy Carpenter.

The early 2007 success against a relatively weak schedule was like fool’s gold, Erickson says.

“We had a lot of seniors on that team, a lot of them offensive linemen,” he says. “Our schedule was so good, and we wound up winning several times at the end of games. Oregon State was better than we were; we just made some plays at the end. Same thing with Washington and California. We started believing and playing pretty well. We had a chance to win at Oregon but lost, and then SC knocked our hats off. But it was a good season.”

Erickson says he knew the Sun Devils weren’t going to be as good as projected last season, in part because there remained few veteran O-linemen. A 23-30 overtime loss to Nevada-Las Vegas at home in the third game sent them on a six-game losing streak.

“The loss to Vegas really hurt us,” Erickson says. “You can’t lose games you’re supposed to win at home. Then we had to play Georgia the next week, and our schedule was brutal – the opposite of the previous year. We played Cal and SC pretty good on the road, but then we were on a tailspin. We had a chance to beat Oregon State up there – that was a hell of a game, and a win would have turned things around.”

Erickson pauses, then shakes his head.

“Our league is hard,” he says. “We were very young. We played 11 true freshmen last year. But really, there’s no excuse. We should have been better than we were. We didn’t play well; we didn’t coach well. That’s just how it was.”

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