The streak must end

Without wishing to re-open old wounds, probably the most disturbing statistic of the Dirk Koetter era was the "0-for-California" streak. It's not like he just lost consistently at USC, he also lost consistently at Cal (less excusable), UCLA (even less excusable) and Stanford (totally inexcusable).

Anyway, all that can end on Saturday night at the farm. With ASU starting the week as two-touchdown favorites, I'd call this game a "must win".

Why hasn't ASU been better?

Over the past 10 drafts (1997-2006), 2,522 players have been drafted from 243 different schools. 14 schools have had 38 or more players selected in that time frame:

Per NFL.com
1. Miami (Fla.), 67
t2. Florida State, 66
t2. Ohio State, 66
4. Tennessee, 61
5. Georgia, 54
6. Florida, 53
7. Nebraska, 52
t8. Southern Cal, 45
t8. Virginia Tech, 45
t10.Michigan, 43
t10.Wisconsin, 43
12. LSU, 40
13. Oklahoma, 39
14. Arizona State, 38

from reviewing that list you would think that ASU should have been consistently ranked in the top 20 over the last decade. Obviously that is not that case but the question is why? From a closer look at the numbers we can see that ASU has been living off of the 96 Rose Bowl team for those numbers. 17 of those players were eventually drafted.

Plummer 2nd 97
Redmond 3rd 00
Battle 7th 97
Paulk 3rd 99
Poole 4th 97
Jennings 7th 00
Roque 2nd 97
Ruegamer 3rd 99
Rodgers 3rd 97
Swada 6th 97
Amey 7th 98
Staat 2nd 98
Smith 3rd 97
VonderAhe 6th 97
Simmons 5th 98
Richardson 6th 98
Tillman 7th 98

Another group of 7 players during that time were recruited and signed by Bruce Snyder.

Flowers 1st 00
M Smith 2nd 00
T Smith 4th 00
J Ioane 4th 00
Archuleta 1st 01
Heap 1st 01
Leyva 5th 01

that makes 24 of 38 players that were recruited and played under Snyder for their entire time at ASU. Leaving 14 players that were drafted after Snyder was fired. 11 of those were actually recruited by Snyder.

Jones 1st 02
Peters 4th 02
Scott 4th 02
Kosier 7th 02
Suggs 1st 03
McDonald 4th 03
Bates 4th 03
Karney 5th 04
Walter 3rd 05
Hodgdon 3rd 05
Verdon 7th 05

That leaves an astonishing low number of 3 players that were signed and played only for Dirk Koetter.

Shivers 5th 04
Hagan 3rd 06
Williams 4th 06

I do realize that close to a dozen of Koetter's signings still in the program that will be drafted over the next 4 years. Still under Koetter its clear the talent level dropped. One could argue from these numbers that Koetter was actually a very good coach just not a great recruiter. Snyder on the other hand consistently brought in talent; he was just incapable of consistently sustaining a big time program.

The demise of Dirk Koetter

I've decided to post a post mortem on the coaching of Dirk Koetter at ASU. I want to list all of the criticisms that I've heard and read. I don't mean to be saying that I agree with these ideas. Here is my compilation:

1. The fan support had deteriorated to the point that visiting recruits were listening to shouts for his firing.
2. His loyalty to his coaches, such as Guy and Osborne, was hurting the team, because of low performances on their parts.
3. The unusual level of injuries and serious scandals caught up to him.
4. He was unable to win over the Phoenix media.
5. Koetter was cold and arrogant.
6. He continually asked the fans to wait one more year and his years ran out way to late.
7. Koetter was 2-19 against ranked teams and unable to perform in important games.
8. He couldn't motivate the team when necessary.
9. He was 0-12 in California.
10. He couldn't close on the big recruits.
11. He set the bar too high in his final season by saying he had an embarrassment of player talent.
12. He was just a WAC coach that found himself over his head in the bigtime.
13. He was weak in disciplining the players, as evidenced by the number of penalties, etc.
14. He couldn't hold on to talent as evidenced by all the quarterbacks that left the team.
15. He never took us to a BCS bowl.
16. Boosters were willing to pay the price to bring in a big name.

When one surveys the wide range of perceived causes, one would ask why his contract was renewed the last time. Don't worry! The person who renewed his contract also selected our current coach.

One need not feel bad for our old millionaire coach, but the one thing lost in the whole scenario in this poster's opinion, was the opinion of our players toward their coach. I keep asking why these young men would want to play for a fan base such as ours: A fan base that expresses that Koetter could not recruit at the PAC-10 level. A fan base that depicts its players as unmotivated and incapable of winning the big ones. Are these truly mediocre talents that will respond to the miracle touch of Dennis Erickson? We shall all see, won't we? Tune in next year.

What Dirk meant....

Certain cryptic comments made by Dirk Koetter after being fired have caused a mild stir in Sun Devil Nation. Koetter in his usual guarded self left much room for interpretation when he was quoted saying "The thing is, and I was guilty of this, a lot of people look at ASU on the outside and have this perception of what Arizona State is. And that's not what it is. You have to go on the inside for a while". Some Devil fans were outraged by these comments viewing them as a parting shot by Koetter. While others looked at it as a view to some of the issues that Koetter and now Dennis Erickson face as the head of the football program. A recent article from the San Diego Union Tribune about SDSU recruiting might give some insight into Koetter's remarks. The article and the accompanying chart show ASU as a school that has been reluctant to make exceptions when admitting student athletes who don't meet the normal admission standards of the school. Obviously this practice does not aid ASU in recruiting, but let’s not let Koetter off the hook based on this information. It's hard to make the argument that ASU admission standards are at such a high level that makes them non-competitive. There were much deeper issues that hurt ASU recruiting under Koetter. Too many local and elite recruits reported ASU interest level as mild. ASU was typically a non factor in major Los Angeles and Northern California area prospects. Sure there were some close calls such as with Brigham Harwell, but that was an exception the last 5 years. With many top instate recruits ASU seemed to get in late compared to other big schools. Gerell Robinson a top player for 2008 has already declared to Arizona. Moving forward the question is will Erickson have enough gravitas to affect change in ASU admission policy and in the larger sense will he be as successful in recruiting as he was at Oregon State and Miami.