This week’s Pac-12 stock report:
Falling: Arizona State football
We’ll start by saying that we don’t know if Arizona State actually violated NCAA rules by hosting recruits during what was supposed to be a COVID-related recruiting dead period.
And we’ll also acknowledge that guessing how the NCAA might rule is almost as fraught as guessing when the NCAA might rule.
But we know the NCAA has what Yahoo described as a “dossier” of material implicating the Sun Devils that includes screenshots and receipts.
We know that former ASU football staffers are willing to provide evidence to the NCAA.
We know that ASU’s hyper-aggressive recruiting tactics — again, they aren’t violations, yet — were one of the worst-kept secrets in the Pac-12. (It took a disgruntled former employee to send material to the NCAA in order for those tactics to come to light.)
We know that whenever a program suddenly has next-level success attracting prospects from areas outside its traditional recruiting base, it’s extremely suspicious.
And we know at least some of the allegations against ASU involve “illicit on-campus recruiting trips” during the worst pandemic in 100 years.
That’s the real issue here, folks: ASU wasn’t merely trying to get ahead with alleged shenanigans that we often see from dirty programs.
If the allegations are true, the Sun Devils were flouting the COVID protocols adopted by the NCAA and the Pac-12.
If true, it’s not just run-of-the-mill cheating. It’s deplorable cheating, to the point that the Sun Devils would have to consider a full housecleaning at the top levels of the football program and the athletic department. (If athletic director Ray Anderson didn’t know what was going on, he should have.)
According to Yahoo: “Sources said members of the football program deliberately, blatantly and consistently broke rules related to hosting players during the dead period, including coach Herm Edwards meeting with recruits.”
So appalling are the allegations that Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick and Stanford coach David Shaw were willing to speak on the record about the situation. And you never, ever see on-the-record quotes from coaches or administrators about another school’s NCAA issues.
And if true, then an unseemly picture begins to emerge: Arizona State was the only football program in the conference that shut down for three weeks last season because of COVID.
Other schools were shuttered for two weeks, which made sense given the duration of the quarantine and isolation protocols implemented following positive tests.
But only ASU was down and out for three games, which, as the Hotline noted last fall, didn’t make much sense:
“How were the Sun Devils healthy enough to field a full team in the opener at USC and then, a few days later, suffer an outbreak so severe that it knocked them out for three games (and counting)?
“How could the virus have spread through the program over the course of multiple days when players were (presumably) tested the night before the game and then again (presumably) when they reconvened as a team the following Monday?
“The unusual duration of ASU’s shutdown … suggests something went very wrong.”
Indeed, it appears something is very wrong in Tempe.
Many key details are missing at this point, but one thing is clear: The optics are absolutely abysmal.
Rising: Arizona fans
After years of insults hurled from their arch-rivals, the Arizona faithful now can sit back and watch ASU twist in the winds of NCAA scandal.
The rest of us are left wondering which situation will be resolved first.
Our money is on ASU, because the “dossier” of evidence should speed up the process and because the Arizona basketball case has been turned over to the newly-formed Independent Accountability Resolution Process.
Clearly, NCAA investigators could have saved on lodging expenses if they had just rented an Airbnb in Casa Grande.
Falling: New leadership models
Remember back in the late fall of 2017, when Edwards was hired and the Sun Devils issued a press release describing a “new leadership model” for the football program that read like it was written by a management professor?
Right about now, we could take this opportunity to mock Arizona State for that highfalutin approach, which doesn’t seem to have generated the desired results.
Instead, we will simply say this: College football isn’t about fancy management terms or corporate org charts or NFL front office models or head coaches who serve as CEOs.
It’s about people, it’s about the grind, and it’s about respect for the process — not reinventing it.
Rising: Oregon State football
This being the first edition of the stock report since Colorado quarterback Sam Noyer announced his transfer to Corvallis, we feel compelled to weigh in.
Yes, it’s a significant addition for the Beavers. But in our view, Noyer’s arrival is more about establishing Oregon State’s floor than its ceiling in the 2021 season.
He joins a roster that includes Tristan Gebbia, who started for OSU last year and is recovering from a hamstring injury, and several young, inexperienced quarterbacks.
The Beavers should have at least two solid options for the starting job — solid, but not stellar, because we have seen nothing from Noyer or Gebbia to suggest either is a high-level talent capable of catapulting OSU into contention in the North.
But we’d argue that the Beavers will enter training camp with the Pac-12’s best second-string quarterback. Whether the backup is Noyer or Gebbia, we don’t yet know. But in either case, the resume will include victories in Pac-12 play as a starter.
That quality depth should serve to limit the downside risk for the Beavers if their starter is injured or cannot meet the desired standard for efficiency.
And it stands in stark contrast to the situation on so many other campuses, where the second-stringer is a rookie and, for that reason, the team’s floor includes a trap door.
Falling: Pac-12 image (hypothetically)
Work with me here …
It’s Dec. 3, and Arizona State, which is loaded with returnees on both sides of the line of scrimmage, takes the field at Allegiant Stadium as the South division winner — a mere four quarters from the Pac-12 title.
Over the intervening months, information has surfaced that not only substantiates the current allegations but connects ASU to additional violations over the previous 18-24 months.
In short, the program has been a cesspool of recruiting transgressions.
But because NCAA justice unfolds at the same speed mountains rise, the investigation remains ongoing and the Sun Devils, technically, are not yet guilty of anything as they take the field for the Pac-12’s showcase event.
Talk about Sin City.
