Biggest signee to date for the program. Consensus top-5 pick for 2025. ASU IS a Hockey School!

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One way to try and offset the lost revenue now that the Phoenix Coyotes have relocated

Trouble in paradise??? Deion making some changes with the OFF play calling, not sure if serious issues but an interesting change

Don't even know if should count as a surprise or not...

As we continue to introduce fans to ASU's opponents this year, we examine a BYU team that joined the Big 12 last year and endured a rough transition. How close are they to reversing their fortunes? Salt Lake City’s KSL Sports Radio 97.5 FM Producer Jake Hatch shares his observations

"The team that gets hot towards the end is the team that is very dangerous going into the postseason, and I’m going to fight for my guys to play beyond this week.” Sun Devils look for their palpable momentum to pay dividends in last ever Pac-12 tournament

Kamari Wilson is on the list

The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee has typically favored teams that play well down the stretch, specifically in conference tournaments. Albeit with some work still to be done, ASU has put itself in position to manifest that theory

Mornin Mates...

Today's Topic = Gaining NIL Competitive Traction

There is no doubt that both the SEC and Big 10 sit at the grown-ups table of college athletics while the other conferences, that include the ACC and Big 12 do not, given the difference in financial resources available to each set of conferences...

And, that's not just about what each conference gets through media rights deals but what deep booster pockets can purchase in the pay-for-play NIL world...

As former college football coach - Jimbo Fisher - puts it when asked...he says that mid-majors and below will become glorified junior colleges, since they will take two and three star rated players, develop them into much more highly rated players, after a year or two, who will then move on to bigger and better pay days at some other school, where financial matters are not an issue...

And, right now, our Sun Devils are sitting in a conference that does not sit at the big boys table of college athletics and is behind others in the critical NIL race, with which to attract top talent and keep top talent from leaving, that is the other part of recruiting nowadays, with transfer portal free agency and NIL pay-for-play in existence...

What if we got a Patrick Mahomes type QB to ASU, as a three-star recruit, and, after a couple of years, he turned into a great QB, but we didn't have the NIL dollars in place to keep him at ASU...??

Talk about a major league BUMMER, right..??

Well, like it or not, that's the college sports world (especially in football and basketball) we live in right now, so we have a choice to make as fans and boosters...

Are we going to pony-up so we can sit at a grown-ups table or end up being a developmental junior college type deal, where we develop players only to lose them to the grown-ups NIL table at some future point in time...

How many baseball players at LSU are lost because the roster has to share 11.7 scholarships or, rather, because of the game changing nature of the NIL domain, aren't all of their players now on scholarship since they can get paid (and do get paid) that equivalent through the NIL portal...

And, it's all perfectly legal to do so these days, right..??

So, how is Willie going to compete with that sort of disparity in the college baseball world unless he can offer the same sort of thing to our Sun Devil baseball players...

And, we are just talking about gaining "competitive traction" here and not an unwarranted entitlement for a bunch of selfie celebrities...

I'm having to get over myself about this whole deal since my mental health is better when our Devils win, like what our baseball team is doing at the end of this season, and I don't want Willie (or Dilly for that matter) to be handcuffed in their pursuit of winning because we don't have "competitive traction" in the NIL domain...

How about all of you..??

G'day Mates and Go Devils!!!

I know somebody asked me this question that is buried in one of the threads, so instead of trying to search for it, I thought I'd start a new thread on a very relevant topic.

The optics of this hire, and it's not Rossini's fault, are horrible.

Between the gross mishandling that Michael Crow demonstrated concerning athletics and his stubbornness in not even interviewing excellent candidates such as Rocky Harris and David Benedict, who are extremely familiar with the ASU athletic department and wanted to be here, it's beyond reasonable not to support the direction that Crow did take in this hire.

I definitely don't know for a fact that Rossini was some kind of Ray Anderson "Yes man" who witnessed all of his screwups and was still looking the other way and being silent, but again and not the harp on the optics angle here when you're part of the very top organizational level of an athletic department that even after Rossini's arrival was absolutely abysmal in the the manner it conducted itself, to have the appearance of being rewarded with a massive promotion will naturally rub a lot of people the wrong way.

So, for all those reasons, I mentioned an external hire wasn't only prudent but absolutely vital if you are going to truly take this athletic department in a new and more conducive for success direction.

I get it that Rossini has never been an athletic director or even served in any athletic department capacity in any other school but ASU. That being said I wouldn't completely dismiss his 14 years as an executive with the Diamondbacks as well as what he did accomplish in the short period of time here at ASU. I'm not saying that everything he touched turned to gold, but it's not as if there's a laundry list of bad decisions that he made in the three years he's been part of the athletic department.

Someone pointed out to me that an athletic director is on the same level as the Deans of various colleges which does mean that there is a Provost they report to and that provost does ultimately report to Crow. True, that definitely was not the case with Ray Anderson or even Lisa Love before him since they did report to Crow, but from the various talks I had, I'm getting a strong sense that this is going to be the organizational structure moving forward. So this can negate the whole internal hire=crows puppet equation, which I feel more than anything is the biggest point of contention ASU fans have with the hire of Rossini.

The ASU fan base did give alumni such as Willie Bloomquist and Kenny Dillingham grace for coming into a tough situation and trying to resurrect their respective programs. And both of them, despite reporting to Anderson when they were first hired, still made some headway in their respective jobs. I'm not here to suggest that football this fall or baseball next year is on the cusp of being a national powerhouse, but you are seeing some strides in the right direction.

So hiring an alumnus as an AD for a change, someone who, even though he is going to be a first-time athletic director, isn't exactly void of various accomplishments working for ASU as well as for an MLB club. I know this is not going to be comforting to say, but Crow could probably screw up this hire that much more with an unqualified individual, either through an internal or an external hire. So, if he was going to go in-house, Graham Rossini was the correct hire, in my opinion.

There is a 100-ton burden of proof that does lie on both Rossini and Crow, for that matter, demonstrating that this was the correct hire. I think it's hard right here right now to put a probability percentage on Rossini succeeding. I can't say I'm leaning optimistic or pessimistic.

What I do know is it's a damn shame that Crow just went out of his way to create horrible optics with this very important hire. At the same time I don't know if the hire that he made is a guarantee for a failure.

Ultimately, I just have a lot of mixed feelings about the Graham Rossini hire.

“This game kind of sums up our season in a lot of ways. It wasn’t pretty, but the guys kept battling and came out victorious." The pre-planned postgame fireworks were extremely appropriate as ASU scored six runs in the final frame to edge UNLV