Arizona State Puts Its Fork In The Road (Again)

When morning dawned on Saturday, November 8, 2014, it was reasonable to think that Arizona State football was about to encounter a true “fork in the road” moment. Would, indeed, the fork need to be feared, or would the Sun Devils flinch in the face of a defining occasion?

The question certainly needed to be asked, because it has rarely been answered in a positive way over the past 25 years. From the mid-1950s through the early 1980s, Arizona State stood for success, and frequently captured the games it needed in order to boost its standing in the college football world.

In 1955, a man named Dan Devine — who later led Missouri to a New Year’s Day bowl and guided Notre Dame to the 1977 national championship — came to the desert to begin his career as a head coach. Arizona State wasn’t even in the Western Athletic Conference at the time; the name of the Sun Devils’ league was the Border Intercollegiate Athletic Association. Devine stood on relatively parched ground, but he managed to plant roots in Tempe, and after three successful seasons, the wheels had been set in motion for the creation of a thriving football force. In 1958, a man named Frank Kush took over for Devine, and the rest was history.

You can read about Kush here, in a piece published last summer, but the long and short of it is that Kush built a powerhouse. He made Arizona State good enough to finish the 1975 season the No. 2 team in the country after a Fiesta Bowl upset of Tom Osborne and Nebraska. His building skills as a coach turned Arizona State into a program that could regularly host and win the Fiesta Bowl. If the Sun Devils had not blossomed under Kush’s stewardship, the Fiesta Bowl might not have come into existence, and it certainly wouldn’t have become what it is today.

Speaking of the Fiesta Bowl, when ASU won it over Marcus Dupree, Barry Switzer, and the Oklahoma Sooners on January 1, 1983, the Sun Devils — under a new coach, Darryl Rogers — reinforced their identity as a team that needed to be taken seriously. Arizona State was a member of the Pacific-10 Conference, a testament to its steady rise in Division I-A athletics. The Fiesta Bowl had become a New Year’s Day showcase event. This was not the program Dan Devine inherited, or which Frank Kush took over, in the 1950s. The Border Intercollegiate Athletic Association was a distant memory. The WAC also inhabited the past tense.

Facilities, weather, a growing reputation — ASU had it all.

When the program won the 1987 Rose Bowl over Michigan and a quarterback named Jim Harbaugh, the Sun Devils continued to climb. Surely, this program was going to parlay another positive turning point into a long stay atop the Pac-10.

It didn’t happen.

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The past 25 years have been almost entirely barren in the desert. The Sun Devils did produce their magical 1996 season under quarterback and Heisman finalist Jake Plummer, guided by coach Bruce Snyder. However, letting the 1997 Rose Bowl — and possibly the outright national title — slip away against Ohio State presaged what was to come for Los Diablos Del Sol.

In 2007, Arizona State merited a BCS bowl more than Illinois (USC’s opponent in that season’s Rose Bowl) did, but just the same, the past 18 seasons haven’t delivered a single Pac-12 title to the Devils. Under Dirk Koetter and Dennis Erickson, the program couldn’t turn the corner. The occasional good season served to be a tease more than an indicator. This is the world of ASU football over the past quarter of a century.

Therefore, as we pivot back to November 8, 2014, Sun Devil fans had to wonder how that afternoon’s game in Tempe was going to affect the program.

The long-term answer will be revealed in the fullness of time, but the short-term answer did not meet expectations… albeit in a very unusual way.

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Arizona State’s game against Notre Dame on 11/8/2014 was one of six showcase matchups on that particular Saturday. Baylor-Oklahoma, Kansas State-TCU, Ohio State-Michigan State, Alabama-LSU, and Oregon-Utah joined the marquee to form one of the more anticipated non-rivalry, non-conference-championship Saturdays in recent memory. It was a testament to the job done by head coach Todd Graham that Arizona State was a central part of the day, and not merely an occupant of the periphery while Notre Dame pursued a national title. Arizona State had a central place in the title race — the game with Brian Kelly’s Irish was high-stakes poker for both teams, not just one.

Early in the fourth quarter of the contest against Notre Dame, ASU fans throughout the greater Phoenix metropolitan area were almost surely thinking about a moment nine years earlier against Notre Dame’s great intersectional rival.

In October of 2005, ASU led USC, 21-3, at halftime. The Trojans — at the height of their powers — were bludgeoned by the home team in the first half on a scorching afternoon in Sun Devil Stadium. Yet, USC was able to completely turn the tables in the second half, roaring back for a 38-28 win that typified the past quarter of a century in Tempe.

This memory had to rush to the surface of the mind’s eye when Notre Dame, down 34-3 with one minute left in the first half, scored its third touchdown in a row to pull within 10, at 34-24, with 9:12 still left on the clock. Gacking away a 34-3 lead seemed impossible, but if a program could do it, ASU had shown a propensity to let golden moments slip away. When Notre Dame scored another touchdown in relatively short order, the score was 34-31, and the “pucker factor” in Tempe reached 37 on a scale of 1 to 5.

Yet, something strange then happened: Arizona State found a backbone.

A swift and decisive touchdown drive pushed the lead back to 41-31 with under 4:30 left, and just moments later, a pick-six sealed the game. For much of that fourth quarter, Arizona State was trying to hang on at best, but a 21-point surge in the final five minutes gave the Devils a 55-31 victory. ASU won not in a 15-round decision, but with a late TKO.

Responding in that fashion to a moment laden with both importance and fear is what coaches dream about. Todd Graham surely didn’t like the way his team reacted when it gained a 34-3 lead, but he had to be ecstatic with his team’s answer to a raging attack of nerves. When 19- and 20-year-olds — thrown into a national spotlight against Notre Dame in November — can regroup the way Arizona State’s players did, it’s more than reasonable to think a threshold has been crossed. Arizona State did more than insert itself into the national title race that day; it cut against the program’s recent history while also exhibiting considerable mental toughness. The team that won the 2013 Pac-12 South title had followed up one season with an even bigger achievement: beating Notre Dame on the big stage.

Surely, this was going to lead the Sun Devils to that exalted plateau they’d been waiting decades to claim. Surely, Todd Graham appeared ready to succeed at a level Koetter and Erickson couldn’t. Surely, this was going to be a turning point for ASU football.

Well, it was… but in a manner that cut all too deeply for fans of the program.

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Arizona State conquered many demons against Notre Dame, but the simple fact of that win put a bulls-eye on the Devils’ backs. That changes the competitive equation in any sport, and teams do have to learn how to be the hunted, not just the hunter. Arizona State played a night game in the chilly Pacific Northwest against Oregon State… and promptly fell flat on its face, outplayed and outhit by the more urgent and energized Beavers. A few weeks later, the Sun Devils were worn down and overwhelmed by Arizona.

In the span of a few short weeks, Arizona State went from national title contender to Sun Bowl participant, playing a third-tier December bowl far removed from the New Year’s Six or any other prime bowl destination.

The route acquired several unexpected turns, but the bottom-line result was the same: Yet again, an Arizona State team from the past 25 years could not complete a journey filled with so much promise. This time, the sense of hope surrounding an ASU football season was not squelched in September or October; the back half of November — the home stretch of the season — did in the Devils.

Now, Graham and ASU have to ask themselves: Will that win over Notre Dame become a cruelly ironic turning point, a time when hopes were raised only to be brought low, or will the “almost” nature of the 2014 season reinvigorate the Sun Devils and teach them how to finish the job this time?

No one needs to make a prediction before the 2015 season begins; the drama of seeing ASU attempt to climb back up the mountain will be compelling enough in its own right.

About Matt Zemek

Editor, @TrojansWire | CFB writer since 2001 |

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