ASU Devils Den Football Podcast

Senior Day is upon us.  After months of discussion of who will play where? Is this guy a good fit for the team?  Is this player a leader?  It’s time to accept at least for this 2012 season, who are seniors are and that we should applaud them whether the Devils are a .500 team or one that is bowl bound.  It was tough for Don and I to talk about another ASU loss, but when you look at the opponents they have faced over the past four weeks it is hard to disagree with Todd Graham’s assessment that these have all been teams that are now currently ranked but it UCLA, USC, Oregon State, or Oregon.  Facts are facts, if you like football, there are just two games remaining.  Either you are a guy like Don and I and you can’t get enough football, or you are sick of the losing and ready to move on to the off-season.  Either way if you are a college fan you understand the meaning of this game for the players and it’s time to give credit to where it is due for these student athletes walking through that tunnel for the final time in their college careers.

In other news I have a off-beat opinion of this game and what has gone on lately.  I love seeing coaches that think outside the box, and you have gotten a really good show of this over the past few weeks  with Chip Kelly and Noel Mazzone’s unique brand of offense or USC’s pro preview of defense and offensive talent.  You don’t see teams with these unique qualities up and down the schedule and it continues this Saturday with an offense that took a long time to catch on across the other conferences.  Mike Leach’s Air Raid offense was long thought of as a gimmicky system but look no further than his disciples (and historically those touched by long time offensive guru Hal Mumme) that now coach big time programs like Texas A&M, West Virginia, Oklahoma State, Baylor, Houston, and Louisiana Tech.  That’s a pretty impressive spread of former assistants and quarterbacks that now deploy the Air Raid in some way or another.  I look at these games as a way of rating our new coaching staff and the schemes they run and this week is just the next test.  Good luck to all the seniors who I hope can grasp the accomplishment that is about to take place, and I look forward to talking more about this game with Don in our next episode.