On Tuesday, word came down that Herm Edwards appeared to be one of the favorites to become the next head football coach at Arizona State. One day later and a report indicates that Edwards is in line to take the job, as long as the university’s president gives the thumbs up.
The site Sun Devil Source reports that Edwards will meet with university officials, including president Dr. Michael Crow and athletics director Ray Anderson, over the weekend in Tempe. As long as Crow gives his approval, Herm Edwards is going to become the next head football coach at Arizona State University, which is a tremendous sentence to read.
Anderson, according to the sources, doesn’t need to be convinced of Edwards’ candidacy for the job. The two men have known each other for a number of years and Anderson served as Edwards’ agent when he was a NFL head coach. They’ve already had extensive conversations about the job, which Edwards is prepared to accept.
…“Nothing will get done without Dr. Crow signing off on it, but if he does, this is going to happen,” said one source, who spoke on the condition on anonymity due to not being authorized to disclose the information. “[Anderson] has known he’s wanted to do this for a while and it’s just been about getting everything else lined up.”
This is an ambitious move by Arizona State, which is banking on Edwards’ experience as an NFL head coach to outweigh his lack of experience coaching in college. That same experiment hasn’t worked out especially well thus far at Illinois, where Lovie Smith is the head coach of the Illini and has accrued a 5-19 record in two years, but the Sun Devils and athletics director Ray Anderson must believe that the Edwards experiment will work out better … as long as he gets the thumbs up from the school’s president, of course.
UPDATE: DevilsDigest.com has confirmed this report, and added in a tidbit about Edwards’ potential staff in Tempe.
Confirmed earlier reports that pending approval of ASU President Dr. Michael Crow, Herm Edwards will be hired as ASU's next football coach. Deal has been done for days. Edwards will keep current staff.
— DevilsDigest.com (@DevilsDigest) November 30, 2017
So basically, everyone from fired coach Todd Graham’s old staff would stick around, only instead of Graham, they’d answer to Herm Edwards. It’s, um, quite the arrangement, and it would legitimately be fascinating to watch the dynamic between the new head coach and a staff that the old coach hired.
