Head back to the start of 2017 for a second. You probably expected a bunch of stuff to happen now that society is completely through the looking glass, but I would venture to guess that “Arizona State head football coach Herm Edwards” was nowhere on that list. Well, earlier this week, Edwards officially became the head coach of the Sun Devils.
His opening press conference was just tremendous, and as we learned thanks to a video from the program, his first day on the job was almost as good. A video crew followed Edwards around as he was getting settled into his new digs, which included getting a first-hand look into the Sun Devils’ new coach getting used to college football in 2017.
So to Edwards’ credit, he has part of being a college football coach down. He’s great at interacting with people in a 1-on-1 setting and looks incredibly comfortable in a large room. For things like recruiting and fundraising events, both of those “skills” are critically important.
But the scene that takes place in his office is really incredible. First, Edwards has to double-check which way the school’s pitchfork logo had to go as he was putting a pin on his jacket, which is a smart move but also rather silly.
Then there was his amazement over the size of the uniforms that players wear today. Here is a picture of Chad Pennington from 2004, when Edwards was the head coach of the Jets.
This was 13 years ago, and as you can tell, jerseys have gotten a lot more snug since then. Apparently, this is something that caught Edwards a bit off guard, as he originally thought that the game uniform they were handing to him was for “girls.”
This really does illustrate how long it’s been since Edwards has coached — the Arizona State job is his first gig on the sidelines since 2008 and his first college job since the 1980s. If he was caught off guard by the tightness of uniforms, wait until, say, he has to go up against Arizona’s Khalil Tate.
