Playing Portland State: Wrong Move For The Sun Devils?

by Cory Williams on Aug 31, 2010 7:42 PM MST in ASU Football

The Pac-10 has a pretty tough opening weekend, all in all.

UCLA heads to Manhattan to play Kansas State, Washington rolls into Provo to take on BYU, Wazzu visits Stillwater to play Oklahoma State, and Oregon State plays a de facto road game against TCU in Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

USC and Arizona also take to the road for their opening game, traveling to play Hawai'i and Toledo, respectively. California, Oregon, and Stanford all stay home to play weak competition.

But Arizona State's season opener takes the cake: the Portland State Vikings.

Lets break down some vital statistics about Portland State.

College Football Subdivision: FCS

Conference: Big Sky

2009 Record: 2-9 (1-7)

Student Body Population (Undergraduate): 20,330 (per The Princeton Review)

When San Jose State backed out of their game with us last year, ASU was left in a bind: scheduling an opponent on extremely short notice. I imagine that all avenues were explored, but we were left with the FCS.

The issue here is not that Portland State is a bad team. The problem is that they offer nothing to Arizona State in terms of experience, difficulty, or room for improvement.

Any quarterback on this team, be it Steven Threet, Brock Osweiler, and Samson Szakacsy, could and will tear apart this defense, which gave up 41 points to Idaho State (a team we beat last season to the tune of 50-3).

The Sun Devils answer nothing by playing this team. Dismantling two straight FCS teams (NAU comes to town on September 11) before heading into Camp Randall to play Wisconsin does little to prepare the players for the huge jump in talent.

In the offseason, there were rumors of ASU picking up a big game against South Florida or Cincinnati. This didn't come to fruition, and as a result the fans and players suffer. It's difficult to figure out exactly why the negotiations fell apart, but the Sun Devils could have used another marquee game to bring the right kind of publicity to the team.

In the end, AD Lisa Love was forced to fill the schedule opening to pick up an easy victory for the program. As a result, ASU must win 5 out of their last 10 games in order to be bowl-eligible, and it would be a very impressive season for coach Erickson if he were able to pull that off.

While I hope this game against Portland State is the first of many victories for the Sun Devils in 2010, it's hard to get excited for a game that already has a predetermined outcome. With the 2011 schedule featuring two quality opponents (Missouri, at Illinois), it is my sincere desire that this situation never repeats itself - but lets get out there and cheer the Devils on anyway. See you on Saturday.

Tweet Comment 7 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

I think that Lisa love

forgot that only one AA game counts towards bowl eligibility. I can’t think of any other possible reason this is one the schedule.

Mr Pac Ten's Blog - 2007 2008 2009

by MrPacTen on Aug 31, 2010 10:31 PM MST reply actions

the only other possibility

would be that NOT a single FBS team wanted to play us.

House Of Sparky: An Arizona State Sun Devils blog
SBN Arizona: The ultimate destination for Arizona sports coverage

by Cory Williams on Aug 31, 2010 10:37 PM MST up reply actions

there are a number of Sun Betl and MAC teams

with AA games on the slate; I doubt that none of them would have listened to a paycheck game offer. Moreover, I’m sure that there are plenty of non-AQ’s who would have at least considered 2:1 offers.

Mr Pac Ten's Blog - 2007 2008 2009

by MrPacTen on Aug 31, 2010 10:40 PM MST up reply actions

It's about money

ASU doesn’t exactly have a lot of it laying around to entice those teams to take a trip to Tempe — especially on short notice.

"He will not coddle them. Nolan Ryan doesn’t coddle." - Jeff Passan

by Dirk Diggler on Sep 2, 2010 11:14 AM MST up reply actions

I was just issued a warning for telling the truth

we had a game scheduled with SJSU—they bought themselves out of the contract because they were offered 1.4 million bucks by Bama.

It cost them 250K for the buyout they were gonna get $400k from us for the game.

The cancellation of the contract sent ASU scrambling for an opponent to fill the slot.

PSU was the only taker!

JIC your wondering—ASU has only played 8 FCS opponents since 1950—we have nothing to be ashamed of here!

by baal on Sep 1, 2010 8:17 PM MST reply actions

mostly true

you were issued a warning for swearing and saying that my site is of no value.

as for the schedule, I wish there were more stipulations against breaking a contract than a mere $250,000 for ASU.

House Of Sparky: An Arizona State Sun Devils blog
SBN Arizona: The ultimate destination for Arizona sports coverage

by Cory Williams on Sep 1, 2010 8:42 PM MST up reply actions

More concerned

with how our offense will settle after only knowing about the starting qb for a week?

It’s obvious we are going to thrash Portland St. and NAU, but how long will it take us to get in sync with Threet. I’m sure there are split factions amongst the team already. England’s World Cup team comes to mind this year when the coach chose Robert Green to by goalkeeper a week before the Cup. We all know his botched goal that led to an American draw.

I’m not worried about defense, except if our offense can’t perform and they get tired and lose morale. But that leaves us with Stanford, USC, Cal, UCLA, Washington, WaSU, U of A, Oregon and Oregon State. We have to beat five of them to get bowl eligible. Who’s going down?

by isulliva444 on Sep 2, 2010 4:41 PM MST reply actions