Erickson has made advances at Arizona State

By Jack Magruder

For the AJC


Tempe, Ariz. — Dennis Erickson still wears that chichi 1989 national championship ring he won in his first season at the University of Miami. And he is not afraid to wield it.

“What do you guys think? Do you want one of these?” Erickson said, holding his left hand high while addressing his team before meeting Southern California for the Pacific-10 Conference title in late 2007.

That game did not go so well — 44-24, USC — and as ASU enters Saturday’s game against Georgia, progress since then has been spotty.

But make no mistake, the ring is the thing ASU was after, from the top down, when it signed Erickson to a five-year, $5.6-million contract on Dec. 11, 2006. Any associated baggage — NCAA probation at Miami shortly after he left, a cut-and-run 10-month tenure at Idaho before coming here — was incidental.

Erickson, 62, has said ASU will be his last stop in a head coaching career that began at the University of Idaho in 1982. The Sun Devils have embraced the man who has beaten three No. 1 ranked teams in his career. Yet ASU remains 3-26 against ranked teams in his decade and is 0-4 against the SEC all-time.

Erickson made a splash in his first season, when ASU won its first eight games en route to a 10-3 record and a share of the Pac-10 title with USC, its best season since the Jake Plummer-Pat Tillman team won the league title in 1996.

But ASU sank to 5-7 last year while tying a school record with six consecutive losses after a 2-0 start. Sun Devil players still have faith in the man who won NCAA titles at Miami in 1989 and 1991 and who guided Oregon State to the No. 4 ranking in 2000. That Oregon State team capped the year by trouncing Notre Dame 41-9 in the Fiesta Bowl, played at ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium.

“I was at that Fiesta Bowl when they ran over Notre Dame,” said senior linebacker Mike Nixon. “You saw that swagger ... that’s what his teams had. We know what he has done. We know what we haven’t done. His resume speaks for itself. When he says something, we listen.”

A former quarterback, Erickson has found a formula that works well in college — creative play-calling and a sic-em defense. Both sides of the ball are built around speed.

“It’s all about speed,” Erickson said at practice last week. “You have a foundation that you believe in and the type of players that you want in your program, which all goes down to recruiting. You are not always going to have a top-five recruiting class but what you can do is get the type of player that you want on offense and defense and develop your program around that.”

Erickson can point to Oregon State players such as Chad Ochocinco (Johnson), T.J. Houshmanzadeh and Nick Barnett. The first two were under-recruited skill players who became NFL wide receivers. Barnett was a high school wide receiver who was shifted to linebacker and made all-Pac-10 before becoming a Pro Bowler at Green Bay.

Erickson’s latest recruiting coup is freshman linebacker Vontaze Burfict, a Los Angeles area native who chose ASU over USC. Rated as the No. 9 player in the nation by Rivals, he is the highest-ranked recruit ever signed at ASU.

“He has brought in great recruiting classes,” said senior quarterback Danny Sullivan, who is being pushed by another true freshman, Brock Osweiler. “He has made our team better. It has made the upperclassmen want to work harder, too, to want to keep our spots.

“The competition with Brock has been great for both of us. I’ve showed myself that I can do this. And knowing that has given me more composure going into games than I really ever had. Big games have been won with these coaches. It gives you a reassuring feeling that you can do the same if you just put your heart and effort into it.”