Pac 10 Fans Home
Pac 10 Football
Pac 10 Basketball
Pac 10 Baseball
College Fansites
Pac 10 Apparel
Pac 10 Tickets

Arizona State Sun Devils vs Portland State Vikings Football Preview

The 2010 season is a hugely important one for Dennis Erickson. The vagabond coach – in many ways to college football what Larry Brown is to the National Basketball Association – was hired to the accompaniment of considerable hosannas in Tempe, Arizona, and after leading the Arizona State Sun Devils to the 2007 Holiday Bowl (many people felt the team should have gotten a ticket to a BCS bowl that season), it seemed that the Erickson era was going to take off. Instead, it has plummeted.

Things began to go really wrong in September of 2008. A highly-ranked Sun Devil team was looking ahead to a home date with a Georgia team ranked in the top 10. However, the looking ahead occurred while on the same football field with another team, the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels. A pancake-flat ASU club took UNLV for granted and got stunned in overtime. That loss shook up the Devils, who were then dismantled by that very Georgia juggernaut a week later. The 2008 season spiraled out of control, as ASU dropped all the way to 5-7, failing to make even the lowest and least-desirable bowl games in FBS competition. In 2009, the Devils limped to a 4-8 finish. This is not what Erickson was brought to town to accomplish after the failure-filled Dirk Koetter regime.

> Browse the selection of Pac 10 apparel & merchandise online as well as Pac 10 Football Scores through Pac 10 Fans and partner sites.

ASU’s hopes this season rest on Steven Threet, the just-anointed starting quarterback who – on Saturday night against FCS-based Portland State – will get the majority of snaps. However, Brock Osweiler, the man Threet beat out for the starting nod, will see some action as well in what amounts to a preseason game. The Vikings do not have the chops to hang with the Devils. This is a paycheck game, after all.

The real value in this game – precisely because it’s not meant to go down to the wire – is to test the range of both quarterbacks’ abilities. Threet, a transfer from Michigan who played eight games for the Wolverines in 2008, has shown what he can do on the gridiron, but his speed and improvisational ability must translate to 2010, sans the rust that might have crept into his game. (Transfers, of course, have to sit out seasons under one of the NCAA’s less-inspired rules.) This game and the following weekend’s game for ASU (against Northern Arizona, another FCS outfit) are geared toward preparing the Threet-Osweiler combo for a massive Sept. 18 tilt against the Wisconsin Badgers. It really doesn’t matter that Threet is the starter now. What truly counts for Erickson and his brand-new offensive coordinator, Noel Mazzone (who won the SEC West with Auburn as Tommy Tuberville’s offensive coordinator in 2000), is that ASU has a dependable No. 1 guy when Wisconsin comes calling.

By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer