Football

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This week in ASU Football, we will start with the questions about uniforms. The Pac-10 designates that the home team will wear dark jerseys and the visitors will wear white. Several fans had the clever idea that we should wear our whites this Saturday to beat the heat. Nice try! As far as gimmick uniforms go, I am philosophically against wearing all Maroon, or breaking out the gold jerseys for one game. I have, at the urging of the players, done this in the past, but we will not be wearing gold jerseys vs. Stanford this Saturday. I still have a nasty taste in my mouth from our horrible performance vs. Arizona last season. Players make plays, not uniforms. We need to worry about improving our execution on offense, and continuing to swarm to the ball on defense, and not about trying to gain a psychological advantage with our uniforms.

Recruiting-wise, we will be able to sign between 20 and 25 scholarship players in this class. As always, we will be looking for guys with a strong desire to graduate and players that have the athletic ability to contribute to a Pac-10 championship team. Stay tuned!

Please, no more questions about the shotgun. I don't particularly like it because I have seen too many snaps go awry over the years, and there is very little threat of running the football. Also, we are big believers in a rhythm passing game and that rhythm is different when the QB is not under center. We are not advanced enough with our current offense to deal with the shotgun at this time. I do hereby promise to not talk about this subject again this season!

This week featured several questions about the status of third team QB, Andy Goodenough. Andy continues to be a hard and conscientious worker in practice. The #3 guy on any team gets very few reps in a normal practice week (5% - 10%). With the bye week, and with Andrew out prior to SDSU, Andy has gotten more snaps recently and must be ready at any time to step in and play. Kellen Bradley, our true freshman QB, was out of action this week with a sprained foot, so Andy did a nice job of running the scout offense and imitating the Stanford quarterbacks. We hope to have Kellen back next week.

Our players do have very demanding schedules. They have twenty hours per week of football activities (practice, weight lifting, meetings, etc.) plus treatment, taping and dressing. All players must carry a minimum of 12 credit hours per semester, (we average 15 credit hours) and all of our freshmen and other scholarship athletes with GPA's under 2.4 have between 6-8 hours of required study/tutor time. The academic time is headed up by Jean Boyd, our "academic coach," and a former Sun Devil defensive back. Jean and his staff help our guys with scheduling, advisors, tutors, study hall, academic organization, etc. On top of this, our players still need additional study time on their own, in addition to some semblance of a social life. Football season is a busy time, and time management is very important. A typical day for the players starts at 7:00 or 7:30 AM and finishes up with training table and treatment around 7:00 PM.

That's all I have time for this week. Hope to see everyone Saturday at Sun Devil Stadium for the Pac-10 opener. In the coming weeks, we will have articles by other members of the football staff, starting with strength coach, Joe Kenn.

GO DEVILS!

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