Tough Thanksgiving Break for Two Former ASU Sun Devils

Two (soon to be) former Arizona State Sun Devils found out over the Thanksgiving weekend that winning was not the only thing that mattered in respect to their job responsibilities. Dirk Koetter and Jake Plummer were both handed pink slips over the holiday because they were not winning enough, and not doing it with style.

Though they both share the current misery of being kicked out the door, and being natives of Idaho, that's where the similarities between them end. The numbers speak for themselves; Koetter, not Plummer, was more worthy of a dismissal.

Koetter was fired as ASU head football coach less than 24 hours after defeating arch-rival Arizona for the fourth time in six years. He had just received a contract extension at the end of the 2005 season, but he apparently fell short of the vision set forth by ASU Athletics Director Lisa Love.

It is hard to defend Koetter. His 40-33 overall record is just barely over .500. His record in the Pac-10 was a dismal 21-27, and he failed to win a single game on the road in California going 0-11 against USC, UCLA, Cal and Stanford.

In addition to supplying a die-hard Sun Devil fan base with mediocrity year after year, several off-the-field incidents made it a no-brainer for Love to push Koetter out the door. One of his star running backs, Loren Wade, shot and killed former defensive back Brandon Falkner outside a popular Scottsdale nightclub days before spring practice in 2005. The incident not only caused emotional damage to the team, but it also left Koetter without a veteran running back for the 2005 season.

Once the 2005 season began around the Tempe campus was that Koetter and his staff landed the best wide receiver recruit in the country. Angelo Richardson turned down USC for ASU after an 18 touchdown season in junior college. Tragically, Richardson never stepped foot on the Tempe campus. He was shot in the back at a party in San Francisco and left paralyzed from the waist down. The tragedy shook the team again, and left Koetter without a home-run threat to replace out-going star wide receiver Darren Hagan (now with the Miami Dolphins).