Arizona State should take its time, make sure interim coach Shaun Aguano is best it can do
The Sun Devils have become a much better team in Aguano’s three weeks as interim head coach.
What’s happening with Arizona State’s football program shouldn’t be called Aguano mania, not yet, but there is no doubt interim coach Shaun Aguano’s chances of having his job title abbreviated in the next two months are increasing.
By most accounts, Arizona State players seem to love playing for him. Aguano’s staff has rallied around him. An increasing number of fans are in his corner, as are the state’s high school coaches, who recently voiced their support for Aguano.
All of that is easy to understand. Aguano is likable. The minor changes he promised to make when he replaced Herm Edwards are working. Practices are more intense. Recruiting Arizona kids has become a focus. Discipline has been emphasized. The Sun Devils have become a much better team in Aguano’s three weeks as interim head coach. And they won a game last week for the first time since beating Northern Arizona in the season opener.
Aguano created order out of disarray. And he might well be the best candidate to replace Edwards on a more permanent basis.
But Arizona State should be in no rush to make that happen. The Sun Devils have won one game under Aguano. Yes, it was an impressive upset of Washington, which fell out of the top 25 after the loss, but it’s still one game. And it’s possible, maybe even likely, the Huskies weren’t all that good to begin with.
Time will tell us that. And time will also lead to a more accurate evaluation of Aguano, who, at least in the minds of fans and media, has a better chance at the Sun Devils job than most of us thought three weeks ago, when he was promoted from running backs coach to replace Edwards.
At a news conference that day, Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson went out of his way to mention that Aguano was a realistic candidate.
My thought at the time was “yeah, right,” that Arizona State couldn’t afford to hire someone who had been a college coach for only four-plus years after spending 20 as a successful assistant and head coach at Chandler High.
To his credit, it’s taken Aguano only three weeks to become a viable candidate, at least to me, and I suspect, many others. The Sun Devils would be taking a chance by hiring him, but would the gamble be any bigger than hiring someone else with no head coaching experience beyond the high school level?
Would it be a bigger risk than the one Anderson made five years ago when he hired Edwards, who hadn’t coached in college since 1989?
Obviously not. But whoever is leading Arizona State’s search for a new coach, President Michael Crow, Anderson, or some unnamed forces, should avoid getting caught up in the swelling support for Aguano’s candidacy.
Time is on their side. What they should be doing now, and possibly are, is using back channels to gauge the interest of head coaches and top assistants who have turned around Division I programs, people such as Kansas State’s Chris Klieman, Kansas’s Lance Leipold, former Carolina Panthers coach Matt Rhule and Colorado State’s Jay Norvell.
Time also will give them more time to evaluate Aguano, too. If Arizona State goes on a run over the last six games, then Crow, Anderson, and company can make the best kind of decision, an obvious one, and hire Aguano.
And if the Sun Devils falter over the last six games, the search committee can focus elsewhere.
We already know Arizona State could do worse than hire Aguano as head coach. If Crow, Anderson, etc., are smart, they will take a couple more months to see if Aguano proves there also is no one better to become the next head coach of the Sun Devils.