Head coach Todd Graham directs his players at practice on Wednesday, September 10 (Photo by Alexis Macklin).This week debuts Sun Devil Spotlight, a new weekly feature from the State Press. The Spotlight will focus on one team, athlete, official or trend from around ASU that isn't getting the attention it deserves.
Don't laugh, because that headline was serious. Three years into his career with ASU, Todd Graham has cemented his place in the elite ranks of college coaches and has a very strong case to be the Pac-12's premier head coach.
Graham has a 21-9 record through three seasons, which is fifth among all third-year coaches and second in the Pac-12 to UCLA top man Jim Mora.
Last season was the coming out party not only for the Sun Devils, but for Graham, who weathered criticism and speculation about his future in Tempe and still guided his team to the Pac-12 Championship game.
With his team now hovering in the mid-to-late teen's in this year's AP polls, Graham deserves credit for injecting new life and new talent into what had been a largely stale program.
Some may think that calling Graham the best coach in the conference at this point in time is premature or an overstatement, but they are wrong.
Sure, Graham's record isn't as good as Oregon's or Stanford's in the last three seasons and therefore he might be seen as inferior to Mark Helfrich or David Shaw.
But consider that Helfrich and Shaw both took over programs that were elite before they got there. Under Chip Kelly and Jim Harbaugh, respectively, those two teams had routinely competed for the Pac-12 title and had played in numerous BCS bowl games.
When Graham took over after the 2011 season, he inherited a program that had just gone 6-7, losing five straight games to close out the season.
By that logic alone it would appear at face value that Helfrich and Shaw are simply managing the machines they inherited while Graham is rebuilding, and doing so with great success.
You could also look at USC's Steve Sarkisian or UCLA's Jim Mora as potential candidates for the conference's best but neither truly measure up to Graham.
Sarkisian coached at Washington before returning to Southern California this season and has been a head coach in the Pac-12 since 2009. He has started off 2-1 at USC and had a 34-29 career mark with the Huskies which includes three straight 7-6 seasons and a 1-2 record in bowl games.
Mora, who became the head coach of the Bruins in the same year that Graham joined ASU, has a slightly better record in three years (22-8). Head-to-head, the men are dead even.
In 2012, Mora's Bruins narrowly edged out the Sun Devils 45-43 and a year ago, ASU claimed a 38-33 victory in Pasadena. The two teams will face off on Sept. 25 in Tempe.
And so looking purely at the numbers, it appears as though Graham has a narrow edge over Mora and Sarkisian. Looking at the context of their respective programs, a strong argument can be made that Graham has the edge over Helfrich and Shaw considering he has done more with less.
Reach the sports editor at icbeck@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @ICBeck21
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