(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)
TEMPE — Ray Anderson announced he was stepping down from his position as Arizona State’s athletic director on Monday, marking the end of an era of Sun Devil Athletics.
“By prioritizing student success, raising unprecedented levels of resources and evolving the Sun Devil brand, Ray Anderson has been one of the most impactful and longest serving athletic directors in the history of Arizona State,” ASU President Michael Crow said in a statement released Monday. “We respect his decision, and we appreciate his service to the university.”
While Anderson has become the target of frustration from fans and boosters in recent years, coaches were quick to share their gratitude for the former athletic director. Anderson hired several coaches during his tenure, including football head coach Kenny Dillingham and baseball skipper Willie Bloomquist, both alumni of the university.
“I’m obviously very grateful for Ray,” Bloomquist said. “He gave me the opportunity to come back to this place which I love, obviously, I love Arizona State. The man gave me my job back here, to come back, so I’m forever grateful for him for that opportunity.”
Ten games into the football season and with hockey and basketball seasons just getting underway, the timing of Anderson’s resignation came as somewhat of a surprise. However, the 69-year-old put great thought into the decision and deemed that due to the rapidly changing landscape of college sports, the time was simply right.
“There are so many things that are going on, and it’s going to take a long time to sort those out,” Anderson said Wednesday on the Anderson Healey Show. “You’ve got political involvement in maneuvering now in the college athletic scene, the Title IX challenges that are going to be brought out of these new times are going to be monumental.
“When you put all that together, you’ve got to have leadership that’s going to be in place for six, seven, eight, ten years perhaps. I simply do not have that runway, and it would not have been smart, fair or in the best interest of the university for me to hold on for another two years knowing I’m 69 years old, my wife Buffie is 72.”
Good or bad, the legacy Anderson leaves at ASU is undeniable.
He most recently oversaw the Sun Devils’ move to the Big 12 Conference, which will take effect in 2024. After becoming AD in 2014, Anderson helped ASU expand to 26 varsity sports and reinstated the men’s tennis program in 2016. He facilitated the baseball and golf teams’ moves to new home venues and played an integral role in the construction of the 5,000-seat Mullett Arena, which hosts the school’s ice hockey, wrestling and volleyball teams.
For the ASU ice hockey program, Anderson means everything. In his first year as athletic director, he announced the then-club team would become a member of the NCAA thanks to a $32 million donation. Just months before the Big 12 move, the program revealed its intentions to join the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC), one of the most elite conferences in all of college hockey.
“For all of us at Sun Devil Hockey, we sincerely thank Ray for everything,” ASU ice hockey head coach Greg Powers said in a statement released Monday. “We simply don’t exist if not for his support.”
Among the general public, Anderson’s near-decade-long tenure in Tempe will mostly be remembered for the controversial hire of Herm Edwards — his longtime friend and former client when Anderson worked as an NFL agent — as ASU’s head football coach on Dec. 4, 2017. This decision received widespread criticism and ultimately proved detrimental, as Edwards’ regime became the subject of an ongoing NCAA investigation, which stemmed from alleged recruiting violations dating back to the COVID-19 dead period, in 2021.
Despite five coaches departing the program amid the investigation, Edwards remained at the helm entering the 2022 campaign, much to the dismay of the Sun Devil faithful. But after posting a 1-2 record to start the season, Edwards was dismissed from ASU and given a $4.4 million buyout, another move that didn’t sit well with fans.
This past August, Anderson announced the school was self-imposing a postseason bowl ban for the 2023 season in light of the ongoing investigation, blindsiding first-year head coach Kenny Dillingham’s group less than a week before its first game. Supporters and boosters were once again upset with this decision, claiming the ban should’ve been imposed in 2022 when Edwards was still head coach.
Even as he’s inherited less-than-ideal circumstances in his first season as head coach, Dillingham had nothing but gratitude for Anderson.
“[I’m] thankful for him, giving me the opportunity to be the head coach at my alma mater, my dream job,” Dillingham said. “So very, very thankful for him. He’s been supportive of me since I got here, so best of luck to him in his future, and we’ll look forward to what the future holds here.”
For Sun Devil Athletics, the future will need to hold an increase in Name Image and Likeness (NIL) resources. When it comes to NIL, many Pac-12 schools are simply behind the curve compared to their Big 12 counterparts. This not only puts the member schools at a disadvantage in recruiting but also when trying to maintain similar rosters from year-to-year, as big-time programs have become known to poach players due to offering a larger financial opportunity.
“We’re in a landscape that is evolving, it’s changing every day it seems like,” Bloomquist said. “I think Kenny did an outstanding job when he got hired to try and activate the Valley. We need it, man, we do. If we’re gonna be successful in today’s landscape of college sports, we are gonna need help. And that’s every sport, we’re gonna need help. That’s not a threat, that’s not a cry, that’s just the honest truth.”
And so far, it seems Anderson’s departure has benefitted the Sun Devils in terms of NIL. Many fans and boosters were reluctant to donate to the Sun Angel Collective — an NIL collective that supports ASU athletes — with Anderson at the helm. This unwillingness seemingly disappeared immediately after ASU moved on, as within hours of Anderson resigning, the collective recorded a single-day record of new monthly members.
“Unbelievable,” Dillingham said. “It’s what we need, can we keep that momentum going? That’s the challenge. We, every day, set a new record. How many days in a row, can we, as a valley, as an ASU community — there’s almost a 100,000 graduates — can we set a record where you give $10 a month, you give $250 a month, it doesn’t matter… How many days in a row can we break that record?”
The answer is two days and counting. On Wednesday, the Sun Angel Collective doubled its number of monthly membership donors, per Chris Karpman of Sun Devil Source. But even with an influx of contributions, there is still much work to be done for ASU to reach a level playing field with several other schools across the nation.
That’s why it will be essential for whoever succeeds Anderson to have a strong understanding of the direction college sports are heading in. Dillingham witnessed how marquee programs — serving as an offensive coordinator at Auburn, Oregon and Florida State — handle adjusting to the new world of college athletics, and he outlined potential characteristics an ideal candidate should have.
“I think this landscape is changing so much that you almost have to get somebody with that background, that kind of knows how it’s changing and is in it, is part of the change at a high level,” Dillingham said. “Because I think Arizona State, from a program perspective, from a school [perspective] can be one of the top athletic and academic institutions in the country. I think maybe getting somebody who has a little bit of background at one of the top athletic institutions would be beneficial.”
