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The only podcast covering all things Arizona State athletics! We bleed maroon and gold, and love talking about the Sun Devils no matter what sport.
Tom Hardon (00:30)
Welcome in everybody to another episode of Echo from the Buttes. Tom Harden, your host here, standing in for David Hellman once again with me, Austin Bundy and Andrew Hazlett. And we're through week one, guys. Devils pulled out the win. It wasn't exactly the prettiest win, but at the end of the day, a win is a win and it's much better to start the season 1-0 than it is to start 0-1-1. Just give me you guys quick thoughts.
before we dive into what we thought was good and not so good throughout the game.
Austen Bundy (01:04)
⁓ I mean, like you said, a win is a win. I'll take it. It wasn't the prettiest, but from what people at home like myself could see from the game, we'll talk about a little bit later how most of the audience outside of Mountain America Stadium only got to see the first half of the game because of an ESPN Plus issue, but... ⁓
It seems like ASU has a capable offense, a very capable defense. I liked what I saw out of the defense all night. ⁓ But it seems like the play calling was lacking in creativity and being able to take advantage of the versatile assets that they have at wide receiver. And especially when it came to play call choice for their running backs and tight ends. But otherwise, I mean, I'll take the dub, we'll move on, but I think there's still
lot that needs to be improved before we head down to Mississippi State next week.
Andrew Hayslett (02:03)
Yeah, I agree. I feel like the reaction is a little too negative out there on social media. It's like at the end of the day, the Sun Devils did win. Playing against a team that's a tough team. Kenny talked about it all week how their defensive schematic is so different compared to everything else.
you aren't going to see that often and so you can only prepare go against that mock defense for a week versus NAU they've been running it all camp so they know what they're doing and it's kind of hard to just go against that so yeah the offense didn't look as good as it could have at times
But it was still a pretty solid day overall, I'd say. 1-0 is where you want to be. Just, okay, we won that one. We're on the next one. It's the mentality you have to have if you're the Sun Devils or Kenny Dillingham. Clean up the mistakes. Because we knew there was plenty of mistakes there, but clean up the mistakes and just head on to Mississippi.
Tom Hardon (03:13)
Yeah, and those mistakes are to be expected the first game of season. You're getting back into game speed. not just practices every day. You're actually going up against a real opponent, not just ⁓ your own defense or your scout defense. So it's a grind. You expect a little bit of ⁓ a ⁓ maturation period, but thankfully, able to come out on the right side of it. When you're talking about things that were
good for yesterday's game. feel like you have to start with the play of Sam Levitt. He did it with the arm, not to the degree that everybody was expecting, but still 257 yards and two passing touchdowns, both to Tyson. Hard to complain with that. Where he really impressed me was with his running game. Seven carries for 73 yards, two touchdowns, a 52 yard touchdown and an 18 yard touchdown both in the third quarter. He really...
showed his ability on those design runs to be able to find those gaps in the lumberjack defense and make them pay and make them just find those gaps and go at them.
Andrew Hayslett (04:23)
Yeah, Leavitt had a solid game in his postgame presser about what he saw in that 52 yard run plays. Like, he saw there was one guy that he had to beat some safety in that formation and he just did that. So, Leavitt's ability to read defenses is obviously has grown from what it was and this is something that NFL scouts who were at the game on Saturday will want to see.
Austen Bundy (04:54)
Yeah, I was impressed with everything Levitt had to show out there. mean, lot of people already talking about his Heisman campaign being ⁓ launched last night. I feel like it's a little premature to start talking about it just yet just because it is an inferior opponent and he did make a couple of
preventable mistakes during the second half, but I mean just being able to see him turn on his legs and be able to do what he did last night and be able to put the team on his back a little bit was encouraging to say the least. ⁓
I would like to see a little bit more of some smarter football out of the offense. ⁓ I'm not saying Sam Levitt doesn't have a good football IQ or he wasn't making the right decisions all the time. He's gonna make mistakes, but I feel like there were some that he made that ⁓ could have been on the play call and he was forcing it a little bit, or it could just be that he played a little bit of hero ball at times. We saw when he made the interception in the second half. ⁓
He threw that ball a little bit, he forced it a little bit, didn't necessarily need to put everything out there on the line ⁓ on that specific play. But like you said, Tom, like these mistakes are going to be made early on in the season, especially against your weak one opponent. So I think it was good that ASU got the win, but they also got to see on tape ⁓ how many holes they need to fix going into another power.
conference opponent in Mississippi State next week.
Tom Hardon (06:26)
And it's a good opportunity to review the game film and learn from those mistakes, learn what you're seeing and not seeing in that situation and apply it to the next game. I feel like ⁓ we can't talk about yesterday's good side without giving some commendation to the coaching staff of Northern Arizona. Kenny even said in his post-game presser how he felt that Brian Wright out-coached him.
And from my vantage point down in section 28, it did look like NAU was the better coach team. They were playing a very bend, don't break style of playing and really forced us to make those mistakes and didn't really give in. They got down 14-0 in the first quarter, but kept sticking it out. And it was a very commendable.
effort by the Lumberjacks all throughout the game.
Andrew Hayslett (07:29)
Yeah, Kenny also in his postgame presser mentioned how he went up to the NAU's defensive coordinator and said, you're doing a really good job. Just because of his interesting formation schemes that I talked about, and often mentioned the bear scheme, that was what he got.
what they seem to run a lot. Yeah, it's a very tough scheme and I think that's why the Sundells didn't score as many points as maybe some people were expecting in a sense. That's still a very tough scheme at the end of the day. There's a difference between playing NAU like Arizona State did and then playing Portland State like BYU did. Yes, they're two FCS schools but they're at very different levels.
Bye.
Austen Bundy (08:21)
Yeah, for sure. ⁓ like I think we mentioned in our previous show, is ⁓ ranked in the FCS right now. So it wasn't like they were going to be a cupcake FCS team coming into Tempe. This was going to be a team that was potentially fighting for a playoff spot come the end of this season in the FCS. ⁓ And 38 points is still a lot of points for someone like ASU to put up on the board, as much as you would have wanted to limit your hemorrhaging when it came to how much NAU was going to score on you.
was right around where I think we all predicted things were going to be. ⁓ So I think, like you said, Andrew, a lot of the negative reaction online may be a tad overreacting to the situation because the final score landed right around where I think we all thought it would be. ⁓
not getting over the forty point mark is a little disappointing but the fact that ⁓ we saw what kind of defense and he was throwing out there and it was not this ⁓ just make sure they don't
Andrew Hayslett (09:22)
Thank you.
Austen Bundy (09:25)
as many points as they can on us. This was a we're going to throw everything in the kitchen sink at you and see what we can do to frustrate you. And they did frustrate ASU's offense a lot. There were a ton of three and outs that ASU had that you would think would be uncharacteristic for the offense that Kenny Dillingham wants to run. ⁓ But that just showed how impressive NAU was coached and how ⁓ exposing a little bit more of the
holes in play calling and ⁓ creativity that I think the coaching staff is going to have to take back to the board here and devise a little bit ⁓ better when it comes to utilizing the guys on the field and maybe not utilizing guys like Jordan Tyson as much as people think he's going to be utilized, which in the end could end up making him more wide open in certain scenarios if you're going to focus in on a guy like Mateo or ⁓
relic brown on on certain down situations
Tom Hardon (10:28)
We'll touch on that usage of Jordan Tyson in a little bit here, but I wanted to throw out one last shout out to just the Sun Devil crowd. We showed out in full force. was the first sellout since 1998 as we were talking about leading up to this game. The final announced attendance was 56,759 fans. And I want to give an extra shout out to the student section. Set a school record.
14,280 fans in the Inferno. From my vantage point down in the crowd, it was electric, electric a kickoff. And we had a lot of, a lot of the crowd was staying through the third quarter in years past for season opening games. I've seen the crowd be visibly empty even before halftime. And it was great seeing the crowd stick around for as long as they did. It did empty out in the fourth quarter as a.
as I was expecting, but part of that I attribute also to just the heat at ⁓ kickoff. And when you're sitting down there in that stadium bowl, the heat pools. A lot of people were just miserable, sweating, getting up out of their seats to walk around the concourse just to get a ⁓ little bit of airflow. But people were sticking around. know it was great to see. Hopefully that's the sign of things to come from our crowds for the rest of the season.
Andrew Hayslett (11:52)
Yeah, I was impressed with the student section as well. This is my first time up in the press box and I didn't really, I was like, wow, they're pretty loud. And you could hear it up. It's not a mile up high, but it's a long ways up. We're basically on the roof of the stadium up there. But yeah, I was like, wow, they're doing a good job. And they stayed for the majority of the game. Like you said, I...
There was a mass exodus at halftime of the student section, but it wasn't as mass as what it could have been, which is a good thing. I know Kenny in the past and the rest of ASU. ⁓
Staff has thrown out incentives for students to stay the whole game. I don't know if there was one this game, but maybe that's something that I might do in the future, depending on how the rest of season goes and who they're playing. A lot of other factors as well.
Tom Hardon (12:51)
I feel
like there is something like some kind of partnership with with Chick-fil-A. I want to say for for student tickets for a purchase today I'm not 100 % sure on that. might be imagining that but I think there certainly was something.
Austen Bundy (13:08)
It's kind of tough to get students to accept Chick-fil-A being an incentive over Mill Avenue on a Saturday night. So you got to give Kenny credit for trying, but it's tough to get away from the tempting sirens of Mill Avenue.
Andrew Hayslett (13:15)
Yeah.
Tom Hardon (13:23)
Yeah.
Andrew Hayslett (13:23)
be a
minority here but I'll take the trip. ⁓ Seven days a week and twice on Sunday even though they're closed.
Austen Bundy (13:26)
Hahaha
Tom Hardon (13:27)
Hahaha
Austen Bundy (13:32)
Ha ha.
Tom Hardon (13:32)
if we
can get it on Sunday, which is kind of tough to do. Well, we've covered what we thought was good about the game. Can't have the good without the bad. And we've touched on this a couple of times already. But for me, was the offensive play calling. We looked very one dimensional, heavily reliant on Jordan Tyson. You can't argue the numbers. 12 catches for, what was it, think it was 141 yards.
So, you know, it was a great performance as you would expect, but everybody knows that Sam and Jordan are going to be that connection all throughout the season. And if you're showing your hand this early in the season against NIU and there's that game film to back it up, it's going to be easy for every team in the Big 12 to review that tape and defend against that scheme. Jordan was in man coverage for the majority of the game. I saw he was getting double covered. ⁓
⁓ quite a bit towards the, during the second half and still trying to drive the offense through him. You can't have the offense go through one guy only. You've got to be able to spread the spread the ball around to your different receivers. I was irrationally excited when Sam finally found Shaman Mateur for that catch for 20 yards in the third quarter. I'm like, yes, feed Shaman more. He can line up in the slot. He's, he's a, like a wide receiver plus he can.
He can do just about anything on the field and I want to see more of that for him. I want us to see, I want to see us run the ball a lot more as well. We did rack up 200 yards of rushing, but it was not, I never got a sense of any kind of flow to the game, to the play calling. It was very fits and starts. was like, it was just like, this is working for a while and then kind of tapers off. There was no real continuity. There was no.
you natural flow from pass to run. You weren't really working in the play action all that well. And when you're getting too predictable like that, you saw Sam forced to scramble a lot. know, the NA defense only recorded two sacks, but they forced him to scramble a lot more than you want to see. I forced that ⁓ near hospital ball that resulted in the easy interception. And I just want to see.
a lot more even distribution of the bulb between the receivers.
Austen Bundy (16:02)
Yeah, I don't want to pile on too much with the offensive line, but I will say they were missing LeFauTanu a lot last night. There were way too many pressures, like you said, that were forcing Sam to scramble. I didn't feel like the offensive line gave the running backs as much of an opportunity as they probably should have in the running game. And I feel like that maybe spooked Kenny a little bit out of the running game and throwing it a little bit more. ⁓
I mean the yardage says that the running was successful but I don't think that number tells the whole story from being able to watch the first half and actually see what the offensive line was doing. It didn't feel like the offensive line was as dominant as it could have been against an undersized NAU defensive front. Now I give a lot of credit to the NAU defensive front because they were frustrating the front line.
ton and getting to Sam and ⁓ making him make mistakes and have to scramble a lot more than he really should have in a game like this. But if the offensive line is going to have any shot against guys equal or bigger to their stature when we enter conference play, ⁓ there needs to be a bit of a scheme change or there needs to be some sort of strength and conditioning upgrade because it didn't seem like they were dominating as much as they should have against an inferior opponent like NAU.
Andrew Hayslett (17:28)
me, I'm gonna go back to Jordan Tyson here. I don't think going to Jordan Tyson and having him have the game that he did is not necessarily a bad thing. I didn't feel as much double coverage on him at the end of the day as you might have Tom. I think Kenny thought that same thought too. But at the end of the day...
he's gonna have good games. Remember there's games where he's only gonna go for 58 yards or whatever and someone else is going to take the step up. Whether that might be Malik McLean, we saw him catch a few balls. I know one I believe was called back, which I think we're gonna get to later. I wanna get to that later. ⁓
You have Jaylen Moss, have Jaren Hamilton, guys like that. Even Derek Usable, that which I'd like to see, I saw him get in a few plays.
at the receiver, maybe one of those guys can take the step up. Or when your tight ends like Shaman or Kamari Anderson or whoever. But something I did see a lot of that I liked, I'm kind of going back to like, ⁓ with the pass offenses, the running backs catching the ball. We saw that often in that first drive. And then I felt like they kind of got away from that, which is...
which is something I'd like to see them kept doing, maybe that's something to see in the future. But yeah, I just, don't think Tyson's great game is necessarily a bad thing.
Tom Hardon (19:10)
And it's not a bad thing by any means. just, you know, to me, I want to see us be a little bit more varied and just not be not be as predictable when it comes to what the play calling is going to end up being. Moving on, though, that, you know, with any defensive front, you know, I thought it was while they were undersized, I think the I think their speed really caught caught ASU off guard and
Andrew Hayslett (19:29)
you
Tom Hardon (19:39)
really started forcing some of those mistakes, namely ⁓ Sam's interception in the fourth quarter, which I felt was a true running situation. You're already up by ⁓ 18 points, just salt the clock away. I think with the play call, I think he saw the opportunity to go for McLean down the sideline and his eyes got real big, wanted to.
get that definitive touchdown strike and instead launched up a floater that was easily picked off by Michael Beresford. And thankfully nothing came of that interception. We got an interception of our own a few plays later, but it's the kind of play that against a better opponent will come back to hurt ASU later on in the season.
Andrew Hayslett (20:31)
Yeah, I agree with you. I would have liked to see more running at the end there. We saw the leak. We a breakout game we saw.
Tyson had a good game as well but we didn't see much of Kanyu Yudo at all. Yes he did get in a few plays, maybe half a dozen total. I'm not quite sure what the stats are off the top of my head but I think he had a quarter pass and had one or two rushes but I thought we weren't going to see as much of him as the other two. I just didn't know, I just did not expect it to be that.
that level of lack of distribution for me. That's something I've taken away. don't know about you guys.
Austen Bundy (21:19)
feel like if you're, when you have that kind of rotation, when something's working, it's working. But that was kind of tough to gauge considering as much as the yardage was high for the two guys that were taking the bulk of the carries, but the carries was still a relatively lower number. Like I would have expected one of them to get at least 10 carries. And even then I think that's on the lower end when it comes to a game where you should probably be running the ball a lot more, especially in the second half. ⁓ So I feel like.
Tom Hardon (21:19)
Yes.
Andrew Hayslett (21:36)
Yeah.
Thank you.
Austen Bundy (21:50)
ASU has a good problem at running back. You have a lot of guys that are capable, a lot of guys that could easily take control of the game if the other two are not feeling it that night. ⁓ But when you're not going to involve all of them to a certain degree or you're not going to involve the top guys as heavily as you should when things are going well,
Andrew Hayslett (21:53)
Thank
Austen Bundy (22:15)
that poses a problem that I think can go under the radar for a coaching staff. ⁓ I'm going to trust Kenny on this one. I'm going to trust the coaching staff with how they're going to utilize those running backs and the committee in the backfield that they have. Relique Brown, like you said, had a breakout game. I feel like he's the guy that you're going to be hearing his name called a lot more.
breaking off of tackles and getting into the end zone frequently. I'm not saying he's gonna be a Kam Scadaboo level type player, but he's easily the type of guy who can replace enough of that production to give Kenny and the coaching staff enough leeway to get creative with the passing game on the opposite side of that.
Tom Hardon (22:58)
I'm going to quote Moneyball here, you know, can't replace Scott of Oowen one player, but you can replace him in the aggregate. And I think that's ultimately the end game with with the running back by committee and to run to run through the numbers here.
Kyson had seven carries for 73 yards, Rolik five carries for 38 yards and touchdown, Kanye two carries for 19 yards, Kanye also had one catch for six yards, Rolik three catches for 13 yards and Kyson six catches for 72 yards. there's utilization there and I think as we were talking about last week with ⁓ Kanye coming over from ⁓ a different running scheme at Army, they're more of the option style offense.
It's a little bit of ⁓ an acclimation period for him and just getting his feet under him and learning this new style rather than always being on the option and more of designed running plays. ⁓ The penalties to me was a major frustration. ⁓ 12 penalties, 93 penalty yards, a lot of procedural penalties, a lot of... ⁓
drive disruptors, ⁓ couple of those penalties, called back big gains or called back touchdowns. ⁓ It was difficult to watch that knowing the discipline that Kenny was trying to drive home through camp and through practices leading up to this game. And then to see it, I wouldn't say it fell apart, but we definitely lost our composure as far as keeping ourselves on the ⁓
on the right side of those procedural penalties. again, it's a facet of the game that will be exploited by any team in the Big 12 later on this season.
Andrew Hayslett (24:50)
Yeah, there are a few things I want to point out in penalties. We had that one stretch where Sun Devils were just got the ball, had a relief brown touchdown that was called back due I think to a ⁓
Malik McClain illegal block of some sort. Then you had a play to McClain that went for like 60 and that was called back to a do it at Kyle Scott hold and then you had a false start that's just three in a row on three plays that's just gonna take you out of any drive no matter if you're on opposing one or your own one you're screwed.
Tom Hardon (25:30)
And I think on that thin drive, there was also
the ineligible man downfield that disrupted what would have been a long game.
Andrew Hayslett (25:38)
Yeah. And then as, yeah.
Austen Bundy (25:40)
back-to-back plays, weren't they?
Tom Hardon (25:42)
Yeah,
we went from first and 10 to first and 30 or first and 35 really quick.
Andrew Hayslett (25:48)
Yeah, ⁓ there were on defense, on one drive, you had two 15 yard penalties that were, I think one was a personal foul and I don't think the other one was a rough in the passer if my memory serves me correctly. Which is,
Austen Bundy (26:04)
Take care.
Andrew Hayslett (26:09)
Those are the penalties you don't want to commit. You don't want to commit penalties as a whole, but you don't want to commit those big 15 yarders. Those are the ones that are really going to cost you. And then also special teams committed two penalties as well. We had a delay of game on an extra point from Gomez, that he wound up making. And then we had a, I believe it was a false start on a pun as well. Just...
It wasn't the penalties weren't just on one side of the ball. They were on all three sides of the ball. That was my big takeaway.
Tom Hardon (26:43)
I think I counted half a dozen delay game penalties combined between offense and special teams. Those penalties are so easy to avoid.
Austen Bundy (26:54)
Especially you're in your home stadium, sound should not be an issue when you're trying to get a snap count off. ⁓
These are the type of things that when you enter conference play are going to make or break the season. I mean, we saw from just last season, ASU benefited from a lot of teams making mistakes on penalties, especially a lot of those procedural penalties. ⁓ And ASU simply just can't afford to be on the other side of that because that's not going to result in winning football. It doesn't matter how good of a team you are. If you're killing yourself on drives that are going down the fields and putting yourself in a scoring position, but then you end up with 10, 15 yards in penalties,
that back you up out of a situation that could have gotten you a first down or put you in field goal range at the end of a game. ⁓ Those are the type of things you need to limit and eliminate if you're Kenny Dillingham. And I hope that he takes the opportunity this week at practice to really drill guys and really make sure that they get through their heads that they need to be perfect on procedural stuff and they need to be disciplined when it comes to the more individual aggressiveness penalties like roughing the passer.
Tom Hardon (28:03)
Onto some of more ugly facets of the game. Austin, you can speak to this one much better than Andrew and I will be able to. Lots of chatter about the ESPN Plus feed, not only the overall quality, but just why we were relegated to ESPN Plus in the first place. ⁓ In true fashion, Graham Racini, I give him full marks for coming out and addressing this head on and...
speaking to the fan base at large on Twitter about this last night, but you kind of have to wonder why we were even in that situation, not being on linear television for the opening game. Yes, it is against an FCS opponent, but as we've mentioned many times, it was really a ranked on ranked matchup when you come down to it. And it was a much more competitive game than some of the other games that were on.
on the major networks throughout the day. thankfully, the next two games, we are on the major networks. There's no need for the ESPN Plus stream. But Austin, us what your experience when that went out was.
Austen Bundy (29:16)
I'll start with my guess as to why we were relegated to ESPN Plus in the first place. mean, was more than likely a perfect storm in the network sense because when you go and take a look at other channels that were showing games...
Other, mean, when you look across like your channel guide, you're gonna see like the Michigan and New Mexico was on NBC. ASU obviously can't be on NBC because that's a big 10 in NBC agreement. Same with CBS or with... ⁓
CW which has PAC-12. ⁓
Fox, I believe, did not have a game on in that slot or it might have, but I think it was a different conference at the time. But when you're looking at ESPN and at ESPN ⁓ bought the rights to ASU's game to week one ⁓ period, they weren't going to be able to put it on any of their channels because you already had ESPN 2, which had the US Open on it. ACC Networks dedicated to the ACC. ESPN was finishing up one of the prime time games, which was ⁓
not Clemson LSU, that one was on ABC, which is why ASU wouldn't have been there. I can't remember who ESPN had, but I think it was two lesser teams that perhaps just, I don't know if it was for a regional reason, but ASU bottom line was put on ESPN Plus probably because they got stuck in this network, whatever you want.
call it the politics of finding a place to put them. But on the other hand, ASU is the number 11 ranked team in the nation and you're going to bury them on a streaming platform regardless if it starts at 10 p.m. I mean you have Hawaii and Arizona were being played on TNT. ⁓
It doesn't make any sense to me that that game which ended up being not as entertaining as ours and not between two ranked opponents made it onto a normal cable channel instead of the streaming that ASU, a ranked team, got thrown onto. And even at that, I mean, you could only watch the first half of the game because as soon as halftime came around...
The feed went black. Like, you couldn't watch the game. You could only listen to it for a majority of the second half. You either had a black screen or a ton of static and not much visual. You could hear the game for whatever quality you want to label it as. You were still a little bit of choppiness to it, but you could hear what was happening and they kind of had to go into a bit of a radio mode for a while.
But if you were watching from home and you didn't turn it off and switch over to Tim Healy on ⁓ radio or streaming internet radio elsewhere, ⁓ the feed didn't come back until there were eight minutes left in the game. there were, of course, a lot of conspiracy theorists on X thinking that this was just ⁓ more ESPN bias against ASU, just sabotaging the stream and not really caring and fixing anything. But it turns out that the issues were ⁓
across the ESPN and ESPN Plus app. There were several other games that were having the same issue. So this was not a localized thing where maybe the satellite truck at Mountain America Stadium had a cord problem or something like that, or a transmission problem. This was something happening all the way up in Bristol, Connecticut that they couldn't figure out until the game was almost over.
So yeah, very frustrating for people watching at home. Very evident online. mean, even Kam Scataboo chimed in from his residence now in New Jersey as a member of the New York Giants. He chimed in with Chirpin at ESPN for not being able to watch the game. And like you said, to your credit with Graham Racini jumping in and saying he was gonna address this with the Big 12 and with ESPN. I mean, for someone like ASU especially, because you're a top 15 school and you've got a little bit more.
commanding power, you really should go to the conference and someone like Brett Yormark who is very defensive of schools, I give Brett Yormark a lot of credit for defending schools in the Big 12 against networks and against other conferences. If he's gonna prove that that's his track record, I think someone like Yormark would go to ESPN and say like, from now on, none of our ranked teams end up on your streaming platform. They either end up on a normal-
television channel or we're taking our business elsewhere. And ESPN has shown year in and year out that their product is not the high standard that it used to be. And very disappointing that you have ESPN launch a brand new app, a whole new thing where it's got its own issues of making people who already subscribe to it on their televisions having to pay extra to us to stream for it. ⁓ But the fact that the quality of these streams was subpar to begin with. ⁓
And another thing that I think a lot of people were finding annoying from this is the fact that the game, whenever they were coming back to the game, it was static and it was terrible, terrible quality. But then when you go to a commercial break, the commercials are coming through just fine because they're all preloaded internet ads that you're getting rather than like watching the television feed come in via the stream, which at one point you did get some Arizona ads come in and the quality on them were...
just as terrible as the game feed. So that's where you can tell that ⁓ it was the app and internet ads that were coming in just fine. And it was something with the transmission in Bristol that was not coming through to everyone's televisions correctly. So very frustrating that a lot of people couldn't watch the win in its entirety. They couldn't watch most of the second half where the team pulled away. They kind of had to rely on radio or rely on.
where a lot of us were recovering it. Andrew and Tom, you guys were on the ground tweeting out a lot of things as they were happening. So we tried to bring that to the people as best as we could when there was no one else to ⁓ really give them any of the, catch them up on any of the action. You guys were there for it. ⁓ Almost reminds you of the old days of... ⁓
sports blackouts which I guess are still around but I the really old days of football sports blackouts where you really had to just be at the game and then either listen to on radio or read about it in the paper the next morning to find out what happened.
Tom Hardon (35:39)
Yeah, I saw a tweet on Twitter either late last night or this morning and really called out the importance of local media, everybody on the ground who's getting the information out to people who aren't able to watch it. ⁓ Andrew, go ahead. Sorry for cutting you off there.
Andrew Hayslett (35:40)
Yeah.
Yeah, I did see that taken, liked it. I saw you repost it, I'm like, yeah, exactly. honestly, I don't have an issue with that game being on ESPN +, because at the end of the day, you only have maybe a half a dozen places where you can theoretically put it. ESPN, ABC, Fox, FS1, and TNT.
That's six places. And across all college football, is that a top six interesting game in that hour? Probably not. But at the end of the day, regardless of whether you agree with that or disagree with that, it is inexcusable for ESPN Plus to not have a working stream. Simple as that.
I'm taking a class right now in Cronkite that is literally setting up streams and doing TV streams. I'm not saying I can do it, but maybe at the end of this class I might be able to do it. If Cronkite kits can do it, you can do it too. But for me at the end of the day, here's something I'd like to see. Is SCC has its network, ACC has its network.
I don't think the Big 10 has a network, but I do know that I have a Big 10+.
Austen Bundy (37:28)
There's a Big Ten
network, but it's owned by Fox Sports.
Tom Hardon (37:29)
Yep, there is.
Andrew Hayslett (37:31)
I didn't know that. But the Big 12 I know doesn't. This is perfect time for all the people in the Big 12 office to say, you know what would be good? Our own streaming network and we can tie it to not necessarily ESPN or...
Fox maybe TNT because I know they have a deal now it's a I don't know let's get something together so that there is big 12 streaming and a place to put big 12 games on so people can watch more of them instead of less on your streaming networks or your yeah your streaming stuff because
People aren't gonna shell out more money to watch things behind paywalls. Simple as that. If you can get this new network possibly onto a YouTube TV and other things like that, it would be huge for the conference. So if I'm somewhere in that office right now, that would be something I'm pushing heavily after last night's fiasco.
Austen Bundy (38:43)
We all know Brett Yormark and the Big 12 are not the Pac-12. They're not going to mess it up with a direct TV exclusive channel that more than half the country couldn't access ⁓ unless you were regional. ⁓ I think the Big 12, like you said, Andrew, the Big 12, especially with Big 12 Studios, I they do a great job on social media and YouTube with their production teams there. They have the resources to be able to do something like this. They just need to find the right network partner to set something like that up.
Tom Hardon (39:12)
I think the logical destination would be through ESPN. I'm not sure what the share of games between ESPN and Fox are for the Big 12, but with ACC Network, with SEC Network under the ESPN umbrella, to me that's the logical destination. And I know the ACC Network and SEC have been around since before the massive realignment in the last, I it 20 years now.
But I think when the Big 12 kind of went by the wayside ⁓ after both Nebraska and Colorado left, they were the kids at the adult table. And everybody thought the Pac-12 was going to be the first of the super conferences. We all know how that went. But with the Big 12 really reinventing itself, I think that the time is soon.
for that network to come to life. The last point I wanted to really make is, this might be a little bit of tinfoil here, but the officiating did not seem to be on its A game, at least as ⁓ far as my, from my vantage point. A couple of those penalties, like there were legit penalties. I'm not gonna argue that, but.
maybe a little bit of a phantom hold on some of those penalties and then to me it was the crew losing track of the downs and really just not grasping the basic in-game aspects and I don't know, just to me it was not a good game all around for them.
Austen Bundy (41:02)
Yeah, the Ghost of Pac-12 refs were still haunting ⁓ Mountain America Stadium there a little bit. I mean, I don't know, I don't remember where this crew was from, but they were struggling a little bit to keep control of the game a little bit, and a lot of tiki-tac penalties, a lot of tiki-tac ⁓ flags that were getting thrown out there. I mean, I couldn't complain too much about...
the officiating given that as you did shoot themselves in the foot multiple times and a lot of those penalties where the procedural ones where it's like i mean the rules the rule the clock is telling you right there what's what's happening but i think there was maybe just one of those delay of game calls where i think kenny was yelling at the ref about how the clock didn't start on time or the play card the play clock didn't reset like it was supposed to but otherwise i feel like a lot of those procedural penalties were warranted
Andrew Hayslett (41:58)
me out that's not really something I try to worry about but I did notice that sequence that you mentioned Tom where they just lost track of the downs and the NAU coach was upset about it on the sideline. I was wondering up in the press box like what's happening right now I don't know what happened I don't I still know what happened but it's week one hopefully that group ⁓
gets everything ironed out by the next time Arizona State sees them.
Tom Hardon (42:34)
I think the specific sequence was NA was on offense, it was third and long, penalty on NAU, and then it went, somehow it went back to second down, and then it went back to third down where it should have been. To me, that was just one of those things, it's like, come on guys, you got your jobs, you know what down it is.
Alright, well at the end of the day a win is a win. We'll take 1-0 every day over being 0-1. I don't think this game is not going to move the needle up for ASU at all. I don't think it's going to hurt us either. Hopefully the AP does not look too unfavorably on the closeness of the game. Hopefully they take into account how highly ranked in the FCS NAU was.
No, I expect us to still be entering next week at number 11 when we go down to Starkville for Saturday's matchup with the Bulldogs. Any other any other walk in topics for you guys before we sign off?
Andrew Hayslett (43:41)
Yeah, I do want to go. Go ahead.
Austen Bundy (43:41)
I don't think... Go for it, Andrew.
Andrew Hayslett (43:47)
Alright, do hear something I want to say is that for me, yeah, I know it's week one, but I some of these teams that were ranked and lost, I don't want to see them in the AP poll that that just frustrates me. You've got a bunch of one to no teams that played other FPS schools and won.
Tom Hardon (43:47)
Andrew, go ahead.
Andrew Hayslett (44:08)
They deserve it. I don't want to see Clemson ranked. I don't want to Alabama ranked. Yeah, they're supposed to be good, but what's on tape is what's on tape. They're 0-1. They'll have time to get that spot back. Simple as that.
Austen Bundy (44:25)
Yeah, I agree with you. There needs to be more of consequences for stuff like that. And I believe that AP voters do have a little bit more of, they give more leeway to establish programs like that. Whereas ASU, let's say they get into the top 25, or they have in previous years, have a decent record and then as soon as they lose the next game, they're out of the top 25 and they can't seem to break back in no matter what they do later on in the year. But someone like a Clemson or a Bama will lose to an unranked team at some point and still somehow only drop like three.
or four spots which Bama I anticipate them to probably drop into the teens somewhere. Florida State will jump into the top 25. Clemson will probably drop somewhere into the teens. I don't see them dropping out completely but because you have a lot of those top 10 upsets and one of the teams tonight ⁓ as we're recording this Notre Dame and Miami one of those two teams has to lose. So like you said Tom I feel like ASU is gonna have to at least stay at 11. I don't think they'll get the benefit of moving up even one spot.
after what they did last night. But I can't fathom them dropping any farther than like 12 or 13 if the AP voters really want to be cruel about it. I don't think there was enough there to drop them. But there were enough losses ahead of them that I think should keep them relatively steady in that number 11 spot going into next week.
Tom Hardon (45:44)
Yeah, you know, that's at the end of day, you just don't want to lose ground and I think we'll be safe there.
Well, thank you everybody for listening. This has been another episode of Echo from the Buttes. Tune back in with us on Friday as David should be back with us to preview next weekend's matchup with the Mississippi State Bulldogs. For Andrew and Austin, this is Tom signing off. Forks up.
David Howman (46:11)
you