Arizona State names Erickson new head coach

NCAA Football Betting Lines

12/11/2006 - Tempe, AZ (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Arizona State made it official on Monday, announcing Dennis Erickson as the school's new head football coach.

Word first leaked out last week when Rob Spear, athletic director of Idaho, where Erickson coached last season, told the Idaho Statesman that the former two-time Pac-10 coach of the year would leave the school to take over the job with the Sun Devils.

Erickson, who will make his third coaching stop in the Pac-10, spent just this past season at Idaho in his second stint with the school. The Vandals went just 4-8, including 3-5 in the Western Athletic Conference, losing their final five games of the season.

In 1982, Erickson began his long head coaching career at Idaho, reviving the school's program during a four-year stay. From there, he coached at Wyoming, Washington State, and Miami-Florida, where he won two national championships. He also coached at Oregon State and went to three bowl games in four years.

"Dennis Erickson has proven both on the national level and in the Pac-10 that he can compete and win against the best," said Arizona State vice president of athletics Lisa Love. "When you start looking at his accomplishments, what stands out is his big-game experience. He has been to the top of the college football world with two national titles at a proven national power in south Florida, and then took a program that had not had a winning season in three decades on the other side of the country to a Bowl Championship Series win. He coached in one of the nation's best rivalry games when it was at its highest level. He has had great success against the nation's top-ranked teams and also handled the pressure of being No. 1."

Erickson also spent six years coaching in the NFL, four with the Seattle Seahawks (1995-98) and two with the San Francisco 49ers (2003-04).

Erickson's successes in the college ranks at Idaho, Wyoming, Washington State, Miami and Oregon State are documented in his record of 148-65-1. Of his 18 college teams, 14 competed in a postseason game.

Erickson will replace Dirk Koetter, who was fired as head football coach of the Sun Devils on November 26. Arizona State will play Hawaii in the Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Eve in Honolulu, and Koetter will coach the Sun Devils in that game.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.