ARIZONA STATE FOOTBALL

Tony White named Arizona State’s new defensive coordinator

Dec 19, 2019, 7:22 PM | Updated: 10:48 pm

Arizona State Sun Devils Head Coach Herm Edwards on the sidelines during a college football game ag...

Arizona State Sun Devils Head Coach Herm Edwards on the sidelines during a college football game against the UCLA Bruins played on October 26, 2019 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA. (Photo by John Cordes/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

(Photo by John Cordes/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Arizona State head coach Herm Edwards named Tony White the team’s new defensive coordinator on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station Thursday.

“It was an easy transition. When you look at your staff, you’re always looking to give guys opportunities,” Edwards said.

On his weekly coaches show All Aboard, Edwards also announced that recruiting director and linebackers coach Antonio Pierce has become the new assistant head coach, a title former defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales previously held.

“He really works at it,” Edwards said of Pierce. “We’re gonna lose him eventually as well. That’s gonna happen. He’s gonna go somewhere and be a head coach one day again. He was a head coach in high school, was a great football player … that’s just part of it, though, and you understand that when you’re in this profession.”

White has been with Edwards for his first two seasons in Tempe as the cornerbacks coach and defensive passing game coordinator. He previously had coached at San Diego State for nine years as the cornerbacks coach, where the Aztecs were one of the best teams in the country at interceptions in White’s time there.

White also spent time at New Mexico, where Gonzales took the new head coaching job, as the linebackers coach in 2007 after first breaking into the college ranks as a graduate assistant for UCLA in 2006.

Edwards will have two new coordinators next season after replacing Rob Likens with Zak Hill and Gonzales with White.

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