ASU’s Graham CBS Sports’ Pac-12 Coach of the Week
Sep 5, 2012, 4:10 PM | Updated: 5:22 pm
The Pac-12 doesn’t give out the Coach of the Week Award as part of their weekly hardware announcements, opting to stick to honoring the offensive, defensive and special teams players of the week.
But Jon Gold over at CBS Sports will be giving out his own weekly award for the conference’s sideline bosses, and Arizona State’s Todd Graham won the unofficial honor in Week 1 after his Sun Devils trounced Northern Arizona 63-6.
Arizona State was penalized nearly eight times a game last season for roughly 80 yards on average, negating the talent that Dennis Erickson acquired. In one game under Graham, albeit against a vastly inferior Northern Arizona counterpart, the Sun Devils stood upright. Forget the 63-6 final score, Graham must’ve been more pleased with 30-4 — that is, just 30 yards on four penalties.
The 30 penalty yards for ASU was the lowest total since the Sun Devils had 27 in a 20-17 win over Arizona on December 1, 2007 — a span of 51 games.