The cost was high, at just around $8.6 million. But to hear ASU associate athletic director Dawn Rogers tell it, this thing is worth every penny.
"During August and pretty much through October we practice at night due to the extreme heat," Rogers said. "That makes it really difficult for players to get up and lift (weight train) at 6 a.m., go to class all day and then to study table and practice. It makes their day extremely long.
"It also makes it difficult for them to recover. What the air structure does is allow us to start with a normal schedule beginning in August and continue on until the team is able to go outside for day practices."
But it doesn't stop there. Rogers went on to say that this isn't just a football facility, but one that several sports will enjoy. Even the band will get use out of it. And finally, the cost of the air conditioning won't be too steep. Partly because they won't have to cool it year-round, but they are looking into using solar panels to help produce the energy needed to cool the facility.
Now will this help on the football field? Time will tell. Other severe weather teams have certainly embraced the bubble idea. But to be able to keep their student-athletes on a somewhat regular schedule, in a cool, comfortable, and potentially environment-friendly structure? I guess the only question is what took so long for this to happen.
"Old School" is the College Football FanHouse's irregular look back at the rich history of college football, usually through the medium of embeddable flash video. Check out the Old School archive for more famous plays and infamous hair.
It's hard to imagine how dominant Nebraska was in 1996. The gold standard for excellence this millennium, USC, has won a couple national titles but has only one undefeated season in the Carroll era. Even when they were obviously the best team, they weren't flat unbeatable.
Nebraska was. After a crushing 18-16 defeat against Florida State in the 1994 Orange Bowl (about which more here), the Huskers went on the warpath. 1994: 13-0, national champions, no team within two scores save Miami in the bowl game. 1995: 12-0, national champions, no team closer than 14 points. Obliterated Florida 62-14 in the bowl game. They opened the 1996 season by hammering Michigan State and Oklahoma State by a combined score of 114-31. Nebraska was never going to lose again.
Enter Arizona State. Enter Derrick Rodgers. Exit streak.
Tillman was a Pac-10 defensive player of the year at Arizona State before playing several years in the NFL. He later joined the US Army Rangers unit where he was later killed by friendly fire during an operation in Afghanistan.
Since that time, Tillman's become a national hero of sorts, while his family has battled to pursue possible negligence that led to his death and how the military handled the investigation of the friendly fire incident.
I can't speak for his NFL career, but he was an absolute demon while at ASU as an undersized safety/linebacker. Tillman was on the 1997 Rose Bowl ASU team that nearly won the national championship before surrendering a last-minute touchdown drive to Ohio State.
Mike Stoops got off a zinger in his signing day press conference when asked about more successful in-state rival Arizona State:
"Each school has to recruit to their school and what kind of requirements they (have)," Stoops said. "Arizona State has turned into a JC, and we're a four-year college. According to all the players, they say it's easier to go to school there, easier to get in."
Stoops laughed. "I thought we all had the same requirements."
This may well be true. Arizona State takes a lot of two-year players. But if there's any BCS school in the country that should avoid the subject of academics at all costs, it's Arizona:
NCAA academic indicators for athletes in school - the Academic Progress Rate - show Arizona football with a score of 883, well below the 925 standard. Arizona State is at 926.
The Wildcats were the only BCS team in the nation to get socked with scholarship penalties from the APR last year; they are the most academically irresponsible program in the country.
All this... and no bowls ever. Arizona! Not a JC! Not even a C!
Picture the scene... you're sitting around your house on a Saturday morning and your girlfriend calls you and asks if you want to have brunch with her family. Normally, you'd be fairly amenable to free silver dollar pancakes, even if it means enduring some awkward conversation, but today is not a normal day. It's the high-school all-star game. Sorry, tootsie, but home boy has a date with Tom Lemming today, and no amount of waffles or eggs Benedict can interrupt.
If any of this made sense to you, congratulations, you're a junkie.
Just to remind you all, this game is sponsored by the U.S. army, so the over/under on lame Army commercials is like a million.
A lot of these blue-chippers will be announcing their college choices. When that happens, I'll put the contents in bold face, so you can skip over my pithy commentary and get right to the commitments, if that's your thing.
No pictures, no YouTube (yet) as this is live television folks. Texas was leading Arizona State 21-0 after the first quarter in tonight's Holiday Bowl, then things got interesting.
After marching deep into Texas territory, ASU quarterback Rudy Carpenter appeared to lateral the ball backwards as he was about to get sacked. Texas' defense pursued the loose ball as it neared the Longhorn sidelines then everything went to hell.
The Longhorns recovered the ball after some bobbles, but replay appeared to show a Texas staff member on the field barely touching the ball. Replay officials re-examined the play and determined that it had been a touch and returned the ball to ASU and flagged Texas for unsportsmanlike conduct. ASU immediately scored a 7-yard touchdown pass to bring the game to 21-7 and re-introduce them into what had been a Texas blowout.
Ever since, ESPN has been showing shot after shot of the staffer looking miserable on the sidelines. Credit to Kirk Herbstreit for bringing up the Steve Bartman example as ESPN cannot look away from the guy. Personally I watched the replay and it's hard to see where he touched the ball. He came darn close but appears to have just gotten his hand back as the ball skirted by him. Replay officials better be darn sure that he did in fact touch it because that has completely changed the complexion of this game.
Update: ESPN is now informing us that the staffer's name is Chris Jesse and he is Mack Brown's stepson.
Since joining the Bowl Championship Series system, the Pac Ten has been the perennial odd-man out, and history repeated itself again as the Kansas Jayhawks were selected to play in the Orange Bowl, leaving Arizona State as the off-man out.
In 2001, the Oregon Ducks were jumped over by a Nebraska team that lost its final game and left out of the Rose Bowl. Two years later, USC was ranked #1 in both human polls, but left out of the Title Game. A year later, Mack Brown lobbied enough pollsters to jump Cal for the final automatic qualifying spot and a Rose Bowl berth, and in 2005, Oregon missed an automatic BCS berth by one slot.
That stench the college football world is smelling these days is coming from Pasadena--where the Grandaddy of them All could be forced to put an undefeated Hawaii team that nobody thinks is any good against a 7-5 UCLA squad that lost to the Worst College Football Team Ever®, Notre Dame.
If UCLA beats USC and Arizona State falls to Arizona on Saturday, the five-loss Bruins will win a four-way tiebreaker and become the Pac Ten representative for the 2008 Rose Bowl Game, presented by Citi--and let the puns begin!
If Ohio State also gets picked up for the BCS Title Game, Tournament of Roses officials will have their choice of teams, but UCLA-Illinois just seems like a glorified Sun Bowl Matchup. Remember, a UCLA qualification for the Rose Bowl would open the door to the BCS for a number of other teams.* For the sake of staging a competitive bowl game, the Rose Bowl might turn next to Hawaii--though we understand Georgia has the inside track if the opponent is either USC or Arizona State.
The USC Trojans used the national stage of Thanksgiving evening to make Arizona State look like turkeys, turning the Sun Devils' world upside down en route to a 44-24 win.
From the opening drive, the Trojans looked like the squads which competed for National Championships, not Sun Bowl berths, driving the length of the field for a quick touchdown.
Trojan quarterback John David Booty's 375-yard performance came from distributing the ball efficiently and finally connecting on long passes to Patrick Turner and Ronald Johnson.
On defense, the Trojans stifled Arizona State, limiting the Sun Devils to zero yards on 27 carries through three quarters.
Oregon's Dennis Dixon, statistically didn't have an overwhelming night against Arizona State. Only 189 passing yards but he made them count with 4 TD passes. The scariest thing, though, was that Dixon twisted his knee in the 4th quarter. He was kept out of the game after that and said it wasn't serious. Safe bet that there will be lots of monitoring and treatments. The good news, is that Oregon has a bye next week to give Dixon extra recovery time.
Oregon, though, didn't take any chances. Not only was he kept on the sideline for the rest of the game, but as the game neared the end it was apparent that the students were going to storm the field. The Ducks sent Dixon off to the locker room before that, to avoid any further risk.
Arizona State kept the game close in the first half, but kept having to settle for field goals despite piling up yards. In the second half, the Sun Devils just couldn't stop the big play. Jonathan Stewart had a 33-yard TD run and Dixon torched Arizona State on the next drive with two runs for 13 and 15 yards before tossing a 19 yard TD pass.
Normally you hear about this kind of thing from a northern weather school, but if you've ever been to a day game at Sun Devil Stadium in September or October, you can understand the idea. After working practice schedules around the oppressive heat for so long, ASU has finally constructed an indoor bubble, large enough to house a couple of practice fields with room to spare. 
Tillman was a Pac-10 defensive player of the year at Arizona State before playing several years in the NFL. He later joined the US Army Rangers unit where he was later killed by friendly fire during an operation in Afghanistan.
Mike Stoops 
Picture the scene... you're sitting around your house on a Saturday morning and your girlfriend calls you and asks if you want to have brunch with her family. Normally, you'd be fairly amenable to free silver dollar pancakes, even if it means enduring some awkward conversation, but today is not a normal day. It's the high-school all-star game. Sorry, tootsie, but home boy has a date with Tom Lemming today, and no amount of waffles or eggs Benedict can interrupt.
No pictures, no YouTube (yet) as this is live television folks. Texas was leading Arizona State 21-0 after the first quarter in tonight's Holiday Bowl, then things got interesting.
Oregon's Dennis Dixon, statistically didn't have an overwhelming night against Arizona State. Only 189 passing yards but he made them count with 4 TD passes. The scariest thing, though, was that 
