Former Sun Devil on ASU’s Missed Expectations: “It Stings Everybody”

Arizona State has three losses as they sit on their bye week leading up to a big Thursday night matchup at home with Oregon.

It has been well documented that head coach Todd Graham had and continues to have high hopes for this team this season but with tough losses in big games against Texas A&M, USC and most recently Utah, the expectations appear to be falling short for a team that is supposedly the best Coach Graham “has ever coached.”

“Obviously it’s been disappointing with the high hopes going into the season,” Former Arizona State All Pac-12 performer Todd Heap told Sports360AZ. “I still like the group of guys and I think we’ve got some talent, it’s just we need to use them correctly and win some of these big games that we need to win to consider ourselves top tier in the Pac-12.”

For the fans, those missed expectations are very frustrating. Even for the former who still attend many games like Heap does, it stings just as much.

“I think it stings everybody,” explained Heap. “It’s hard to ever project in the Pac-12. You just can’t do it. The talent level is so high across the board that it is really hard to go into a season saying with our recruits and our talent and our experience, we’re that much better than last year than any other team in the Pac-12. It’s hard to make that projection and you see that every year.”

While Heap wants the best for ASU, he realizes that the talent and level of play in the conference is as good as any in the country. So it is hard to put too much on yourselves from an expectation standpoint based on the teams you also have to compete with every year.

“The Pac-12 cannibalizes  itself,” he mentioned. “Any team can beat any team on any given week. That’s the biggest thing that I see is that the expectations were pushed so much, that everybody’s expecting big things. One game here or one game there can really mess up a season, especially in college football when you only have a limited number of games.”

Nevertheless, Heap still spends much of his time around ASU as a fan attending games and also as a student as he is back taking classes to pursue a degree in business and real estate.