ASU buys out 50% of former football head coach Herm Edwards' remaining contract. Plus, key takeaways from The State Press' biannual meeting with ASU President Michael Crow, and more from Senator Mark Kelly's visit to the downtown campus. Join hosts Sonya Sheptunov and Naomi Dubovis as they explain this week's biggest ASU news stories on "State Press Play."
State Press podcast transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. The official record for State Press podcasts is the audio.
Sonya Sheptunov
Hi there, this is Sonya Sheptunov.
Naomi Dubovis
And I'm Naomi Dubovis.
Sonya Sheptunov
You're listening to State Press Play. Herm Edwards agreed to a $4.4 million buyout with the university, ASU president Michael Crow met with State Press reporters to address key issues, and Mark Kelly made an appearance at the Downtown campus to promote voter turnout among college students.
Naomi Dubovis
We've got all this and more for you this week. Tune in for the ASU community's top stories every Wednesday - right here, right now.
Sonya Sheptunov
Former ASU football coach Herm Edwards has agreed to a $4.4 million dollar buyout from ASU. This figure covers half of his salary through the remainder of his contract, which was extended in 2018 until 2024, originally. This story was a scoop from none other than State Press's own digital Editor-in-Chief Piper Hansen. Piper, thanks for being here with us today.
Piper Hansen
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Sonya Sheptunov
So $4.4 million, how did the university arrive at this number?
Piper Hansen
We don't really know exactly how they came to that number. When Herm Edwards was initially kind of in the mutual agreement with Ray Anderson, who's the Vice President of University Athletics, they came to a mutual agreement that he would kind of relinquish his coaching duties. And at the time, we had to ask, you know, well, how much is he going to get paid? What's the buyout? And the university kind of said, well, we don't know yet. We're waiting to figure out exactly how much it's going to be in negotiations. So I would just answer with, quote unquote, negotiations between between the two.
Naomi Dubovis
And what's that 4.4 million made up of?
Piper Hansen
That is sort of the the rest of his salary. So it's a 50% buyout of his remaining salary, according to these documents. It's a bulleted list of what exactly he's owed, which includes close to $600,000 of an academic performance bonus, because he was also a professor of practice in the Cronkite School. And it also includes any, you know, like, you still have to comply with the NCAA investigation. And these are kind of the terms that we're coming to and then the supporting documents in that are his original contract, and then the contract extension. So the 4.4 million is coming from the remaining salary that he sort of had for the remaining remainder of his contract.
Sonya Sheptunov
So does this conclude Herm Edwards's era at ASU?
Piper Hansen
I think it would be fair to say that, yes, kind of Herm is not the head coach anymore. He's not a professor, his last day at the university as an employed person was October 1. So he's no longer with the university. I'm not really sure what exactly is next for him as a coach, as a person as a person in sports. But yeah, I don't think he'll be back at ASU anytime soon, or really what position he would fill.
Naomi Dubovis
So Todd Graham, Edwards predecessor, got $12 million, compared to Edwards $4.4 million. Do you think Edwards is being lowballed in some way? Why is there this huge difference?
Piper Hansen
I'm not sure why there is such a big difference. And I'm not I don't know all of the details of Todd Graham's buyout. I do know that Graham's was a like complete buyout for the remainder of his contract instead of just 50%. I'm not sure how they came to 50%. That's still something I'm kind of trying to figure out. But I do think that it is kind of on the lower side, just given some of the other recent firings that have happened in the Pac-12. You've received Colorado's head coach was recently fired, also. And he got a full buyout for I think, close to $9 million, which is about double what Edwards got.
Sonya Sheptunov
So what's the next? Is this Aguano's time to shine?
Piper Hansen
So when we were meeting with President Crow last week, we asked, you know, how is this search going for a new head coach? What exactly does that really look like? And he kind of said, you know, we're going to wait until the season is over to really look for a permanent replacement for the coaching staff of the football team. So it kind of seems like in you know, open practices in press conferences after games, it really is Shawn Aguano's, time to shine. He speaks very highly of the team. He speaks very highly of his time as interim head coach already. He's been kind of at the helm for some pretty tough losses and also like a really incredible win too. And so I think that going forward, at least for the rest of the season, he is kind of the face of the football team, just because it is kind of turning into this weird story of we started out really strong, and then it kind of dipped off really, really fast. And we had obviously a coaching change. But it does seem like right now, the university and the team are really focused on putting Shawn Aguano kind of up and letting him coach the team as it's still playing rather than, you know, trying to introduce any new faces or get distracted by, you know, having new people come in and all of that kind of stuff.
Sonya Sheptunov
So I guess we can expect the next year's State Press salary database to have one more name off that list.
Piper Hansen
Yeah, for sure.
Sonya Sheptunov
So switching gears a little bit to Piper Hansen's sports journalism era, you scooped the story! Congrats! How'd you do it?
Piper Hansen
I think a lot of it was just obviously, at the State Press, we cover the university. And that's really the only thing that we do. And I think just having a really, really good understanding of what's going on at the university. And the issues that students are always talking about, really helped me form the question for Michael Crow, when we did have that sit down with him of just you know, so we all know that this is happening, like, what can can you give us any more details? Is there anything that we should know. And, you know, I definitely piggyback off of the incredible reporting that our two football beat reporters have done. Vinny and Danny are both like incredible at watching that team. And noticing all of the little things that I would, I don't even know anything about that. And so it's been really incredible to kind of like work with our sports desk, and really get to know the teams through our reporting, and just be able to feel prepared to go into an interview with someone like President Crow, which again, it's not my first time in an interview kind of like that. But to be able to form a question that I know he would have an answer to. Just given all of that was really awesome. And Michael Crow in our interview, too, he kind of said, you know, like, we don't keep any secrets. And if people would have asked, we would have told them. And so that was kind of an interesting thing that he said, because I know that we asked kind of the day, and the day after the decision to kind of part ways with Edwards came down, that we needed to know how much the buyout was, and they were like, We don't know yet. Well, we'll we'll circle back to it eventually. And I guess I was the first person in the group to circle back on it to to finally get an answer.
Sonya Sheptunov
That was a crazy day in the newsroom.
Piper Hansen
Yeah, we were like 10 minutes away from starting our editorial board meeting, and everybody kind of started freaking out. And everybody's like, 'Herm just got fired.' We were like, what it was like, Well, sounds like we're not doing our editorial board meeting, we're gonna write the story all of us here right now. And I was sitting kind of in between our two sports editors, and they were sending me tweets and statistics. And we had a Google doc open. And we even had our reporters go out to a press conference that was being held and get some quotes and come back to us with that. And it was a really awesome coordinated effort to kind of see all of those people kind of like, come together and put together a really awesome story. We weren't the first people to write about Herm Edwards kind of parting ways with the team. But we were really, really quick to it. And I think the story is our story is one of the better ones out there.
Naomi Dubovis
So this story got a lot of Twitter engagement. How do you deal with that? Does Twitter give you any anxiety?
Piper Hansen
I've been doing this for a long time. And this is also not like the first kind of big story that I've written for the State Press or for like, an Arizona media outlet. And so I think it's always nice to know that people are like sharing your story and reading it. And that kind of always propels me at least to go forward to kind of say, you know, all right, it's not just me who's interested in doing this and knowing this information, but people were, you know, waiting for it to come out. And that's always really, really awesome. I think that social media can kind of be a stressful place for reporters, because people are, they want to know more, and you don't know. And it's really hard to kind of communicate, like, what's in the story is what I know so far. And I have the same questions as you. And I'm going to try my best to go and figure out those answers. And when I know them, you'll know them. And that's what's really awesome about it. But it is really difficult to kind of communicate that with people and kind of say, you know, like, I know that there's stuff that's not in here. I wish I knew, but I don't. And that is kind of the anxiety inducing part of social media is people have questions and I can't answer them. I wish I could, but I can't.
Sonya Sheptunov
That was State Press digital Editor-in-Chief Piper Hansen, thank you for joining us this week.
Piper Hansen
Yeah, thank you so much.
Sonya Sheptunov
For more on Herm Edwards's buyout, check out the article by Piper Hanson at statepress.com.
Naomi Dubovis
Up next, we're highlighting more of our top stories this week. Mark Kelly visited the downtown campus as part of his own campaign for Senator and to encourage voter turnout among younger demographics. Plus key takeaways from state press his most recent meeting with ASU president Michael Crow, stay tuned.
Camila Pedrosa
Hi, my name is Camila Pedrosa. And I'm one of the managing editors of the State Press Magazine. Our second issue of this semester the sanctuary issue comes out on Wednesday, October 5. Check out newsstands on campus this week. Pick up a physical copy of the magazine or check it out digitally through our Instagram at statepressmag. Also follow us on twitter for long form insightful stories at statepressmag.
Sonya Sheptunov
ASU president Michael Crow held a press conference with State Press reporters last Thursday. If you've been thinking about Crow's thoughts regarding student food and housing insecurity, what he thought of Arizona PBS's recent decision to cancel Kari Lake's interview and much more, this is definitely an article you should check out online at state press.com. But for now, let's get you caught up. If you listen to last week's episode, you'll know that ASU recently promoted its newly opened California Center. Crow took the opportunity to set the record straight. The California Center is not a campus. ASU is a university also present in California, Crow said. We're not going to be attempting to take enrollment from the California campuses, Crow said. Whatever we do there will be unique. As for in-state enrollment, ASU is looking for ways to bridge the funding gap that's appeared in the last decade. According to Crow they haven't found a solution yet. But Crow's fix for the housing crisis is expansion. ASU is in growth mode, Crow said, about student housing shortages. There's still a lot in the air as far as finding Herm Edwards' replacement and a middle ground between Mirabella and Shady Park. Crow is pro supporting interim coach Shaun Aguano till the end of the season. As for Mirabella, courts are good to solve things when you can't find a resolution. I'd rather find one before that, Crow said. For more on Michael Crow, check out the article by Camilla Pedrosa at statepress.com.
Naomi Dubovis
Early voting has begun, Election Day is quickly approaching, and some candidates are visiting college campuses to promote their campaigns. Senator Mark Kelly did just that this past Friday as part of his reelection campaign. He came to ASU downtown Phoenix campus to encourage young people to vote and to educate them on how to vote early. The event was presented as a ballot drop kickoff and it was hosted by Senator Kelly's campaign mission for Arizona. Speaking directly to students, Senator Kelly said the issues we work on in Congress affect you more than anyone else because you have to live with them longer. He also took the opportunity to reiterate his stances on issues like abortion and healthcare, confirming that he would fight to keep abortion legal unlike his Republican opponent Blake masters, Arizona PBS recently aired a debate between Senator Kelly masters and Mark Victor, which, by the way, was hosted by ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. For more details read the article by Larisa May at state press.com.
Sonya Sheptunov
As we near the end, here are our favorite stories from this last week. The Tempe SDFC and @ Live Well at ASU have come together to offer women-only training hours in the adaptive training zone on Mondays and Fridays. Anyone who identifies as a woman is welcome to join according to Ashley Campbell, a personal trainer who created the program. This space is community oriented with exercise workshops, personal training, free workouts, and most importantly, a safe space. According to Carly Todd, an ASU senior studying marketing and communications, who is also a personal trainer, the training hours have provided women with the space to ask how to use different workout machines and create a more comfortable environment for women's fitness. For more on women only hours at the SDFC check out the article by Kylie Saba at statepress.com.
Naomi Dubovis
KJZZ's Lauren Gilger, Mark Brodie and Nick Sanchez reported on a special artistic piece created by a New York Theatre Company during the pandemic. Theater Mitu let people leave anonymous voicemails the Republic hotline where they answer the question, how do you imagine a more perfect future. These voicemails were then transferred to a vinyl record which was included in a live performance titled utopian hotline. Theatre me two's website says that the performance was done in partnership with ASU's interplanetary initiative among other establishments. Interestingly, the project was inspired by the Golden Record a time capsule created by NASA that was launched in 1977. This vinyl record was placed in the Voyager spacecraft, and it contained messages and sounds and images meant to show extra to terrestrial life what it's like here on Earth, check out the article at kjzz.org
Sonya Sheptunov
Thanks for listening to this episode of State Press Play, but, don't pause just yet! So you don't miss a single episode, follow the State Press on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Naomi Dubovis
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at State Press.
Sonya Sheptunov
To learn more about the stories we talked about today. Check out the articles online. You can find all these stories and more at state press.com. Thank you to Piper Hanson for being here with us this week. The show was edited and produced by the State Press podcast desk.
Naomi Dubovis
Thank you to our editor Kate Ourada, and to our managing team Andrew Onodera and Angelina Steele. Our music is courtesy of Epidemic Sound.
Sonya Sheptunov
I'm Sonya.
Naomi Dubovis
And I'm Naomi.
Sonya Sheptunov
You've been listening to State Press Play. See you next week!
Sonya Sheptunov is a podcast producer at The State Press. They take an interest in data, counterculture, and all things nerdy. In their free time you can find them drinking too much coffee or attempting to crochet.
