Arizona State AD Graham Rossini: Prioritize football, basketball and others will thrive

On the surface, it looks as if Arizona State had a solid 2023-24 school year in athletics.

The school finished 27th in the Learfield Director's Cup, a yearly competition that awards points for finishes in each sport to come up with an overall winner. This past school year, that was Texas.

ASU was sixth among Pac-12 schools, a better tabulation than rival Arizona and Oregon.

Look at schools that now make up the Big 12 and ASU would be second behind Oklahoma State.

But all sports are not created equal. New athletic director Graham Rossini knows that for the entire athletic department to thrive, a university needs to excel in the revenue driven sports, particularly basketball and football.

Success in swimming, golf and wrestling are nice but it is the others that drive the gravy train and ASU was 28-47 the past school year combined in football and men's basketball and women's basketball. Baseball has been above .500, narrowly missing the postseason the past two years.

"The best way to generate resources is for us to focus clearly on football and men's basketball," Rossini said in an interview with The Arizona Republic this week. "Economically, that's how the waterfall works. We have a better chance of selling out Mountain America Stadium and Desert Financial Arena with frequency. Those revenues allow us to invest throughout the athletic department and give all 26 sports a high chance of success."

There is no easy fix and the issue has become more complicated with the emergence of NIL — name, image and likeness — changing the college sports landscape. New rules allow athletes to profit from their personal brands, and schools that aren't prepared to facilitate that financially risk falling behind.

Former athletic director Ray Anderson was slow to embrace that concept. ASU has lost quality athletes to other schools who caught on sooner. The Sun Angel Collective has finally launched and is helping to fill the gap and get ASU in the game.

Rossini, previously the school's executive senior associate athletic director, said the changing landscape happened fast, catching many off guard.

"In fairness I don't think anybody understood what this was going to turn into," Rossini said, "and despite how it was originally designed, how recruiting inducement, how collectives would enter the scene. There was no way anybody could have estimated that.

"A few out of the gate figured out that there is a pathway to exploit the margins and have done that. Others followed that lead. Now, two, three years later we're just very thankful we've got individuals that created our collective, many long-time supporters have stepped up, taken on that responsibility and got others in the conversation."

Arizona State's high-profile coaches a plus

Rossini says ASU benefits from charismatic coaches leading major sports programs who are positioned to spearhead the school's NIL efforts, citing Kenny Dillingham and Bobby Hurley.

Perhaps no other figure at the school has been more vocal about rallying the troops than Dillingham, the head football coach, who regularly wears his "Activate the Valley" message splashed across his apparel.

Hurley, the head men's basketball coach, is a big name who won multiple national titles as a player at Duke, played in the NBA and is brother of Danny Hurley, the UConn men's coach who has won two straight national titles. A proposed docuseries featuring Bobby Hurley played a major role in his landing the Sun Devils' best recruiting class in program history.

"The brand of Bobby Hurley is a thing and he is such a passionate basketball person," Rossini said. "He loves coaching and he wants to spend every waking minute thinking about his team, recruiting. Maybe up until lately he didn't recognize that people gravitate toward him, want to ask questions, want to understand what makes him tick. About Duke. About what he's done in the NBA. He can use that to his advantage.

"Sometimes it's hard to ask people to step up and help you and then you realize they want to help. They were waiting for an invitation to join the party, so to speak. Once he started to find those connections that people wanted to invest in the sport, it took off from there."

Hurley admits being hesitant about using his name for fundraising at first but he's softened his stance on that. It has made a difference. ASU actually has the No. 4 ranked recruiting class in the country and the first in the Big 12, considered by many the best overall basketball conference in the country.

"I've always been a purist about the game and especially the collegiate model but it's a different world and you have to adapt," Hurley said.

"I think I've come out of my comfort zone to ask for more assistance from our key donors and people have stepped up and supported the collective and so it has enabled us to have the opportunity to bring in some guys that are really prepared to compete in the Big 12."

Finding new ASU fans in Phoenix area

Money derived from NIL is one factor, but so is fan support. Rossini said fan engagement and improving the game-day experience for the Sun Devil faithful are immediate objectives and each program has been asked to find ways to connect with fans who could be drawn to their sport.

"We need to tap into all facets of the market," he said. "There are so many people coming here in the last decade and they're looking for something to connect to. Why can't it be ASU?

"We have 26 sports so wherever you're from, whatever you're into, we probably have it and how do we use that to get somebody on campus so they see all we have to offer?"

Hurley likes the direction things are headed, noting the positive turn even began during a transition period under interim athletic director Jim Rund after Anderson stepped down.

"I had a ton of really good conversations with him (Rund), one on one, and that's transitioned now with Graham and talking about the program quite a bit, what we need for the transition to the Big 12, what program things we need," Hurley said. "He's really emphasized the importance of football and basketball for the success of the whole athletic department so we're very unified in trying to make that a reality.''