Perhaps the Sun
Devils should consider a name change, seeing as they typically play by
moonlight. Stanford visits No. 15 Arizona State this weekend for its first road
game of the season, and although Saturday's high temperature in Tempe is
expected to be 111 degrees, a 7 p.m. kickoff negates the biggest home-field
advantage Sun Devil Stadium could possibly offer. ASU will play seven home
contests this season, and none of them are scheduled for the desert's
mid-afternoon heat. While clearly safer for players and more comfortable for
fans, those nocturnal start times do nothing to sharpen the Solar Satans'
tridents.
The Stanford
teams I played on from 1999-2002 made five trips to regions notorious for their
oppressive heat. We went 3-0 in night games at Arizona and ASU, rolling up 151
points in the process. Our matinees at Texas and ASU yielded slightly different
results though: two losses by a combined score of 134-41. No, the torrid
temperatures didn't directly force our turnovers or produce our penalties. They
did, however, make it nearly impossible to focus on anything but trying to keep
cool. Water and Gatorade were chugged. Potassium supplements were swallowed.
Massive fans circulated frigid mist throughout the sidelines. Those measures did
little, other than remind us we weren't in our pleasant Bay Area confines
anymore.
Playing on the
road presents four major challenges: trying to concentrate and communicate amid
deafening, disorienting crowd noise; tweaking pre-game routines because of
cramped locker rooms and makeshift training rooms; adapting to unfamiliar
climates and sometimes different time zones; and dealing with the rigors of
travel. Our teams always enjoyed chartered flights and plush hotels with fine
food, but the other elements of visiting-team disadvantage couldn't be tempered.
Much of our practice time before road games was spent trying to simulate
conditions to which our upcoming host was accustomed. Before trips to
particularly loud stadiums, we practiced in a fog of obnoxious crowd noise and
fight songs, pumped onto the field via mammoth speakers. Before playing on
artificial turf, we trained at least once on the carpeted surface the field
hockey team called home. When rain was in the forecast, balls were soaked before
practice. Whether or not those tactics paid off is debatable, but one thing is
undeniable: Absolutely nothing can substitute for a scorching sun or horrific
humidity.
There is nothing
inherently intimidating about Sun Devil Stadium. The venue is nice enough, but
that's a problem as far as ASU is concerned. There is no Lilliputian visitor's
locker room like the claustrophobia-inducing fort at Cal. There aren't throngs
of anger-management dropouts perched in the stands, eager to hurl insults and
loose change like the minions at Oregon State and Boston College. The nastiest
remark I ever heard at ASU came from a jovial heckler who insisted that our 2002
duds looked exactly like South Carolina's — a charge none of us could deny. The
Sun Devil Stadium grass isn't ankle-deep like the pasture at Notre Dame, and
Tempe's evening air is downright pleasant. Home-field advantage is about
manipulating conditions to make guests feel as unwelcome and uncomfortable as
possible. This is why it confounds me that the Sun Devils seldom take advantage
of the most dangerous weapon in their arsenal — the suffocating afternoon heat
they train in every day.
While Stanford
Stadium is hardly a hostile hornet's nest for visitors, the Cardinal squads I
played on went 15-8 at home and 9-14 everywhere else. Though our often eerily
quiet venue seemed to lull opponents to sleep, some of our other home-cooking
methods felt more contrived. We played four games against visitors who traveled
from at least two time zones east of the West Coast, and all of them were at
night. Television scheduling likely played a role in those nightcaps, but I
always suspected the after-dinner time slots weren't a mere coincidence. We went
4-0 against those weary travelers, including a 27-24 upset of No. 5 Texas in
2000. The Longhorns thrashed us 69-17 in Austin the previous year in an early
tilt that forced us out of bed at 5 a.m. PST. But when Texas came to Palo Alto,
we kicked off at 7:25 p.m. We took a 13-9 halftime lead into the locker room,
where head coach Tyrone Willingham announced, "Right now, it is 11 o'clock in
Austin, Texas. Let’s put them to bed." By the time DeRonnie Pitts flipped into
the end zone for the winning touchdown late in the fourth quarter, it was nearly
1 a.m. CDT. The "eyes of Texas" were bloodshot. It would discredit our
performance and undermine Texas' mental toughness to imply that we only won that
game by keeping Major Applewhite and Co. up past their bedtimes. But competing
against a determined opponent is difficult enough, let alone doing so when you'd
rather be asleep.
Some tricks home
teams pull are so deviously shrewd that they can only be admired. While visiting
UCLA in 2002, our coaches wondered why the Bruins' defensive backs were wearing
long-sleeved undershirts on a warm Pasadena evening. But they eventually
realized that all those sleeves were white — a tone that perfectly blended with
our receivers' road jerseys. The Bruins broke no rules with their camouflaged
coverings, and they won the game fair and square. Still, we couldn't help but
wonder how many defensive holding and pass interference calls were missed by
officials who couldn't decipher one upper body from another. I coached the
offensive line at my high school alma mater, Live Oak High School in Morgan
Hill, Calif., in 2003. The team went 0-9-1, but I made sure my overmatched
Acorns learned at least one thing: the value of wearing white gloves at home and
dark mitts on the road.
My most
recent memory of Sun Devil Stadium is the 65-24 beating we took on a blistering
afternoon in 2002. My most pleasant recollection of Tempe, however, is the 1999
game that proved the key turning point in our run to the Rose Bowl. After
reeling off five straight victories to start Pac-10 play, we suffered a
deflating loss at Washington, giving the Huskies control over their Rose Bowl
destiny. After razing Arizona during our bye week, all Washington had to do was
sink mediocre UCLA and Washington State squads to punch its ticket to Pasadena.
But late in our 50-30 victory at ASU, the speculative murmurs became official
news: UCLA had upset Washington in overtime, resurrecting our Rose Bowl quest.
Other than the emotional aftermath, what I remember most about that triumph in
Tempe is that it encapsulated our formula for success. Todd Husak, Troy Walters
and the other usual suspects torched the Sun Devils' secondary; we ran the ball
often enough and effectively enough to maintain offensive balance; and our
maligned but clutch defense put on a big-play display, scoring a touchdown on
Willie Howard's fumble recovery and setting up another score on Andrew Currie's
interception in the ASU red zone.
Nothing looks to
come easy for the Cardinal on Saturday. Running back Toby Gerhart and Stanford's
offensive line may not trample ASU's defense like they handled Oregon State's
front seven in the opener. Sun Devils quarterback Rudy Carpenter may prove that
last week's nearly perfect performance didn't occur just because ASU played host
to Northern Arizona. Beating ranked opponents on the road never is a breeze, but
at least the Cardinal can count on one thing: They won't have to beat the
heat.
About the Author: Greg Schindler, LSJU '03 has been living in
Kalispell, Montana, working as a sports reporter for the Daily Inter Lake.
He was a four-year starter and four-year letter-winner for the Cardinal from
1999-2002, starting 42 of 46 games. After redshirting as a true freshman in
1998, he was the team's starting right tackle in 1999-2000 and the team's
starting right guard in 2001-02. Prior to Stanford, Schindler starred at Live
Oak High School in Morgan Hill, CA and was named a First-team All-American by
Prepstar in 1997. Following his Stanford career, Schindler was signed by the San
Francisco 49ers as a free agent after graduating in 2002 with an English Major
and a Political Science minor. His sister, Veronica Schindler, is a Development
writer at the Stanford Athletic Department.
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