Who was interviewed? What took so long? How Arizona State hired its new athletic director

The seven-month wait is over. Arizona State has a new athletic director in Graham Rossini, who was promoted from his previous role as executive senior associate athletic director and chief business officer. The move had been expected, with Rossini looming as the school's target for the position even since Ray Anderson stepped down in November with three years left on his contract.

Rossini, 44, spoke to the media for the first time, doing so at the North end of Mountain America Stadium near the Pat Tillman Statue on Thursday morning.

Rossini, a 2002 graduate of ASU, spoke to reporters, as did school president Dr. Michael Crow, and head football coach Kenny Dillingham.

"What I'd like everyone to know is I'm a Sun Devil," Rossini said. "I feel like I have the credentials to lead us in what comes next but out of the gate I'm a proud Sun Devil. That's always been a big part of my background, my DNA and I can't wait to represent this entire community of Sun Devils who care so much about what we do here."

No other candidates were interviewed

When asked point blank how many candidates were interviewed, Crow replied, "zero." The school president said that doesn't mean conversations were not had with other potential candidates with school representatives reaching out to some and fielding phone calls from others. Crow added that the school doesn't necessarily conduct formal interviews in the sense that most might think of when it comes to an open position and also said each position search is handled differently.

Why did the appointment take so long?

This is perhaps the biggest question ASU faithful have had. If the position was just going to be a promotion from within, then what took so long? Crow said there were a couple of factors. The school wanted to wait until the NCAA investigation centering around the school's football program had been resolved and that just happened in the spring. The school was also restructuring the model for the athletic program and working it under university auspices, which will help it run without carrying over debt. That process was expected to take six months.

"A lot of athletic programs around the country nowadays borrow money from the universities and then they carry debt with the university so we have eliminated all of that. We have built a structure now for finances which can weather any hurricane going forward, any tumult we might encounter. We've built the athletic facilities district as a legal entity which generates the revenue to build things like this stadium. We've created all types of other financial structures that are going to allow ASU athletics to be able to advance," Crow said. "We came through the pandemic with no debt. We came through the pandemic with no layoffs in the university, no reductions in salary or furloughs. So we've built a financial structure, what has happened in the past is that athletics was considered a separate thing, an auxiliary enterprise. It's not an auxiliary enterprise now. It's in the core of the enterprise of ASU, so we've changed the model that's going to allow us to have our athletic department focus on victory, and success of our student-athletes academically and athletically. The rest of the enterprise is going to worry about the bigger financial issues."

While Rossini had not been formally named, that didn't mean no one was manning the ship. Jim Rund, ASU senior vice president for educational outreach and student services, had been serving as "interim" athletic director but Rossini was also sitting in on meetings and working behind the scenes, even taking part in meetings with Big 12 athletic directors earlier this month as ASU's representative.

Rossini understands angst in fan base

It has been a tough few years in the ASU athletic department, most notably because of the football investigation that brought a crashing halt to Herm Edwards' tenure, and Anderson's too. The fact that both walked away with big payouts has further angered the fan base. Rossini understands that winning back the trust of the fan base will be a process.

"I understand the expectations of our fan base, I'm a Sun Devil fan first and foremost," Rossini said. "That's the reason that I'm here today. I understand the expectations but what I want our fans to understand is that we as an athletic department are behind their experience. As simple as it sounds we want to obsess over the people that obsess over us. That's going to be looking at all aspects of game day, aspects of our fan experience, the touchpoints our fans interact with. We embrace the high expectations. I'm a big believer that trust is earned. We'll do that hand to hand, community by community, group to group. We want to make ourselves available, be present and visible in the community. We've seen that done elsewhere. We know there is incredible passion for what ASU can be."

More resources are needed

College athletics is an arms race and ASU has been behind in that regard. The Sun Devils have made strides in the NIL collective and have personnel working to improve that situation, but Rossini knows that is just the tip of the iceberg. The revenue-producing sports need more resources and Rossini is confident that is coming.

"We're looking at everything we can do to generate resources to support our coaches and student-athletes and our new leadership structure will reflect that," he said. "We're putting all our efforts into resource acquisition. We have 26 sports and we want to do our best for all of them but we know what works best is when football and basketball are successful so we will put extra attention and focus on those game days because the waterfall of those sports going well benefits all of our programs.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: ASU's new athletic director Graham Rossini ushering in new era