The Monday After: Arizona State coach Herm Edwards is making us all look like idiots

A few months from now, the 2018 regular season will be over and coaches will be fired. Their replacements will then be hired, and people like myself will begin the process of grading those hires. People like you will race to your computers to find out what grade the latest coaching hire is going to get.

And then, roughly nine months later, we'll all look like idiots.

Let's go back in time to the end of the 2017 season, shall we? That's when schools like UCLA made the splashy hire in bringing in Chip Kelly. Florida got rid of Jim McElwain and decided to hire Dan Mullen. Nebraska brought Scott Frost home. Florida State lured Willie Taggart away from Oregon. Arizona replaced Rich Rodriguez with Kevin Sumlin.

For the most part, these hires were well-received. Then there was the one hire that was almost universally panned by the media, fans and sports universe in general.

Arizona State hired Herm Edwards, a man who hadn't been on a sideline coaching a real game in a decade and hadn't been on the college level in nearly 30 years.

Included in its announcement was a bunch of corporate speak and promises of a "New Leadership Model," featuring a "general manager structure" for the Sun Devils program with Edwards being "a head coach who serves as a CEO." Simply put, it left many college football "experts" laughing and scratching their heads.

It was a ridiculous plan and one destined to blow up in Arizona State's face.

Or ours.

Two weeks into the 2018 season, Herm Edwards sits at 2-0 after knocking off a Michigan State team that was ranked No. 15 in the AP Top 25 and considered by many to be a legitimate Big Ten title contender. Meanwhile, Kelly, Mullen, Frost, Taggart and Sumlin have gone a combined 2-7 with the two wins coming against Samford (Florida State) and Charleston Southern (Florida). That means Edwards already has a top 25 win under his belt while those other five new hires have yet to beat an FBS opponent of any standing.

Now, none of this is to say the Edwards hire was a success. It's two games into the first year, and there are a lot of games left to play in 2018. Arizona State -- which just debuted in the top 25 this week -- must go on the road against San Diego State, Washington and Colorado in three of its next four games. After that stretch, it's Stanford, at USC and Utah in consecutive weeks. A 2-0 start is the best start possible, but it's not a guarantee of success.

What it is is another reminder of how this sport, even when so much of it seems like a predetermined outcome (Alabama), finds new ways to surprise you every week. Edwards may not prove to be the best coaching hire of the 2018 season, but his hire has proven to be the best story of it to this point.

In fact, I'd give him an "A" so far.

[www.cbssports.com]

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