"We deserve more," said Ray Anderson during the opening remarks of the press conference that followed an announcement that Todd Graham, head coach of Arizona State football for the previous six seasons, had been fired. Anderson's tone, and the cadence of his speech, fluctuated from confident and convicted to defiant and succinct.

"We have the capacity, and the University, and the community that deserves more, and I, very frankly, should demand more."

And so 'demand more,' he has. Despite reclaiming the Territorial Cup, beating a then top-5 Washington team, ending the Sun Devils' losing streak against against Oregon, and on the road against Oregon State, and placing second in the PAC-12 South, Anderson found Graham's efforts "average," and has taken it upon himself to raise the necessary funds to pay his former coach several million dollars to walk away.

Todd Graham, for all the aforementioned reasons and more, leaves Arizona State as a largely sympathetic figure. His overall record at Arizona State stands at 46-31, while graduation rates and grade point averages increased, and in-game penalties and off-the-field missteps decreased. He won the Territorial Cup twice as many times as he lost, donated a portion of his own salary to help motivate donors to fund the stadium and facility upgrades, and helped ASU qualify for bowl games in five of his six seasons.

All that, and he closed his time out as a Sun Devil with a seemingly humble, gracious, and encouraging reflection on his time as head coach in a press conference immediately following his dismissal.

No one needs to worry about Todd Graham. He's rich, fairly well-liked, employable and connected. He'll be fine.

Ray Anderson, on the other hand, is taking a monumental risk. And he's reportedly taking that risk on his old friend, Herm Edwards.

Anderson's background as a lawyer, agent, and NFL executive led him to be a popular choice to replace the previous athletic director, Steve Patterson, and he's made quick work of leaving his imprint on Sun Devil athletics since being hired in 2014.

Some of those hires have paid dividends, such as Bob Bowman (swimming), and Zeke Jones (wrestling). Some are starting to show signs of progress, like Bobby Hurley (men's basketball), and others have yet to bear fruit for once competitive programs, like Tracy Smith (baseball), Graham Winkworth (women's soccer), Trisha Ford (softball), and Erica Crismon/Sanja Tomasevic (women's volleyball).

If the hiring of Herm Edwards doesn't produce immediate gains, especially considering the football team returns many key contributors (and with several other athletic programs underperforming under the tutelage of his hires), the next national search Arizona State undergoes could be to fill the athletic director position.

It's with the understanding of that risk that the news Anderson's old client, an ESPN personality whose last experience as a head coach was inheriting a 10-win Kansas City Chiefs team and leading them to records of 9-8, 4-12 and 2-14 from 2006-2008, is reportedly ready to fill the vacancy at Arizona State (pending President Michael Crow's approval), that has left many supporters of the Sun Devils' football team collectvely scratching their heads.

Anderson and Edwards are longtime friends. While Edwards, who last coached at the college level nearly a decade before most of the players on the current Arizona State roster were born, doesn't have the recent coaching experience than most athletic directors would desire in a candidate, he does possess one trait that Ray Anderson explicitly expressed a desire to see in the Sun Devils' next coach- the ability to walk into any living room in any region of the country and sell Anderson's vision for the program.

Now, you may be asking "how could someone who only had to recruit defensive backs for San Jose State in the late 1980's be relevant enough to get in front of parents and kids today?" The answer is he's already in front of them, on their televisions, several times a week. While the discerning college football fans and distinguished media might look at Edwards and see an absurd candidate that flies in the face of both Anderson's philosophy that ASU supporters shouldn't be "living in the past," and Edwards' philosophy that "you play to win the game," recruits and their parents will see a television star.

Herm Edwards turned his penchant for half-entertaining, half-proselytizing coaching soundbytes into a family-friendly personal brand that has kept him employed at Disney's ESPN for the last eight years. He supplements his income with speaking engagements, and spends each New Year surrounded by the nation's top high school talent in an Under Armour All-America bowl game that is less about serious competition and more about brand ambassadorship. The fact that the self-proclaimed "data-driven" athletic director of a major college football program, one that aspires to be in contention for conference championships, is entertaining the idea of bringing in Herm Edwards as its coach amidst cries of nepotism and ineptitude, could reveal an abundance of exactly what Ray Anderson feels the primary roles of the head coach of a college football program should be- marketing and motivation.

It also explains his desire to see the assistant coaches that were under Todd Graham retained while Arizona State brings in a household name that provides the county-wide brand recognition of some of the University's other endeavors under President Michael Crow.

To some, the possibility that Anderson's flirtation with replacing Todd Graham with a more polished, but less relevant version of Todd Graham, was merely a cover or prelude to something, or someone else. Anderson and Edwards have a long history of doing each other favors, and as Hod Rabino highlighted in this piece evaluating Edwards' media appearances in relation to the ASU job, Edwards told Arizona Sports 98.7 FM “…I owe him (Anderson) to come down there and speak. And so, that's where it's at.”

Even if this is merely a mutual favor, Ray Anderson's level of risk in this matter just went from walking a tightrope, to walking a tightrope without a net. The athletic director prior to the one Anderson replaced, Lisa Love, is as synonymous (if not more) with the botched search that nearly led the program replacing Dennis Erickson with June Jones, as she is credited for being part of the decision to hire Todd Graham.

A popular theory when Edwards' name was first floated by the media was that Herm might simply be serving as a back-channel by which Ray Anderson can get right-coast leaning ESPN to paint Arizona State's opening as attractive, portray the athletic director who just fired a winning coach as a desirable employer, and ultimately steal airtime from those who'd rather talk about Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi State, UCLA, or any other school that can afford to pay coaches more than what Anderson proposes to be "aggressively fair" wages.

Perhaps Anderson deserved some credit for being several moves ahead of the rest of the board by keeping Arizona State in the news cycle while he nailed down someone that best fit the criteria he outlined in his post-firing press conference?

It now seems that the conspiracy theories of Anderson's craftiness were merely optimistic cover for what might be the most bizarre hire in Arizona State football history. Mind you, even June Jones was four years out from leading Hawaii to a BCS appearance, and had turned around an awful SMU team prior to influential Arizona State faithful outright rejecting the idea of his employment in Tempe.

The criteria that Ray Anderson outlined in his defiant sermon to the media, a speech in which he channeled all of the maroon-and-gold-laced hubris he famously requested Todd Graham tone down after a disappointing 2015 season, is at best lofty and unconventional, and at worst, borderline delirious.

Let's briefly recap what it is he's looking for, and how Herm Edwards measures up to the bars he set:

There's no evidence to suggest that the same coach whose resume most recently includes taking a 10-6 NFL team and going 15-34 over the ensuing three seasons, can spearhead a top-3 Pac-12 program.

The last coach to have Arizona State in the top 15 was Todd Graham, in 2013, 2014, and again, entering 2015. Before that, you have to go all the way back to the beginning of 2008 under Dennis Erickson, when Herm Edwards was in the midst of the 2-14 season that seemingly, until now, ended his coaching career.

The Pros: Herm Edwards is from Southern California. He's been on television for the better part of a decade. He's a household name. He's spent time around the nation's top prospects as a coach for the Under Armour All-America game. He's got two young teenagers at home, so he's not completely disconnected from today's youth.

The Cons: Today's recruits are on Twitter, and Snapchat. Herm Edwards hasn't tweeted since next year's seniors in high school seniors were in third grade. He hasn't recruited a player since cell phones were the size of an adult forearm. Testimonials about his track record of keeping promises to recruits don't exist, and for a firsthand account of how he is as a leader of young men in meaningful games, you'd have to talk to someone like Glenn Dorsey, his last first round pick with the Kansas City Chiefs. Dorsey is now 32 years old.

Herm Edwards may be able to use his NFL connections and contacts to elevate the talent coming into the program. He might also be able to elevate the preparedness of the prospects seeking to play, as well as thrive, professionally. Then again, he may not. Working the cash register at a bakery doesn't necessarily mean you can bake, it just means you know what a pie looks like.

If you read between the lines, what Ray Anderson means here is "someone assistant coaches can get along with." He can't mean "someone who develops a leader into someone who's ready to take the next step, and then holds them back from doing so," because that would be asinine and ignorant. By all accounts, Edwards is a beloved colleague and has a reputation as a good man. However, having good interpersonal skills doesn't necessarily mean you'll be an agreeable boss, especially if the boss is playing catch up due to spending thirty years in different departments of a similar company.

Herm Edwards is frequently brought into different corporations and athletic organizations to speak on matters of character. There's no doubt that Herm Edwards would want to emphasize all of the requirements and standards as far as grade point average, and matters of NCAA compliance once he learns what they actually are. The real concern here is the odd paradox of Ray Anderson boldly assuming that a program's academic and integrity standards, which were set, elevated and maintained by Todd Graham despite constant staff turnover, can be maintained without the only consistent element of the last six years, Graham, being part of that process. Herm Edwards will have to learn, start from scratch, and create his own standards for the Arizona State program. As much as Ray Anderson wants to believe you can transplant a head onto a new body while keeping the same brain, there's just no precedent for it.

With Herm Edwards, you worry less about him being open-minded enough to take on the task of managing someone else's staff (in the way that a corporation trades out a CEO), and worry more about his ability to fill those positions with qualified candidates that don't resemble college football's equivalent of The Expendables.

The likelihood that Ray Anderson stuck to the criteria he outlined, and was able to check all those boxes with his hire, were slim-to-none anyway... if for no other reason than some of these criteria, upon further examination, seem to be impossible to achieve.

Even Kevin Sumlin, one of the most qualified available candidates (whose name was attached to the Arizona State opening even before he was officially fired by Texas A&M), seemed to fall a mile short upon further review of his body of work. Sumlin might have the ability to bring in talent and produce high draft picks, but he also had three offensive coordinators in six years, and never finished in the top-2 in the SEC's Western Division. That's right, not the SEC conference, the division within the conference. Even Todd Graham was able to finish either first or second in the Pac-12 South three times in six years. Plus, would a well-connected college coach like Kevin Sumlin, who has had his own staff for the last ten combined years at Houston and Texas A&M, be willing to take on another college coach's staff? All while taking a paycut? It's highly unlikely.

Herm Edwards is doing a favor for a friend. To be frank, so is Ray Anderson. If Edwards takes the Arizona State job, puts all of himself into it, and achieves the success Ray Anderson is looking for, there is no next step. There's no SEC contract or second shot at the NFL waiting. Arizona State is it. The 63-year-old Edwards can build his collegiate legacy with a team that's already above average by simply maintaining the current status quo, and filling in the personality and personnel management gaps where Ray Anderson feels Todd Graham fell short.

At least, that's the theory Ray Anderson seems willing to risk it all for.