Into the Fire

The other toiled in obscurity off the field, hoping to earn his college degree. Killed by ASU football star Loren Wade in March 2005, Brandon Falkner is the gunshot victim ASU would rather forget.

ASU has gone to great lengths to ensure that the legacy of ex-Sun Devil and Arizona Cardinal Tillman, 27 when he died, won't be forgotten.

ASU has done nothing to commemorate the tragedy that left Falkner, 25, dead and Wade, 23, sentenced to 20 years in prison.

"It would be nice to see some respect for Brandon," says his older brother, Jelani Falkner.

One way to have paid homage to Falkner, an ex-member of the ASU football team when he was shot to death, would've been for the school to overhaul its football program to make sure blue-chip athletes, such as Wade, aren't given special treatment when they get in trouble.

Another way would've been to replace fired coach Dirk Koetter with a coach whose integrity couldn't be assailed, whose past couldn't be questioned.

Instead, ASU President Michael Crow and Athletic Director Lisa Love hired Dennis Erickson last December to replace the beleaguered Koetter.

Erickson, 60, brings immediate cachet to Tempe thanks to two national championships at the University of Miami in 1989 and 1991. But he also brings a disturbing history, especially considering that his predecessor, Koetter, came under fire for coddling thugs like Wade.

Erickson's Miami teams were constantly in trouble with police. No fewer than a dozen scholarship players were arrested in 1994, his final season there. His hiring at ASU sends a clear signal that winning and cash flow are far more important to ASU than rehabilitating the moral fiber of a football program muddied by murder.

The selection stunned Don Crampton, a Phoenix attorney who represented the Falkner family in a wrongful-death suit filed against ASU and Koetter that was dismissed in November 2006. The court ruled that the university and Koetter had no special duty to control Wade's off-campus conduct and can't be held liable for negligence in connection with Falkner's death.

The ruling cleared the way for ASU to hire Erickson, who has a history of recruiting players he can't control, without fear of legal consequences if another off-campus tragedy occurs.

"Nobody cares," Crampton said, referring to Erickson's hiring at a program that ignored the dangerous behavior of a star player who wound up killing a former player in the parking lot of a Scottsdale nightclub. "They just want to win at all costs."

Crow and Love are betting Erickson will field a winning team that will fill the 73,379-seat Sun Devil Stadium and pump money into the athletic department saddled with an onerous $30 million debt.

"I could sell tickets to his practice," Love said upon Erickson's hiring.

Love's assumption that Erickson will attract huge crowds isn't panning out.

Season-ticket sales for the 2007 season that began Saturday, September 1, with a 45-3 win over San Jose State have slipped to 36,000, down from 42,000 last year, despite lower ticket prices.

Stagnant ticket sales will be the least of ASU's problems if off-the-field issues that plagued Erickson's six seasons in Miami occur in Tempe. Gunplay, sexual escapades, police raids, arrests, drug abuse, boozing, a federal grand jury probe, and cash bonuses to players who made the best hits in games served as the notorious backdrop to Miami's success on the field.

All this was accompanied by rapper Luther Campbell, of 2 Live Crew, strutting the Hurricane sidelines during games and doling out booze and money to players at his nightclubs.

Under Erickson's tenure, Miami's football program committed debauchery to the point that Sports Illustrated published a famous June 12, 1995, feature with the incendiary headline "Why the University of Miami Should Drop Football" on the magazine's cover instead of a photograph.

SI had run another cover story blasting Erickson — who'd left Miami in January 1995 to become head coach of the Seattle Seahawks — for lack of leadership in the wake of his arrest in Washington State for extreme DUI. Erickson recorded a .23 on blood-alcohol tests, more than twice the legal limit, and entered a deferred-prosecution program that required him to receive treatment for alcoholism.

Eleven months into Erickson's tenure at Seattle, the NCAA levied severe sanctions against Miami's football program, stripping 34 scholarships, placing the university on probation for three years, and banning the team from appearing in a bowl game.

The disgrace in Miami, along with the glory of two championships, is part of the legacy of the coach ASU hired to make over a troubled football program scarred by the reckless behavior of favored players. The football team already is on probation for violating NCAA rules, and the university is required to submit detailed reports to the NCAA on reforms it's making to comply with NCAA rules. It's the eighth time that ASU's athletic department has been slapped with NCAA sanctions — the most in the nation.

"I haven't talked to anybody who's excited about Erickson coming in," says one prominent booster who asked not to be identified, fearing repercussions from the ASU athletic department for publicly criticizing the hire. "Especially with the precarious situation ASU is in with the [NCAA] infractions."

Rather than publicly addressing Erickson's well-documented debacle at Miami and how ASU will prevent the problems that happened during Koetter's reign from reoccurring, the university is acting as if the Miami mess never happened.

During a December 11 news conference introducing him as ASU's football coach, Erickson told the media he had nothing to do with the NCAA sanctions against the Miami Hurricanes.

"There have never been any NCAA infractions that I've been involved in," Erickson stated flatly.

Love backed Erickson's incredible assertion, stating: "Dennis Erickson was not involved in those issues, and that is what was found to be true."

Both statements are contradicted by the NCAA's 1995 Committee on Infractions report on violations and sanctions for the University of Miami, as well as by scores of stories that appeared in the Miami news media in the early 1990s.

While the NCAA never said that Erickson personally committed a major infraction, it determined that his actions as Miami's football coach directly contributed to two NCAA infractions by the university that led to sanctions.

Not only is ASU rewriting Erickson's resumé, the university also is destroying e-mails between the athletic department and members of the public concerning Erickson's hiring, an act that may be in violation of the Arizona Public Records Law.

ASU spokeswoman Terri Shafer stated in an e-mail to New Times that the athletic department has an "unwritten policy" allowing the immediate destruction of e-mails exchanged between the athletic department and the public.

Just as the Army lied about Tillman's death in the mountains of Afghanistan, claiming, at first, that he was killed by hostile instead of friendly fire, ASU is obfuscating the truth about the turbulent past of the coach it plans to pay $5.6 million over the next five years to lead a football program shadowed by a high-profile murder and other outrageous behavior by players.

And just as the Army tried to cover up the facts surrounding Tillman's death, ASU appears guilty of attempting to hide public reaction to the hiring of one of the state's highest-paid public employees.

On May 18, 1995, the Miami Herald published a devastating investigative report on the University of Miami football team under Dennis Erickson. The story was a prelude to the NCAA sanctions that would be levied the following December.

Under the headline "Hurricanes: Eye of the Storm — A Program in Disarray," the Herald described an astonishing assortment of illegal activities that permeated the football program.

"Interviews with more than 50 current and former athletic officials, players, and others close to the team reveal a litany of lawlessness before and throughout Erickson's six-year tenure," the Herald reported.

The Herald wrote that Erickson battled with athletic department officials to allow players who had been recently indicted in a federal Pell Grant scandal to participate in games. More than 50 Miami players received more than $170,000 after submitting fraudulent applications. (The U.S. Department of Education Pell Grant Program was set up to provide cash to low-income undergraduate students.)

The Herald story also uncovered information that the university later confirmed revealing that Erickson violated Miami's drug policy and played athletes who had tested positive for illicit drugs, including All-American Warren Sapp, in the 1995 Orange Bowl. Sapp, the newspaper reported, had tested positive for marijuana.

The newspaper broke down the violations into categories including:

• Sexual misconduct: "Women were humiliated and sometimes assaulted in football dorms." The paper reported that players gang-raped passed-out female students.

• Arrests: At least a dozen Miami players were arrested during the 1994 season on charges including possession of cocaine and battery on a police officer.