If A Ryan Bass Leaves ASU, Does He Make A Sound?

The Ryan Bass era has ended in Tempe.

Somehow, I missed this note yesterday while in school and working on my Lisa Love piece for this morning, but Rivals.com announced yesterday that Arizona State RB Ryan Bass has been granted his release from the program.

The top school on his list is San Diego State, where his brother Ray went and which is closer to where he grew up. He and four of his former Sun Devil teammates all went to Centennial High School in Corona.

Aztec fan message boards are buzzing about it.

Oh, if only they knew.

With all due respect to the kid, good riddance. Don’t let Tempe’s door hit your on the butt as you leave town.

Let me put the Ryan Bass 10″ back on the record player:

-He has an incredible bounty of untapped potential that he doesn’t seem to even want to tap.

-He has a serious attitude problem which got him into Dennis Erickson’s doghouse on multiple occasions in two seasons.

-His work ethic in practice and camp was atrocious and seemed, on many occasions, disinterested in learning sets and plays.

-He never seemed to have his head fully into football, something Jack Elway figured out and decided to not be a distraction and left the program.

-He wasn’t smart enough to know that if you post disparaging comments about your coaching staff on Facebook, people just might actually see them.

-Oh yeah, and he had this tiny little problem holding onto the football.

There are few other athletes in my journalistic career that have garnered so much discussion in papers, blogs and on message boards for such little activity.

I’ll never say that a program is better off when they lose a player; at the heart of the matter, Arizona State loses a little bit of depth at running back…which can be replaced.

But there’s a memo to San Diego State or whoever ends up landing Bass after a year off because of NCAA transfer rules to consume: there’s a reason true freshman Cameron Marshall jumped Ryan Bass on the depth chart so easily and so quickly.

It’s the reason he’s no longer a Sun Devil and the reason I will not miss him.

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