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ASU's Snyder Out After Season

November 15, 2000 / 5:38 PM EST / CBS/AP

Arizona State football coach Bruce Snyder was fired Wednesday with one game remaining in a third consecutive disappointing season.

Snyder, who just four years ago directed the Sun Devils to an 11-0 regular season, will coach through the remainder of this season.

Athletic director Gene Smith, a former Notre Dame football player who has been at Arizona State only since July, had said he would make a decision on Snyder's future after the season.

But he changed his mind following the Sun Devils' 29-7 loss at Stanford last Saturday.

"I came to the realization very recently that this is a decision that was best for our program for the future," Smith said during a news conference to announce the firing. "Once I make a decision, I'm the type of individual that likes to act."

Smith told Snyder his decision Wednesday morning, then the coach met with his players to tell them. The Sun Devils don't resume practice until Thursday, and Snyder told athletic department officials he wouldn't be available to comment until then.

Snyder will coach the Sun Devils (5-5) in their season finale at Arizona on Nov. 24. A win there would make Arizona State eligible for a bowl game.

Snyder is 57-44 in nine seasons at Arizona State, but just 16-17 in the last three years. He has a 125-105-5 record in 25 years as a head coach, including stints at Utah State and California.

Snyder had three years remaining on his contract. Smith said that the total buyout for the coach and his staff would be "under $2 million" and that most, if not all, of the money would come from boosters.

In 1996, Snyder won consensus national coach of the year honors after guiding Arizona State to an unbeaten regular season. The Sun Devils lost to Ohio State 20-17 in the Rose Bowl and finished fourth in the national rankings.

Arizona State was 9-3 in 1997, including a Sun Bowl appearance, but the team went 5-6 in 1998, and 6-6 last season.

Smith praised Snyder's character.

"I want to make sure that we all understand as the Sun Devil family that Bruce Snyder has operated this program with class, dignity and integrity, and for that, we need to be thankful," he said.

Smith declined to tal about the specifics of why Snyder was fired, but said the win-loss record was important.

In Wednesday's Arizona Republic, former Sun Devils and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White said he had talked to Smith about the job should Snyder be dismissed.

White, coach of the Arizona Rattlers of the Arena Football League, said Smith told him that he would be on a short list of candidates if Snyder were fired.

However, Smith said Wednesday that he had not talked with anyone about becoming the new coach and that White would be considered the same as any other candidate.

Smith, who athletic director at Iowa State before coming to Arizona State, said he would conduct a national search and hoped to attract someone with experience as a major-college head coach who had ties to the West.

"There is as unbelievable pool of people we need to pay attention to and see if they would be interested in us," Smith said. "This is a very attractive job, and there are going to be a lot of people interested, in my view. I'm going to really take my time to wade through that appropriately."

He said Arizona State should regularly contend for a major bowl and periodically be a part of the BCS championship series.

"We are in a very competitive marketplace relative to sports entertainment and we need to have a program that's highly competitive," Smith said. "If we win a championship every year it would be nice, but we need to be highly competitive."

Then-athletic director Kevin White gave Snyder a two-year contract extension in 1998.

But White left last year to become athletic director at Notre Dame.

Snyder's current team was plagued by injuries. Tailback Delvon Flowers went out with a season-ending knee injury in training camp, and quarterback Ryan Kealy, suspended at the start of the season, went down with a knee injury shortly after his return.

Snyder, an Oregon graduate, turned around a California program that had been to just one bowl game since 1958 when he was hired in 1987. His last two Cal teams were 7-4-1 in 1990 and 10-2 in 1991.