ASU football investigation: Michael Crow says NCAA hasn't finished interviewing coaches

The NCAA recruiting investigation surrounding the Arizona State football program isn't near a resolution, according to comments ASU President Michael Crow made to The Athletic on Tuesday.

"I know that we haven’t, out of my office, been very vocal about anything because we’re asked not to say anything by the NCAA," Crow told The Athletic. "And the NCAA is moving in deliberate fashion. I don’t believe they’ve even interviewed our remaining coaches yet."

He continued: "If we had been doing this investigation, we would’ve moved with the greatest speed imaginable to get a sense of what’s going on," Crow said. "It’s a process. You know the process. It’s unfortunate, and we are doing our best to work our way through it and to work it out."

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ASU football has seen five coaches depart amid the investigation, including offensive coordinator Zak Hill and recruiting coordinator Antonio Pierce, also the defensive coordinator and associate head coach.

Recruiting has suffered, as the Sun Devils have brought in few recruits and many key players have entered the transfer portal and found teams elsewhere.

As a result, the team is thin at some positions as its depth has suffered.

Speculation has swirled about head coach Herm Edwards' security as coach, with many calling for him to be fired.

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Crow addressed Edwards' job status in an interview with Arizona Sports 98.7 FM in February.

"In all of these things where you have people who decide not to play by the rules, those people are gone," Crow said about Edwards still being the Sun Devils' coach. "Now we are looking at what went wrong and why that happened and so forth, so we are still in the thick of that. Coach Edwards has done an outstanding job of upgrading our overall program. We've got this collision of people that decided to not play by the rules relative to recruiting and so we'll be looking at how we can make improvements and so forth and so on, but coach Edwards is responsible for all of the actions of his people but these are not things that he asked them to do. These are not things that he was a part of so we're looking at everything possible. He's brought a lot of talent and a lot of energy and a lot of creativity and now we're dealing with people that couldn't play by the rules and now they are gone."

More:Arizona State football's Herm Edwards slammed for 'trust' comments, lack of accountability

In that February interview, Crow said this about the NCAA investigation into the ASU football program:

"The bad thing about the process of rule violations with the NCAA is that they take so long to work through," he said. "If we had been doing this investigation by ourself we would have gotten the information, taken a look at the facts, taken our actions, made our adjustments and moved forward. I think we are hearing that it is still 10 months away, 12 months away, something on that order and so we've got to work for that process. … We're looking forward to moving forward. Obviously we're making adjustments now, but the NCAA process is a long process and is not near conclusion."

More:ASU football, Herm Edwards slammed by opposing coaches: 'Biggest dumpster fire'

According to Crow's comments to The Athletic Tuesday, it sounds like the conclusion of the investigation still isn't near.

The site reported that Crow said "one can only hope" when asked about a potential conclusion coming in the recruiting investigation.

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Reach Jeremy Cluff at jeremy.cluff@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jeremy_Cluff.

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