Arizona State University is installing a pitchfork statue at Sun Devil Stadium just in time for Saturday night’s season opener against University of Texas, San Antonio, according to the donor and a university official.

The bronze statue, roughly 6-feet tall and 3-feet wide, will be mounted at the southeast end of the stadium, near Wells Fargo Arena, under the supervision of sculptor Jeff Carol Davenport and donor Art Pearce.

Pearce said Friday morning that he hopes the statue will “be a rally point for all the ASU students and alumni … when students graduate they can walk out there with their parents and walk up to it, get their pictures taken next to it.”

“I think it will just be a great boost for morale for ASU fans,” Pearce said.

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The pitchfork was originally scheduled to go up last year. Former head football coach Todd Graham, however, is credited with convincing Pearce and others that a Pat Tillman statue would be more meaningful to the football program and should go up first.

Plans for the pitchfork statue “started about four years ago when I realized that ASU didn’t have its mascot or emblem anywhere on campus,” Pearce said.

The statue also will honor Pearce’s great-grandfather Zeb Pearce, who played football at ASU in the late 1890s.

Zeb Pearce later became a beer distributor, connecting Coors to Mesa after prohibition.

Neither Art Pearce nor the university released a cost estimate.

Last year, when the Tillman statue was unveiled near the ASU football facility, Davenport said that if she were to take on a similar project it would cost about $250,000.

ASU faces UTSA at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Sun Devil Stadium.

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Reach Moore at [email protected] or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @WritingMoore.