The Arizona State Sun Devils shocked the college football world in 2024. Picked to finish 16 out of 16 teams in the Big 12 preseason media poll, the team went 11-3, won the Big 12 Conference, earned a first-round bye in the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff and nearly defeated Texas in the Peach Bowl.
The Sun Devils' impressive performance last season was all thanks to second-year head coach Kenny Dillingham. The former Oregon offensive coordinator built a formidable staff and a deadly roster in Tempe, despite finishing 3-9 in 2023.
That incredible turnaround has pundits wondering if he can sustain the success or if ASU will be a one-hit wonder of college football. If you ask Dillingham, he's planning on building a dynasty.
“Everybody has these moments where they kind of put themselves on the map in these eras,” Dillingham told The Athletic's Doug Haller in an interview on Tuesday. “That’s the goal.”
Oregon, Clemson... Arizona State? Can Kenny Dillingham spark the next college football dynasty?
After just one successful season, Dillingham isn't ready to claim Arizona State as the heirs to any long-term thrones — but he sure thinks his team can.
“Right now, you could argue Utah is inching into that world, but nobody’s really stamped themselves in this era,” he said. “And I think that’s the challenge. Can we do that? Can we be that team that in seven or eight years from now they’re like, ‘Whoa, they showed up in this time?'”
The team Haller and other pundits have compared ASU to: Clemson. Head coach Dabo Swinney was just as inexperienced as Dillingham and players were bought into his vision. That resulted in 13 consecutive seasons with double-digit wins and seven CFP appearances (including last year).
Nobody's calling Dillingham the next Swinney but all a program needs to take off is hire the right guy.
Dillingham, however, is well aware of the patterns and lore attached to ASU football: Flashes of brilliance followed up by drawn out periods of mediocrity, and then the cycle repeats and repeats.
Fans know all too well the disappointment of the seasons following the 1987 Rose Bowl victory, the 1997 Rose Bowl heartbreak and the 2014 Pac-12 South title. Dillingham wants to break that cycle and return to the consistent success fans remember of yesteryears long past — like the dominance of the late Frank Kush's teams in the 1970s.
"We still haven’t done it,” he said. “There’s always been flashes in the pan here. There’s just never been consistency, so to say we’ve achieved [success] is absolutely false. We haven’t achieved anything that somebody else has not achieved here.”
“This will be the hardest season,” running backs coach Shaun Aguano, who served as ASU’s interim head coach after then-head coach Herm Edwards was fired midseason in 2022, told The Athletic. “Getting to the top, there’s that hunger. Now what do you do to keep on going?”
ASU is projected to be an AP Top 10 team once the preseason rankings are released this summer. With no underdog status to shield them, can Dillingham lead his squad to sustained greatness while they wear a gigantic target on their backs?