Burn+ subscribers, read everything that ASU football coach Kenny Dillingham had to say at his press conference today ahead of Pac-12 Media Day.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The full 27-minute press conference in words, where Dillingham discussed topics such as his recruiting strategy, unique NIL view, fall camp expectations and Camp T:
Q: How’s the summer been?
Dillingham: It’s been good. I mean, I think the guys have been working. There’s a lot of player-run workouts this time of year. So a lot of a lot of stuff I don’t get to see. And I can’t really ask our players about it due to NCAA rules. But I know when we’ve been with them, they’ve been working hard, they’ve been holding each other accountable. And they’re hungry.
Q: Kenny, you’re probably going to be picked next week to finish somewhere in the bottom third, or something of the Pac-12. But people are completely unaware outside of Tempe, kind of like what you guys have been able to do with the transfer portal and everything. So how do you what’s your sort of expectations going into the camp for the season? And what’s possible, do you think for ASU?
Dillingham: Yeah, I mean, I never put wins as expectations, like the whole program is based off success, which is just being the very best you can be in whatever you’re doing all the time. So I don’t know, to be honest, I’ve never seen the guys play football. I’ve seen them play practice. There’s a huge difference between people who can perform under the lights in a game atmosphere, and people who can perform in practice. Is there a correlation? Yes. But there may be one or two guys that raise their game when the lights turn on. And one or two guys that don’t, I won’t know that until we kick off.
Q: What about though from a talent standpoint? Without seeing games, comparing this to where you’ve been previously as a barometer for what’s possible?
Dillingham: Yeah, I mean, I think our talent, I think we’ve improved the roster pretty, pretty dramatically. But once again, it’s your verse yourselves. So everything is relative to who you’re going verse. So it’s one of the hardest things to do is determine when you’re a new staff how good you’re going to be. When you’ve been a place for three, four or five years, you can say, ‘Okay, well, this was our team last year, that’s how many games we won. This team would have been this much better than last year’s team, therefore, we should be this.’ But when you come in and you’re at square one, you don’t have that baseline, like you used to, to know how good this player is under the lights compared (to this player). Even though this player is beating this player, you don’t know how good this player is when the game field turns on because you haven’t coached them or played with them yet. So I think you’re competing versus a lot of unknowns, too. I think we have a chance to be good. Yes. But you’re still competing with the unknowns.
Q: Coach, obviously, a lot of your summer has been spent recruiting. What can you say about your recruiting philosophy and what’s been the reception for you and your coaches as you’ve been trying to recruit your full first full class?
Dillingham: Yeah, I mean, we’re gonna recruit people who want to be here. That’s the number one thing about our philosophy is there’s no tricks, there’s no gimmicks, there’s no promises. In the world of NIL, there’s zero NIL talk at all because I want people who want to be here. I firmly believe that this is a special place, I have a passion for this place. When people walk into this building, they better have a pride in it. They better have a passion about it. And that’s what we keep the main thing when we talk and recruit is: Do you want to be here? Do you want to be a part of this? Do you want to be a part of something that could be special? And if you do great and if you don’t great? You know, there’s there’s a lot of athletes out there.
Q: I know from day one, you said that (offensive coordinator) Beau Baldwin is the one that’s going to call plays on game day. But do you have any idea with your extensive offensive background, obviously, is it just going to be really be a meeting of minds when a game plan is devised? Or it’s really just Beau having the last word, whatever the process is going to look like?
Dillingham: Oh, I’ll have the last word. I mean, if I want to run something, I’m gonna run it. Right. But I think Beau is a is a really, really good offensive mind. That’s why I brought him here. I think he’s done more with last, the majority of his career. And I think that’s what makes him special. I mean, he’s won a national championship as a head coach, as a leader. So we’re gonna work together to create a game plan, but I have full faith in him on game day. He’s called plays way longer than I have. So I mean, I have full faith in him calling football plays and being the leader of the offense, and he’s going to run it. But I am, on both sides of the ball, going to have a say in both game plans. I believe that’s what a head coach should do is help both sides of the football. Because you have to have a unified attack. You can’t say, ‘Okay, this team is really good on offense,’ and us go out and run 85 plays, because now our defense is going to play 95 snaps, right? Well, are we deep on defense? Who knows? Do we have a two deep? Maybe their twos are better than our twos? Well, if that’s the case, then we need to shorten the game. We need tto make this a 65 snap to 72 snap game. Maybe we’re deeper than them. Well, crap, maybe we need to play as fast as possible to get into their depth. So there’s so much more that goes into winning, not just scoring, not just stopping that I think that’s what I want to have a role in is: what is the philosophy to win the football game going into the game? I mean, there was a game last year that I coached in I mean, we ended up losing, but we ran the ball and we took 13 minutes off the clock in one drive, because it was what I felt was necessary to give ourselves the best chance to win. Is that going to make our stats look great? No, we probably should have kept scoring that would have looked good. But we tried to win the football game and how was that we had to shorten it that week. So that’s going to be my job is: how do we create the best plan to win football games?
Q: And just a quick follow up: Do you already have any idea which coaches are going to be in the booth on game days?
Dillingham: I have a clue. I know Coach Baldwin will be in the booth. Unless we switch, maybe I’ll go in the booth. Who knows? That’s a joke. That’ll probably be you know, sent out national news. But no. And, defensively, probably Coach Ward, but probably Coach Ward or Coach Cooper. Obviously, we named Coach Cooper our run game coordinator. He’s done a phenomenal job here so far. So one of those guys will go up, one of those guys will be down.
Q: Kenny, since you arrived, since you were hired, you’ve talked to the fans, season ticket holders ,alumni. In those discussions, was there a common denominator as far as feedback of what they wanted you to, I don’t know accomplish, but just the direction of the program was there a common denominator as far as that feedback goes?
Dillingham: Yeah, I mean, all of them want to win a national championship. That was common. But I think the common ones just have passion, get our guys to play hard. That’s probably one of the things that comes up the most is, ‘Do they play with passion? I just want them to play hard. I want to watch the game and see guys caring and see guys playing with a passion. And I think that was the one of the most common trends from everybody was just play hard guys, play hard.
Q: On the topic of recruiting, is this season different for you recruiting versus previous years where you’re preaching a vision, but you don’t quite have the exact product on the field for players to see.
Dillingham: No, I mean, I know that’s what most people say in year one is, ‘Oh, we’re selling the vision.’ The difference is I don’t sell. Like, I don’t say, ‘If you come here, you’re going to accomplish this.’ Because in reality, I can tell you what I’ve done in the past and what our offense has done in the past. But anybody who comes to this program is going to have to work their butt off. And the level of success they have is not based off of what I do, it’s based off of what they do. So all we’re doing is giving them an opportunity to showcase themselves in a great place to live with hopefully, really good people around them, coaching them to help them be successful in life. It’s their job, to put in the work, to learn to study to go be successful. That’s what they’ve got to do. I’m not the magic wand that creates this magical player. Right? I feel like we do good things on offense. We do good things on defense, but it’s the players job to put in the work to become successful. And that’s really the vision that we sell is we’re going to give you the platform for you to put in the work to become successful.
Q: Dylan Tapley was one of the first recruits you had from in-state. Is that something that you’re focusing on your time here is keeping the local talent in Arizona?
Dillingham: Yeah, unfortunately, I can’t comment on recruits. But I will say I’m focusing on people who want to be here. And people sometimes get that confused with Arizona kids. I want Arizona kids if they want to be here. But I have no issue if an Arizona kid doesn’t want to be here with him going to experience things. You have to experience things in life. There’s a lot of people, it’s a trend in college football to go experience. If you look in the states of Texas, if you look in the states of Florida, if you look in states of California, kids are leaving their state at a higher rate than they ever have, because of social media. Because the access they have to learn about things that they didn’t know existed 20 years ago. So you can’t get frustrated when a kid wants to go experience something. I’ve actually told a kid in this year’s class, ‘Don’t come here. You shouldn’t come here. I can tell in your eyes. You need to go experience something else. I can see it in you.’ And to be honest, if I would have pushed I may have been able to get him here, but it wouldn’t have been the fit for him. That’s not what I want. I want people who want to be here. Would I love that to be the top players in the state? Would I love to win? Would I love to set a precedent that we’re going to help these guys be successful in life, and those guys flock here? Yes, only if they want to be here though. I’m not gonna trick them to be here. I’m not gonna promise them to be here. I’m not gonna give them anything else I wouldn’t give a kid from another state. Right? The opportunity to work, but the opportunity to do it in front of your friends and family. That’s what should make this place special is: the family aspect of staying home. That’s what makes this job special for me. So why shouldn’t it be special for them?
Q: Kenny, Camp Totozona? Oh, you’re gonna go up there with what three days (won’t actually be until Aug. 10-12)? What do you want to get out of that? What are you hoping to bring back from tthe?
Dillingham: I mean, just, togetherness. I don’t even know if that’s a word. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. Who knows? But that I want people to put their cell phones down. And normally we’re going to have a practice in the morning and a walkthrough at night with meetings and you know, it’s camp. Well, at Camp T, we’re not doing the walkthrough at night. It is football, a little bit of meetings to clean up the practice. Then from 11:00/noon on, right, they’re gonna have to do this thing called, like, hang out, and they’re gonna have to do it without a cell phone, they’re gonna do it without a television, without a video game. They’re gonna do it with a deck of cards, they’re gonna do it with a Jenga set, they’re gonna do it with dice. And they’re gonna have to hang out and talk to each other and build relationships. Because the one thing you mentioned earlier, ‘What has the boosters and the support asked?’ One of the things that I got from the former players here, that the most successful teams here was the togetherness that they had, the brotherhood they had. And the only way you can build that is by doing things like this. It’s putting him them in environments that they don’t want to be. Nobody wants to go stay in a bunk. Come on, I don’t want to go stay in a bunk, but you know what, we’re going to tell the stories, and they’re going to tell the stories about how this team and how this culture was created. And they’re gonna go back to Camp T, and there’s gonna be something that happens where a roach crawls in somebody’s pillowcase, right? And they’re gonna freak out and they’re going to tell the story forever.Â
Q: I’m curious man about Camp T. The facilities aren’t the best, right? Like for football. So do you feel like there’s a good trade off there. And the other thing I worry about with Camp T is we’ve had a couple of coaches make a big return to Camp T, but then for whatever reason, it falls off. And so I worry about the lack of continuity, the lack of tradition. So first facilities, and then secondly, consistency with going to the site.
Dillingham: So one, I will agree with you, there’s some challenges when you when you go to a place like that for sure. And I’ve asked the players what those challenges are. I said, ‘Okay, Jordan Clark, you’ve been there in the past. Tell me a challenge.’ And I have meetings about it. And one of them’s showers, bathrooms, all that. So we’re gonna bring some of that stuff in to help them. The other one is food. You know, the last time they went, they lost a bunch of weight when they went to Camp T. So how are we going to solve that? Well, we’ve got what the nutritionist to solve that issue. Right? So really, what we’re talking about is, where are you sleep(ing) now? And what do you do for fun in your downtime? So we’ve we’ve mitigated those issues on the front end, that way we can really kind of have try to get the best of both worlds. But part of this is to be uncomfortable. Part of this is the football is not comfortable, right? You go on the road at Washington State, Oregon State, those aren’t comfortable games, those are very uncomfortable games. You stay 45 minutes away, you drive. It’s cold, it’s rainy, right? It’s just uncomfortable, right? That’s why nobody’s ever gone undefeated in Pac-12 play. It’s because the league is so diverse in terms of the different places you play. So I think you need to put your players in these adverse situations to get them to wake up and their back hurts because they slept on a single. Right, but they still have to go practice. That’s part of life. That’s part of football. That’s week nine. Right? And if you think that’s not week nine is false. And sorry, what was your second half of that?
Q: Do you think you’ll consistently go to Camp T because other teams in the past haven’t?
Dillingham: 100% we’ll go to Camp T. I mean, I would like to go to Camp T as long as we can. I think like I said, I think it’s great in all aspects to build memories, to build camaraderie. It’s just you need to struggle, you need to build a team. I mean, you need it all. Life’s about experiences, you know, and good and bad. Sometimes they’re intertwined. I think Camp T is an experience that’s good and bad. And it’s all intertwined into one. And those are what people remember. You don’t remember the play. You remember these moments on sports teams, these events, right? And that’s what we’re trying to create is we’re trying to create a brotherhood through the highs and lows, the ups and downs of fall camp, and this is part of it.
Q: Kenny you mentioned that there’s zero NIL talk in recruiting, but star players expect to make money in NIL today and recruits expect to be star players, so it’s kind of maybe the elephant in the room sometimes. So how do you how do you navigate that and maybe more importantly, how much of an impact does it really have? Do you think on college football success?
Dillingham: Oh, NIL is 80% of recruiting, 75% of recruiting. So to think that it’s not is naive, but the way you do it is different. Like, I hope the players that choose to come here get paid the maximum amount of money they could ever get paid, more than anybody in the country. That’s what I hope. I hope I do such a good job, that people, that businesses flock to pay our players more than anybody in the country because we have a Valley behind it. And if you don’t think that your one business can make a difference, you’re false. It’s not true. You’re one business, supporting one player reaching out to one player on Twitter and saying, ‘We’re gonna pay you blank amount of money a month to do this.’ It’s critical. It’s huge. You don’t understand because there’s so many businesses, so everybody’s important there. And that’s the activating the Valley piece. NIL is essential, but I don’t want a kid. I want to reward our guys who are here. I want people to get NIL who wanted to be here, not getting a kid here illegally. By the way, you can’t actually do that and NCAA rules: to entice them with NIL. I want the Valley to support the people who choose to be here at such a high rate that it gets out that man, ‘Coach they don’t ever talk about it. But golly, that kid over there, he’s making blank amount, look at him. He’s everywhere. This kid over here, he’s making blank. They’re starting quarterback’s making blank, their linebackers are making blank. Everybody on their team makes blank because one big company paid a million dollars to pay all their players to do four events for him because they wanted the events.’ That’s how I want NIL, I want the city to wrap around this team and use this team, you have a charity and you want your kid you want a mentorship program. There’s a company MVP foundation that’s going to get behind our players, and they’re going to start getting our athletes and paying our athletes to be mentors for inner city youth. That’s what it’s for. That’s what I want people to think about Arizona State is help our players utilize our players to activate the community, help everybody and then the recruits will see it, they’ll see what we’re doing. And they’ll want to be a part of it. And we’ll never even have to discuss it, then I can focus on actually helping them be successful in life.
Q: Kenny, in terms of the health of the team, I know that you mentioned in spring practice that Ben Coleman is not going to be a full participant in fall camp. Aside from him, are there any other players that may not be full go from day one?
Dillingham: Yeah, him (Colorado WR transfer) Jordyn Tyson is still recovering a little bit. So those would be the two that we’re that were navigating back. (Offensive lineman) Aaron Frost will be full go.
Q: Can you mention the unknowns with your team? I think to this point, I think a lot of people would agree that you guys have killed the offseason since you started to where you are. But as a first year head coach going into the season, do you feel like there’s still some unknowns? Or do you feel some unknowns within yourself just going through all this for the first time?
Dillingham: Yeah, I mean, unknowns are just, ‘What do we look like through adversity?’ You can try to create it, but you don’t know it. You don’t know until you’re in it. Right? Nobody knows how they respond until they get put in that situation. So that’s an unknown, and those are the unknowns that define games. Because I mean, you win or lose if you look at a season, it’s one possession. Those are the games that take you from a five-win team to an eight-win team, right, or from a three-win team to a six-win team. I think they lost last year five or six games of one possession games or something crazy. Of one possession games. That’s the adversity within the game. You never know how you’re going to respond to that until you’re in it. You’ll never know how your guys handle that until you’re in it. You never know how they handle pressure till you’re in it. And those are the unknowns. For myself being on the field, I haven’t been on the field since I was a freshman high school coach. I’ve been in the box since I was in varsity as a high school coach. Since I was a varsity coordinator, since I was a GA, since I was a position coach, I’ve been in the box. So, golly, how loud is it going to be? You know what I mean. Like there is there are some unknowns that I have, unknowns from a football perspective that football is football, you can go be a freshman high school coach, you still have to manage timeouts, you still have to do everything you would do, right, within a college football game. There is no difference. IF anything college is easier because you get TV timeouts to get more breaks, right? So that type of stuff I’m not worried about. It’s more just the differences of not being able to be in the box to see the field. That’s different. I’ve always been in the box. It’s like a video game up there. Right to see schemes. That’s a change, right? That’s why I have a guy I trust up there
Q: And one last thing, you told some of us that when you were in other places, you used to be driving your car and you would be practicing the speech that you would give when you were introduced as ASU’s head coach. Now that you are ASU tech Coach, what speech are you practicing as you’re driving around Arizona?
Dillingham: No speech really. I mean, I don’t really have a speech anymore. speeches are over, I guess. And my speech failed miserably. Nothing like I practiced. So that didn’t work.
Q: I realize you’re not going to be recruiting people in the room to play but arbitrary numbers just listening to your passion. If you have a kid that’s a 10 talent-wise, but 3-4-5 on the motivational scale versus a kid that’s six or seven talent-wise, but 12 out of 10 motivational, who is the Kenny Dillingham player?
Dillingham: Oh, (12-10) motivational guy. At the end of the day, it’s contagious. Right? If you can create such a recruiting pipeline where you get 75 five-stars, 75 high four and five stars, then you know what you can, you can take the chance of having 15 kids who kill your culture, because they’re just gonna weed themselves out because you’re so talented. They don’t matter, they just disappear. Right. But if you’re trying to create a culture and add these really talented people that kill culture with into a team, that’s all 12 efforts. Right, these 12 efforts are going to look at these talented kids that just do whatever they want. And you’re not going to have a unity, because you’re not going to have the same vision. So I want people that’s why I keep going back that want to be here, it’s the most important thing in recruiting is not the sales pitch. We’re going to sign good players, a lot of really, really good players and the news flashes, guess what? The rankings change all the time? And guess what if a kid signs at a high level school, their rankings gonna get boost. So a lot of the rankings, right? You got to take it there. They matter, and they’re accurate. But they’re also relative to where a kid somewhat signs, right? And that’s the reality of it’s where are you at the end and not now. My goal is to not sign the top players right now they’re signing the best football players. And when they play their senior year, let’s see where they are at the end of this thing. And that’s why for me, it’s people that are passionate, it’s people who care, and it’s people who want to be here. So when they walk in this door, and I challenge them, and I tell them this is this isn’t the standard here. They know that I gave them no promises to anything other than the opportunity to work.
Q: Coach with Pac-12 Media Day coming up, and it’s going to be your first time at the Pac-12 Media Day. What are you looking forward to most? And what do you think you’re going to be taken away from media day?
Dillingham: Looking forward to for it to be over the most, so I can get back here. I just got back from vacation, so I’m ready to actually get back to work. But I mean, I’m really to be honest, I’m looking forward to seeing Bo Nix. Really, that’ll be fun for me to see him again. Last year, this time, I think I was at his wedding about three weeks ago. So I’m looking forward to go see him and see him and see Dan and see some of the staff and see our kids, given the opportunity to go talk to the media. That’s what I’m looking forward to is to see the kids have that opportunity to really start their own branch off out a little bit and be the face. That’s what college sports is about. It’s not about me. It’s about the kids, so I’m excited for them to get that opportunity.
Q: On recruiting, you talked about the rankings on kids coming out of high school. You know, that’s a dog and pony show, we don’t know if a kid in California is better than a kid in Georgia or a kid in Pennsylvania. Right? And there’s no guarantee a kid’s going to transition to the next level. So maybe rankings aren’t all that important. But I know some are stars, but not all of them will be accurate. So the transition part is probably the most critical?
Dillingham: Yeah, we’re focused on the growth, the projection of people. When I look at this league in this conference and what wins and you look at the coach Whittingham, I mean, that guy has done a phenomenal job evaluating somebody on where they’re going to be in two to three years. You look at Coach Smith at Oregon State, he’s done a phenomenal job of evaluating where people are going to be in two to three years. And those kids fitting in a culture and a style, right. And then when those players mature, and they have that culture. That’s their edge is they now have a junior playing a freshman, right, with an extreme culture, with an extreme vision. And I think here at ASU, you can have a balance. If you don’t get lost trying to win recruiting, if you stay focused on your vision and your plan, you can attract the skill players that may be some people can attract because you’re at Arizona State, you can attract skilled players. And if you combine that with the vision of the culture, I think in two to three to four years, you can have that culture that these gritty places have with good plus skill that they always can that those places usually can’t get as the skill. That’s usually what they’re missing. I think if we do it right, in three to four years, we can have that greediness. We can have that culture and combine it with the skill, but you can’t just try to flip the switch and say, ‘We want this player because he’s ranked high because it looks good.’ This isn’t about publicity stunts. There has been multiple four stars that I could have gotten that we didn’t think was good enough. I don’t want a publicity stunt, I want players that fit the culture that fit the place.
Q: Coach, we’ve seen on social media that you’ve been able to get out and play golf with some of your guys. How meaningful is that to you to be able to have that bonding, that relationship with those guys outside of the facilities here?
Dillingham: Yeah, I mean, it’s critical. I mean, the one thing I think people can start to realize about me is I really don’t have like, Coach Kenny and then Kenny. It’s just me. Right? You know, some people are like, ‘Oh, when I get on the field, I change.’ I really don’t. I’m just the same person all the time. So I mean, the relationships you have with those guys, I think when tough moments happen, I think that’s when the relationships really matter. And to me, it’s fun. I mean, getting out there and playing golf and competing. I love competing. So it’s just kind of who I am. I mean, it doesn’t matter. Like, it’s just fun. What you do, it’s what life’s about.
Q: Coach who are some of the newcomers that have missed spring ball that have jumped out to you over the summer?
Dillingham: I mean, (USC WR transfer) Jake Smith missed (spring ball). I know, he was here, but he missed the majority of spring ball. He’s really jumped out. I mean, he’s back up to 197. He’s moving really well. He ran high 22’s the other day. So I mean, he’s a kid who’s really who missed that’s done a nice job. Obviously, Frost, he’s done a really good job coming back. So, I think we have a couple guys. It’s hard. There’s no pads on, just running around. You know what I mean? So I would say just athletically, those two guys have really shown up, but we’ll really find out when camp starts. And we have day six, six days in a row to start, and we practice outside in the heat, right? We’re not going in the bubble if we don’t have to, unless there’s a heat advisory. So we’re gonna practice outside. It’s gonna be 113 and people are going to be super hot, it’s fine, right? And we’re gonna see who really wants it.
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Brendan Mau is a college sports insider and general assignment reporter for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on Twitter via @Brendan_Mau
