Kenny Dillingham says ASU’s breakout season means nothing if they cannot repeat

Credit: Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Images

FRISCO, TEXAS – Arizona State football has not seen this kind of spotlight in years. At Big 12 media days on Tuesday, the Sun Devils were front and center, with Commissioner Brett Yormark awarding them the first-ever Commissioner’s Cup for their breakout 2024 campaign.

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But head coach Kenny Dillingham is already done with the praise.

Dillingham on keeping ASU from falling back to bad habits:

“The reality is there has been a lot of teams in college football who have done what we’ve done, who have won one year and then come back to reality,” Dillingham said. “We really didn’t do anything special. We did something that’s actually normal. We were just the team that accomplished that normal that year. What would be special would be to continue to build off of that and that was the real challenge was how do we not become what normal teams do in our situation do which is fall back to where we’ve always been.”

Dillingham isn’t wrong about 2025 being an outlier for the program. Last year was the first time the Sun Devils won double digits game since 2014 and 11 games in nearly three decades. The third-year head coach is looking to accomplish a feat that he sees as truly special, and that is doing it again. ASU hasn’t had back-to-back winning seasons since 2018-2019 and back-to-back 10+ win seasons in over a decade.

The program won its first conference title in over 17 years and aim to win back-to-back conference championships in over 50 years, when it was a part of the Western Athletic Conference. Dillingham has hammered it home to star players like Sam Leavitt and Jordyn Tyson that last year is over, the team is 0-0 and they haven’t achieved anything.

Right now, 2024 is a fluke to Dillingham. Last season’s success is over for the Sun Devils and there is no point of celebrating anymore. ASU made it the College Football Playoffs for the first time in its history, but it went winless by losing to Texas in a double OT thriller. The goal for Dillingham and his team is not just to make it back to that spot but to win when in those big moments.

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Reporter Tanner Tortorella covers general assignment for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on his X account, @TannerTSports