Kenny Dillingham is one of the better motivational speakers you’ll find. Seldom does the Arizona State head football coach talk and not elicit a “he gets it” response of some kind.

When he met with local reporters after practice on Tuesday, he touched on his competitive drive and perfectly illustrated the kind of culture he’s trying to establish in Year 1 with the Sun Devils.

“If I go and play basketball, I don’t want to play versus someone who’s just as talented as me. I’m trying to be on the team that sucks. And win,” he said, per SunDevilSource. “That’s what drives me. Not being on the team that’s good and beating the team we’re better than. I want to be on the team that has to crawl and scratch and fight and compete and scrap to win the game.

“That’s what motivates me. That’s how I’m driven. That’s how I’ve always been. It’s not fun beating someone you’re better than. It’s necessary. Because you should just be your very best.

“What’s competitive is when you rise up to those occasions and you can only do that if you’re prepared for adversity. If you’re OK with saying, ‘Man, I’m gonna give it my all and fail.’ So many people are scared to fail nowadays that when they face adversity, they give up before they allow themselves to fail because they’re too scared to fail.”

Dillingham is firmly in “foundation building” mode this year at Arizona State.

The Sun Devils went 3-9 last fall and though there were pockets of sunshine with Shaun Aguano leading the team, the whole exercise largely felt laborious.

One of Dillingham’s primary talking points since taking the job has been emphasizing how much his teams are going to enjoy playing with and for each other.

But a football season is a grind and the Sun Devils are bound to face adversity at some point throughout. How does his team respond when those moments hit? Dillingham says they’ve spent several days in fall camp trying to focus on what kind of team the Sun Devils will be when adversity strikes.

“It’s OK to fail as long as you respond,” he said. “That’s what these last two days have been about. That’s what four of our practices in camp have been about. It’s about, you’re going to fail. Respond.”