Hayes: Kenny Dillingham already showing why he is the perfect fit for Arizona State
“Somewhere inside, we hear a voice. It leads us into the direction of the person we wish to become. But it’s up to us whether or not to follow.”
They handed Kenny Dillingham a jersey last month after the hiring celebration, maroon silk with a gold No. 42 and Pat Tillman’s inspirational words written across it.
He was home. Back in The Valley where he grew up as a kid watching Arizona State play on the those steamy fall nights. Where he’d tailgate with his family in the parking lot and nearly got hit by a car while throwing the football.
Where he and his wife went to school, and where 8 generations of Dillinghams were born and raised.
“I’ve got guys that were in my wedding right there,” Dillingham said during an emotional press conference, where he emphasized — over and over — the rare connection of local boy and his hometown university finding each other. “This place is special. This state is special.”
They’ve tried everything else at Arizona State, why not take a chance on a coach who feels it to his core — and give him an opportunity to make something out of the sleeping giant.
In the past 2 decades, they’ve tried the hot young coach (Dirk Koetter), the hands-off players’ coach (Dennis Erickson), the hard-charging coach (Todd Graham), and the former NFL coach (Herm Edwards).
Nothing worked.
They either weren’t ready, were still trying to hang on, were a bad fit, or were trying to reinvent themselves. A microcosm of the Arizona State program, which for decades has been in the seemingly perfect geographic (and conference) situation to develop into something unique.
The results, for most of 22 years, have been a lot of 6- and 7-loss seasons. So when athletic director Ray Anderson trotted out this latest iteration of home grown hero, it would’ve been easy to see it as yet another reach.
Only this one, this time, might just be different.
“Kenny Dillingham will be a fantastic head coach,” says Florida State coach Mike Norvell, a former assistant at ASU under Graham. “You talk about having a ‘fit’ — that’s a fit.”
Norvell, everyone, is underselling it. This isn’t just a fit, this is Sun Devils DNA.
It’s real and it’s emotional, and you better believe those tears from Dillingham were welling up for days before he stood at the podium and tried to explain what it all means to him.
This is The Valley where he tore his ACL during his senior year at Chaparral High School, and what was absolutely gutting at the time became yet another voice inside pushing him toward the direction he wanted and needed.
He couldn’t play, so he started coaching with the JV team at Chaparral, and before you knew it, he was a 21-year-old offensive coordinator who was also attending ASU. Got a degree, met his wife, started life.
The Valley is also where he met Norvell, who was running the offense at ASU for Graham and recruiting locally. A couple of years later, Norvell convinced Graham that a young high school coach would be a valuable addition to the staff as an offensive assistant.
Then Norvell left for the head coaching job at Memphis, and convinced Dillingham to move across the country for graduate assistant job in 2016. A year later, he was full-time quarterbacks coach — and everything exploded.
A year after that, he was offensive coordinator and it looked and played out like a video game. The next thing you know, Auburn coach Gus Malzahn asked Dillingham to be his OC because the walls were closing in and he needed something different.
Then Dillingham is standing on the sidelines in the Iron Bowl with a freshman quarterback (Bo Nix) — and the scoreboard says 48-45, good guys. And how in the world did we get here?
A decade earlier, he blew out his ACL and was an ‘If-only’ story waiting to be told. This past year, he helped new Oregon coach Dan Lanning convince Nix to transfer across the country to play this season for the Ducks — and the offense was nearly unstoppable.
All the while, Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson is executing due diligence on the 31-year-old from The Valley because, hell, they’ve tried everything else. And nothing has worked.
So there was some symmetry on Wednesday afternoon during National Signing Day, 2 months after Dillingham was called home and as he wrapped up his first recruiting class. The first is never easy for any newbie, and the problems at ASU are compounded by a looming NCAA investigation.
Dillingham hit the transfer portal hard, and landed 25 — that’s right, twenty-five — players to begin building something new. He got a couple of quarterbacks (including former Notre Dame starter Drew Pyne), a couple of players in high demand (Nevada OT Aaron Frost, Oklahoma Edge Clayton Smith), and the No.10 overall portal class according to the 247Sports composite.
But it’s what happened Wednesday afternoon that might be an omen of sorts for Dillingham’s return to The Valley. That was 4-star QB Jaden Rashada, a top-100 player who signed with Florida but asked out of his letter of intent after an NIL deal fell through, committing to ASU.
Rashada tweeted that he will be “attending my childhood dream school” where his dad, Harlen, played in the 1990s. A place, he said, where “I’m happy” and that he’s “glad to truly be home.”
That sounds a while lot like a kid who spent his childhood fall Saturday’s avoiding cars in the parking lot while throwing footballs before yet another Arizona State game.
It’s going to take time, and it won’t completely turn in a year or 2 or maybe even 3. But if there truly is a perfect fit for everyone, Arizona State may have finally found it.
The voice has led Dillingham to the place he wants to be, and the program he wants to build.
“This place can be special,” Dillingham said. “We’re going to put our hearts into it. We’re going to maximize every drop that we can get out of it.”