Kenny Dillingham Is Betting Big on Tailgating to Elevate ASU Football

The month of August is finally here, which can only mean one thing: football is coming back! But before we get to football wanted to talk about golf for a little bit.

By no means do I care about the game of golf. To me, it’s too slow, too boring, not enough drama. Put it this way, if I wanted to turn something on and fall asleep to, I would turn on pretty much any golf event.

Now there are exceptions to that. I actually don’t mind watching the Masters. Why? I don’t know, but even still, that doesn’t make me a golf guy.

I know there are many people out there who love it and love to play it, but I could think of a thousand other ways to spend my day. In fact, I would much rather be in the clubhouse drinking a cold beer than spending it outside trying to put a tiny ball into a hole. Especially down here in my part of South Texas, where it’s consistently 100-plus degrees in the summertime, which is seven to eight months out of the year.

However, one golfing event has always seemed to interest me outside of the Masters. And believe it or not, it has nothing to do with the game itself. Out of all things, it’s the crowd. That event is none other than the Waste Management Phoenix Open. Specifically, the 16^th hole.

That hole is notorious for being the craziest hole in golf due to the party-like atmosphere. It’s filled with rowdy fans full of booze, and it is the closest thing in golf that reminds me of college football.

Not too far away from the Waste Management Open is Arizona State University in Tempe. And what better way to keep that same energy going than at a college football game?

Arizona State is currently in the fundraising stage for a new indoor practice facility that would be built close to Mountain America Stadium in Tempe and double as a tailgating area for games.

“We want to get it fundraised here in the next five months to get a shovel in the ground here in the next six months so it’s here two years from today, which is the goal,” head coach Kenny Dillingham said after practice last week.

“We want to create the 16th hole of the Waste Management Open, or as close as we can to it … we just have to fundraise enough money to do it. It’ll be good for us, our football team, and it’ll be good for the fans if we can get it done,” Dillingham added.

“This is a lifestyle city, this is a city based on fun,” Dillingham said, via 247Sports. “No offense to golf, but people don’t go to the Waste Management Phoenix Open to watch the golf; they go for experience, the fun, and the entertainment. If we have a structure that becomes the best sports bar, slash tailgating event in town, every single week right outside our stadium, I think it could become one of the places to be on Saturday, if it’s done right.”

I absolutely love this idea from Kenny Dillingham, and kudos to Arizona State for trying to pull this off. In recent years, I feel like with everything going on between NIL and the transfer portal, college football has changed dramatically. However, the one thing that should never change is the tailgating scene before a game, and I am glad Arizona State is trying to keep that tradition alive.