Kenny Dillingham on Becoming a Blueblood: ‘One Season Proves Nothing’

Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham is not shying away from expectations anytime soon.

Still, he’s not clueless about what it takes to sustain success. Recently, he discussed the goal of Arizona State becoming college football’s next blueblood, which was met with some skepticism.

Dillingham pointed toward teams like Oregon and Clemson, which emerged as national powers in the last two decades, and believes his Sun Devils are capable of achieving something similar.

“You have Clemson this last cycle, from 2010 to 2020,” Dillingham said. “They just showed up. People think they’ve been around forever. You have Oregon from 2000 to 2010. There hasn’t been a team in this era, in the 2020s. The lifestyle you have in Arizona, if we can create some staff consistency, and then we’re in a league where we can continually compete to win.”

The words understandably struck some fans wrong, with many trying to list reasons that dispute Dillingham’s statement. It didn’t take long for the Sun Devils’ head coach to respond to the backlash, and in typical Kenny Dillingham fashion, he knocked it out of the park.

“Of course, I should believe we can build something, so should every coach of a program,” Dillingham wrote on X. “We are a LONG way away from this, and the context was about why I want to be at ASU for the long haul. One season proves nothing. It’s a marathon, not a race.”

While the path toward becoming a blueblood is far from easy, that won’t keep Kenny Dillingham from setting his sights on that reality as the final destination.