Kenny Dillingham had Michigan offer. How a dinner kept him at Arizona State
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FRISCO, TX — Michigan was calling and interrupting dinner.
When the meal is in Arizona, specifically the trendy Fat Ox in Scottsdale, where menu highlights include 25-layer lasagna and boutique cuts of prime meat, there’s a strong likelihood that it’s a family gathering for Dillingham.
A Valley native, Dillingham notes his sister is his “next-door-neighbor” and parents live four homes farther down the same neighborhood street.
Assistants and staff mostly constitute family in Dillingham’s view, too; remember, Arizona State‘s irrepressible 36-year-old head man is barely 18 months from dispensing his $200,000 performance bonuses to Sun Devils football’s support staff.
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Thus, Dillingham answering a call mid-meal isn’t to be dismissed.
Particularly when it’s Michigan representatives calling with the framework of a coaching offer to step into the lurch of Sherrone Moore’s messy dismissal in Ann Arbor.
“That’s good intel; I know exactly who was at that dinner at the Fat Ox,” Dillingham exclusively told USA TODAY Sports at Big 12 Conference Media Days. “Great opportunity; Michigan found the perfect guy for them. They really did, because (ex-Utah head coach) Kyle Whittingham is somebody that I’ve looked up to.”
Whittingham, in fact, is among the calls Dillingham remembers making during Michigan’s frenetic pursuit of the Arizona State alum whose national awakening traces to the Sun Devils posting 11 wins, taking the Big 12 championship and playing in the College Football Playoff in the 2024 season.
“I actually called him early in the (Michigan) process to talk to him about his choices and his family and things that he’d never sacrificed,” Dillingham says inside a suite perched above the Star at Dallas Cowboys headquarters.
Make no mistake, Dillingham’s focus has and continues to be elevating Arizona State football in all chambers; facilities are improving, the program is selectively aggressive in the transfer portal (see ex-Kentucky quarterback Cutter Boley, among others) and developing players into NFL talents, such as No. 8 overall pick Jordyn Tyson.
“I’ve told our athletic director, Graham (Rossini) and president (Michael M. Crow), as long as we show that we’re advancing, I just want our place to continue to advance,” says Dillingham who took over after Herm Edwards’ disastrous tenure that resulted in NCAA sanctions. “We came from so low four years ago. We were essentially at rock bottom, almost as you could get in college sports, or very close to it. All I wanted them to do was show improvement every year, and not just the improvement of the, hey, everybody’s improving. We’ve got to bridge the gap.”
Happy in the Valley but restless in pursuit of program elevation, Dillingham makes clear the mandate.
“If everybody’s improving at an 11-percent increase, we’ve got to be at 12, 13, 14,” Dillingham tells USA TODAY Sports. “We’ve got to bridge the gap. Otherwise, I don’t want to be here to babysit an average program. That’s not the vision.
“I want to build a program, and I understand we’re not going to be like some schools that somebody can show up and they can flip it upside down tomorrow and become this. So as long as we’re building to what I think can be a championship program in the long haul, and as we go, that’s what I care about.”
Which merely leaves Dillingham with one mystery: the seriousness of his family members’ offers to move to Michigan following the Wolverines’ pursuit.
“Navigating the family, like, my family’s crazy. My family’s like, ‘If that (accepting the Michigan job) is what you want to do, we’ll all move.’ That’s how my family operates. We’re very close. It’s like we’re doing it together. We’re doing things together. We’re doing things as a group.
“Now, whether that (move) would happen or not, I don’t know. It was an awesome, awesome experience, but I’m happy with Arizona State’s growth and as long as they just continue to grow with this thing, hopefully we can build it.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kenny Dillingham had Michigan offer. How a dinner kept him at Arizona State
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