Ever since Arizona State hired 32-year-old Kenny Dillingham to be its head football coach in 2022, he has reminded me of a young Josh Pastner, Arizona's high-profile assistant basketball coach of the early 2000s.
Dillingham and Pastner never met a microphone they didn't embrace and willingly answer questions from the media. Both are talkative, insightful, amusing and accommodating.
Late last year, Dillingham told reporters that someone in the vast Phoenix area surely had the wealth to drop $20 million on the Sun Devil football program. It wasn't long after that a Sun Devil fan donated $10 million. Dillingham has raised the profile of the long-middling ASU football program to a level that hasn't been reached since the Frank Kush years.
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"I don't care about being at a blue blood,” Dillingham said. "I want to coach football and be happy. At the end of the day, some of the best coaches aren't the guys that everybody talks about. I've got a great thing going, why mess it up? I'm not in a hurry.”
Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham screams to his team during football practice in Tempe on Aug. 6, 2026.
Pastner, now 48, has jumped from head coaching jobs at Memphis, Georgia Tech to UNLV. He's had difficulty finding the right fit. But not Dillingham. He grew up in Phoenix and has given a personality to an athletic department that didn't have a face for decades.
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