
TEMPE, Ariz. — On the night Texas won the 2005 national championship, Longhorns coach Mack Brown raised the trophy and turned from side to side, showing it off to thousands of fans crammed inside the Rose Bowl.
On live television, ABC reporter John Saunders asked Brown what this night had meant to the state of Texas. Brown first congratulated USC and all it had accomplished. He thanked the Rose Bowl for putting on such an amazing event. Then Brown thanked his players, his staff — and the high school football coaches in the state of Texas.
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Recalling this moment, Arizona State assistant head coach and special teams coordinator Charlie Ragle remains in awe. “What a brilliant line, man,” he said. “That guy had that dialed up and ready. You know what those high school coaches did when they heard that?”
Ragle pounds his chest.
If there’s a moment that captures what Arizona State is trying to accomplish under new coach Kenny Dillingham, this might be it. An Arizona State graduate and Arizona native, Dillingham has made it clear that this is more than a job to him. He has planned for it his entire adult life. In fact, while driving to work at previous coaching stops throughout his career, Dillingham practiced the speech he one day would give at his introductory Arizona State news conference.
The only thing he didn’t account for: emotion. “It didn’t go as I had planned,” said Dillingham, who broke down in tears minutes into his Nov. 27 intro. “I did not cry in my car for 12 straight years.”
Dillingham hired a coaching staff with deep Arizona ties. Ragle, running backs coach Shaun Aguano and tight ends coach Jason Mohns make up a Mount Rushmore of Arizona high school coaching, with 14 state championships between them. Defensive line coach Vince Amey played on the Sun Devils’ 1996 team that went to the Rose Bowl and later coached with Ragle and Dillingham at Chaparral High in Scottsdale.
Linebackers coach A.J. Cooper attended Phoenix Sunnyslope High. He went to his first Arizona State football game in 1992 with his maternal grandmother. He was in Sun Devil Stadium the night Amey and the Sun Devils stunned No. 1 Nebraska in 1996, one of the great nights in school history. (Grandma remains a season-ticket holder.)
Defensive coordinator Brian Ward, who grew up in Glendale, recently sat in a lounge inside Arizona State’s football facility and looked at a wall displaying the program’s 13 coaches and players who have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
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“Ron Pritchard’s son Cole is a good friend of mine,” Ward said. “I played with him in college. I have connections with Danny White. Jake Plummer, I have buddies that played with him and they still tell stories about him. I had a chance to meet Pat Tillman when he was here. Randall McDaniel, he’s a Westside Phoenix guy; that’s where I am from.
“The football family here in Arizona, even going back 30-40 years, is really a tight-knit family.”
In past attempts to achieve sustained success, Arizona State has hired rising young coaches, established program builders and former NFL head coaches. Each built momentum before sputtering, leading to change and fan frustration. This is the next chapter, a 32-year-old with no head coaching experience promising this time will be different, mostly because the task means more to those in charge.
It’s a game plan that requires explanation.
“College football, whether people like it or not, they’ll never say it out loud, but it’s a job,” said Dillingham, the nation’s youngest Power 5 head coach. “It’s a profession for people. They’ll never say that, but it’s the truth. When you’re working at a school that you’re not as passionate about, you’re working. You’re trying to do the best job to do your job and then move along with your day.”
But this, Dillingham said, is different. “When you’re working at a place where you want to be, when you’re working at a place where you say, ‘OK, I need to set this place up for the next 30 years, not the next 12 months so I can get another job,’ when you’re working at a place like this that’s home, where you want to be at, which is the majority of our staff, you work a little bit harder.”
Ragle puts it simply:
“I’m dead serious when I say this: I want to coach here 10-12 years — and I’m out. I’ll be 58, 60 years old at that point. I’m done. I don’t want to go anywhere else. I know it will take immense work to pull that off. But I know Kenny feels that way. Shaun Aguano and I have talked about it. I know Vince Amey feels that way. And I think that’s what makes this group of coaches different than anyone that’s been here.”
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At minimum, the staff’s Arizona ties should position Arizona State to make a significant impact with in-state recruiting, an area previous coach Herm Edwards and his staff mostly ignored. The Sun Devils haven’t signed a top-10 Arizona prospect out of high school since 2017, an embarrassing stretch that has allowed Pac-12 rivals, as well as SEC and Big Ten powers, to nurture a strong recruiting pulse in the desert.
“Trust me, I’ve been shopping in Arizona for years,” said Arizona State cornerbacks coach Bryan Carrington, who previously worked at TCU, Texas, USC and Houston.
During his time at Scottsdale Saguaro High, Mohns visited with coaches from four different Arizona State staffs. Each told him the same thing. “We’re going to build a fence around the state. We’re going to keep these kids home.” After initial pushes didn’t produce the program’s high-profile players, the Arizona State coaches often shifted their attention to out-of-state pockets where they already had established relationships. It was easier in the short-term but harmful in the long-term, a shortcut that damaged the program’s in-state credibility.
Now that he’s on Arizona State’s staff, Mohns doesn’t expect to have that problem.
“My first week here, I got on the road and went to schools — I knew every one of the head coaches of the places I went to,” he said. “We’ve had conversations, we’ve shared film, we’ve had a beer together at a convention. That’s the big difference.”
Arizona State will solidify in-state recruiting assignments after the holidays, but Ragle said Aguano likely would cover Chandler and the East Valley, Ward would cover the West Valley, he and Mohns would take North Scottsdale (Mohns also will be a national recruiter) and Cooper would take central Phoenix. At a recent event with families of 2024 and 2025 prospects, Ragle made a promise.
“If your kid does not sign here at Arizona State, it won’t be because he wasn’t recruited here,” he said. “Those days are over with.”
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Dillingham and his staff aren’t foolish. They know recruiting California and Texas will be needed for Pac-12 survival. But the Arizona emphasis, they insist, will provide a foundation. To start, the goal is to sign three or four of the top 10 in-state prospects. Then as relationships develop, that number should increase to five or six. The Sun Devils already have made a local impact by way of the transfer portal, signing several former in-state standouts, including Oregon lineman Bram Walden, BYU quarterback Jacob Conover and USC receiver Jake Smith.
“Obviously, the ’23 (high school) class, we’re way too far behind, but we put the effort in to build a relationship just in case those kids choose to enter the portal two to three years from now,” Dillingham said. “The ‘24 class we’re still behind on. We’re probably six months to a year behind, so we’ll have half the time most people have, but I think we can make up some ground there.”
For the last two years, mostly because of an NCAA investigation into allegations of recruiting violations, a bulk of the Arizona State fan base has soured on the program. It could be detected on social media, and the game day attendance drove home message. With Dillingham’s arrival, the staff believes this has started to turn.
“Let me read you something,” Ragle said, taking out his cell phone, scrolling to find a message from an old co-worker.
“I’m sure you know you guys have brought unbelievable excitement to a battered fan base,’’ Ragle read. “I’ve been a season-ticket holder since our first year at Chap but have barely attended games the past few years. That’s going to change. I promise you that. Welcome home.”
Ragle put his phone down.
“I can’t tell you how many of these I’ve had — just think about how many Kenny has had,’’ he said. “That doesn’t assure us of winning games. You know this. But if there’s a staff that can do it with Arizona kids, it’s this one.”
(Photo of ASU assistant head coach Charlie Ragle: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
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