We sat through the worst football in program history, watching the Sun Devils go 16-25 in our four years at ASU. Underperformance and scandal riddled our tenure in football. UA dog-walked our Sun Devils at our last home game as students. Thirteen months later we watched the same team in the Peach Bowl taking Texas to the limit.
The crowd in Mercedes-Benz Stadium was surprisingly strong for ASU. Everyone was there, even President Crow, to rally behind the team. The football team brought together the Sun Devil faithful, newly invigorated fans and reunited our college roommates.
READ MORE: ASU had passionate performance, came up short in Peach Bowl 39-31 against Texas
Shane Brennan, former State Press digital editor-in-chief
My sister still goes to ASU and has had the privilege to watch this team go from surprising to undeniable. She goes to all the games I can't stay up for where I live in the Northeast. I doubted how good this team was early on, but I am happy to be wrong. They got me.
The first Sun Devil football game we went to in college was a 2021 home opener against Southern Utah University, quarterbacked by Jayden Daniels featuring Ricky Pearsall and Jack Jones — legends now, coached by Cronkite professor of practice and football coach Herm Edwards. There was buzz and talent, but a few rough games on the road against Utah and BYU kept that super-talented roster to a good, not great, 8-5 record.
Our freshman year was 2020 — the COVID year. We broke all of the Taylor Place dorm social distancing rules to huddle around a TV for the first game of the year, a 9 a.m. kickoff against USC in an empty LA Memorial Coliseum. Daniels looked OK, and Johnny Wilson dropped a lot of passes in a losing effort.
A couple of years later, I was the Editor-in-Chief and Walker Smith was a managing editor for State Press where we presided over football coverage — which featured talented editors, reporters and photographers. But the team was still no good.
I sat in a hot, empty student section on a Saturday night watching Fresno State make over $1 million to shut us out as Drew Pyne couldn't seem to grasp where he was. We watched ASU lose to Utah by nearly 50. The best post-Herm game I went to was the Trenton Bourguet legacy game, where he became the only quarterback to beat Michael Penix Jr.'s Washington Huskies until the next year's national championship.
Covering the spring game on the same day as a pro-Palestine protest settled on Old Main was a day I'll never forget. I saw Sam Leavitt wear the maroon and gold for the first time. He had a cannon but had work to do and was progressing. Dillingham later agreed post-game. I had no idea what kind of poise and mobility he had in him. I thought little of it and re-focused on the protest. I'm delighted to report that I underestimated the star quarterback.
Three head coaches, multiple quarterbacks and many losses later, I sat side by side with my college roommates of three years in Atlanta. We reunited because there was no way we would give up an opportunity to see this team. We knew Skattebo as a bulldozer and we knew Dillingham had the entire athletic program's weight on his shoulders. We had no idea this team would be the one to reunite us for the first time in months.
Walker Smith, former State Press managing editor
All of us had not only watched this team play, but were at practices, press conferences and media days in the 2023 season, where we watched Dillingham drag his first team to a 3-9 season, highlighted by a win against UCLA in the Rose Bowl stadium. We watched players like Skattebo, Shamari Simmons and other returners fight and claw through 2023, and now get to reach the mountaintop one year later from outside the media circle.
So we packed a bag and traveled to Atlanta, and sat through two hours of bad, 17-3 football where it seemed like we had shown up just to get pushed aside by the Longhorns. What happened the rest of the game was legendary.
We jumped around and hugged when ASU scored 16 points in the blink of an eye to tie the game; locked arms and prayed for both of Texas' missed field goals in the fourth quarter; shouted obscenities late in the game when a targeting call didn't go our way; and finally all thinking ASU had it won on 4th & 13 in overtime, but ultimately falling short.
READ MORE: The future of Sun Devil Football is bright as Sam Leavitt's leadership continues to shine
We knew that ASU would battle back against Texas, so we didn't move a muscle or doubt all that much even into the fourth quarter. For the first time since we moved into Taylor Place in 2020, we got to celebrate and agonize over each play and penalty in a meaningful ASU football game.
While the game made it memorable, the fact that it was the first time all three of us had reunited since graduation made it a special trip beyond what happened on the field.
Edited by Alysa Horton, Andrew Dirst, Sophia Braccio and Natalia Jarrett.
Editor's note: The opinions presented in this insight are the author's and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
This content was contributed by University alumni who do not currently work at The State Press. If you are a community member who would also like to contribute, please email execed.statepress@gmail.com.
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Shane Brennan is the former Editor-in-Chief at The State Press and an ASU alum. He was a sports and politics reporter, before becoming the editor of the politics desk. He has covered local and state politics for the Arizona Capitol Times and Cronkite News.
Walker Smith is a former managing editor in the digital department of The State Press and is an ASU alum. He has previously worked as a reporter and editor on the sports desk and works for Blaze Radio and interned at Big Slate Media in broadcast productions.
