In college football, few coaches have risen through the ranks as quickly as Kenny Dillingham. And on Saturday, the Arizona State head coach revealed the heart behind the rise. Fighting back tears on camera, the 35-year-old paused mid-sentence as he spoke about how deeply the Sun Devils and the school mean to him. And that raw moment drew Phil Mickelson‘s attention.

“He is the best and has brought an amazing energy to ASU football and athletics!” Mickelson wrote in response to the video shown below. 

Speaking to the media, Dillingham said, “I love this place…” before immediately pausing as he broke down in tears. After several long seconds of silence, he finally gathered himself and closed with a simple, heartfelt line: “It’s a special place to me.”

Dillingham’s comments come at a time when there are rumors about his tenure here at Arizona State, as he is expected to move to Michigan. Nevertheless, Phil Mickelson’s praise for the coach is not just pure emotion. Dillingham’s impressive resume backs it.

Dillingham is an Arizona State graduate (2012) and Phoenix native who understands college football at its core. It’s because he has worked his way up from the Arizona high school football circuit to an assistant role with the Sun Devils (2014) before returning as head coach in 2023. That deep-rooted connection has translated into where he is today, as one of the best. And in three years of being with the team, Dillingham has a 22-16 record at Arizona State.

But what exactly ties Mickelson to Dillingham beyond being a pure fan is a shared Arizona State bond because Phil Mickelson is also an Arizona State University alum. He graduated from ASU in 1992 on a golf scholarship with a degree in psychology, and during that time, he became the face of amateur golf.

In fact, Mickelson didn’t just represent ASU but created history while he was there. He captured three NCAA individual championships and won three Haskins Awards as the nation’s top collegiate golfer, tying Ben Crenshaw for the most individual NCAA titles in history. He even led the Sun Devils to a national team championship in 1990, cementing a legacy that makes his support of Dillingham feel less like a mere comment and more like one Sun Devil backing another.

Lefty is very active on X and is always extending his support to fellow athletes. Just a few days ago, he supported Scott Baio and his daughter, Bailey, as she got backlash for her pro event debut at NXXT Women’s Pro Tour at Stoneybrook West Golf Course in Winter Garden, Florida.

As Mickelson appreciates what Dillingham has done, let us note he also tried to take a path similar to him when he was hired to be an assistant for ASU’s golf team in 2015.

Phil Mickelson’s short coaching stint at ASU

Back in 2015, Phil Mickelson was hired by his brother, Tim, to be an “interim assistant” for the golf team at ASU. Tim Mickelson was the head coach back then, and he enlisted Phil to help with the team’s recruiting efforts. It seemed like a fairytale homecoming for Mickelson, who is strongly connected to his roots at ASU and had done so much for golf during his collegiate days.

Unfortunately, that position lasted only three months. “Yes, I recently got fired from that position,” Mickelson said during a news conference at the 2015 Waste Management Phoenix Open.

When pressed further on the matter, Mickelson explained that the position was never meant to be long-term, Mickelson stated: “We had developed a plan to where I could call some recruits. We weren’t really going to say anything and hadn’t said anything for a few weeks until one of the players had tweeted it, and it looked like there were some improprieties, which there weren’t, so we had to publicly announce I was assistant coach; otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to make the phone calls I had been making,” he told the media.

It was a brief, behind-the-scenes glimpse of Phil trying to give back to the program that launched him, and even though it was a short stint, his presence left a story worth telling.