“The GOAT.” No, we’re not talking about Nick Saban or Bill Belichick. That’s the tag Arizona State quarterback Sam Leavitt gave his head coach, Kenny Dillingham. And he had good reasons why. The Sun Devils have gone into “REVAMP” mode under Dillingham. They were picked to finish last in the Big 12 in 2024 but actually won the conference in their first year after moving from the Pac-12. With the 35-year-old coach leading the way, they earned the school’s first-ever College Football Playoff ticket. And Dillingham certainly received the credit he deserved.

Kenny Dillingham was named Frank Kush Coach of the Year on Tuesday for leading the Sun Devils to an 11-3 record and a No. 7 final AP Poll ranking. This award, voted on by all 26 Arizona State athletics head coaches, is named after the school’s winningest football coach. What makes this even more special is that Dillingham is the first football coach to win it since it started in 2018. But more than any award, a coach truly succeeds when their own staff speaks highly of them, and in that sense, Dillingham is a very fortunate man.

On the June 17th episode of the Speak of the Devils podcast, they interviewed Dillingham’s tight ends coach, Jason Mohns. The head coach appointed Mohns after he stepped down from his position as head coach at Saguaro High School in 2022.

On the podcast, Mohns explained how 35-year-old Dillingham, one of the nation’s youngest coaches, grows by always accepting criticism for self-improvement. “He’s so humble and he asked things, ‘Hey where can I get better and what can I do?’ And I just told him, like, ‘Hey listen, usually a employee doesn’t tell their boss they’re proud of him.’”

The tight end coach continued, “But just for knowing him for as long as I have, and last year was his first year at any level being a head coach and so to see the growth he’s made in from year one to year two now going into year three, I’m not surprised. Because the dude is so smart and he’s so calculated, and he’s so willing to look in the mirror and point out his mistakes and work to fix them.”

Being an Arizona native and a Sun Devil alum, Dillingham injected much-needed energy into the squad when he took over Herm Edwards‘ hot seat. He boosted the Sun Devils from a 3-9 overall record in 2023 to 11 victories and a top 10 finish last season. While Dillingham’s openness to feedback is one reason for his growth, there’s another reason as well.

There is no feeling of superiority or ego embedded within him. As Mohns highlighted, “He’s got no ego. I think that’s one of the things that allows him to be so successful in modern college football is that he doesn’t have 10 or 15 or 20 years of this is how I always did it and this is how I’m going to do it. He’s kind of learning on the fly as college football evolves.” Now, after all this, one must have a notion that Dillingham is a no-nonsense head coach who is driven by his mission. But wait, he is the “quirky” one. 

Kenny Dillingham follows the ‘success speaks louder than typos’ path 

Do you remember Dillingham’s press conference after the Sun Devils had beaten the BYU Cougars in their 28-23 heroic feat? The head coach opened up about his approach towards social media. That’s when he made a funny confession: “I operate it, obviously. So if there are spelling errors, it’s 100% on me. That’s how you know it’s genuine. It’s the world we live in.” Now this was also mentioned by Mohns, and it came with a seal of approval from Dillingham himself. 

On the podcast, the tight ends coach shared how he had to accommodate himself to a change. “He’s definitely quirky. I think the last thing I’ll share is like the thing that drove me n–s is. I was raised, my mom was English major and big into spelling, and spelling was always so important. And spelling things properly, and the way Kenny’s brain works is like if you could spell something wrong to make it make sense for the players, then you know the spelling doesn’t matter. And so when we were installing our offense and naming things and we were spelling things, the wrong way on purpose. Because it  coincided with the route concept, and it was so hard for me.”

But Mohns no longer cares for the spellings anymore. He has now tapped into Kenny Dillingham’s ways of doing things. “Now I forgot how to spell things right because I’m so ingrained into this system. So I blame him for any future spelling mistakes I have, because we don’t take pride in spelling things right; we take pride in doing things right, but definitely not spelling them right.”

This did not go unnoticed, as Dillingham re-shared the clip on X with a funny caption, “FAKTS!! #ThisIsAJoke.” Well, the head coach is indeed doing things right. A year ago, Dillingham was ranked 64th out of 70 total coaches. However, in the latest edition of Tom Fornelli’s annual ranking of all Power 4 head coaches, he cracked the Top 25, earning a No. 18 rank. The doubt stops here—Dillingham is about to silence every last septic…oops, skeptic.