Kenny Dillingham: ASU catching up in financial arms race, but still a ways behind

TEMPE — Arizona State’s athletic department has received a couple of financial boosts in the eight-figure range since the 2025 football season ended.

An undisclosed group made an eight-figure donation to expedite the planned indoor facility that will be built outside ASU’s Mountain America Stadium, while Brian and Kelly Swette donated $10 million out of their own pockets to endow the head football coaching position currently held by Kenny Dillingham.

Both contributions have come since Dillingham rattled some people’s worldview of where college sports fundraising was at when he publicly stumped for a whale donor.

“I stood on the pedestal and said crazy things,” Dillingham said Wednesday. “Well, we found that amount of money that I asked for through two different people in the next three months. So, if you’re not willing to go out and say what you need, right? … If I just stayed quiet and everything is roses and candy canes all the time, there’s no such thing.

“It’s an arms race to continue to compete and get better. So, if we ever say we’ve made it … I’m actually hurting our football program.”

Dillingham’s plea in December came after he spurned interest from Michigan when additional support came from ASU, including higher staff salary pools.

ASU isn’t close to where national heavy-hitters are in terms of fundraising — Dillingham cited $40 million rosters around the country — but it’s well beyond where it was when he first took the job in December 2022.

Peter Boyle, a Tempe-based NIL agent who has worked with more than 100 ASU athletes in recent years, told AZFamily the Sun Devils are now in the middle of Big 12 NIL, whereas he would’ve put them at or near the bottom of the conference three years ago.

That’s not to say things are easy now; for example, money was a big part of why star quarterback Sam Leavitt departed the program.

But it has also been critical in supplying Dillingham with a 2026 roster that he has called his biggest and longest, while carrying the potential to go down as his most talented as well.

He also has a coaching staff where the offensive and defensive coordinators along with most position coaches are entering at least their third years with the program.

“We’re just taking the right steps,” Dillingham said. “When I got here, we were in a marathon where it was like we started four years after everybody else or four hours after everybody else started this marathon. Even though we’re catching up and we’re getting better and we’re improving in a lot of areas, we’re still far behind and they’re still running.

“They just didn’t stop and say, ‘Let Arizona State catch up.’ They’re still trying to run the race. … We’re catching up, but we’re not even in the same ballpark of winning this race right now.”

ASU’s previous athletic director, Ray Anderson, had a hand in ASU starting behind the pack.

About nine months after NIL was introduced, Anderson was staunchly uninterested in the idea of an NIL arms race. That’s the type of reaction that Dillingham would categorize with the roses and candy canes, rather than pushing for what was needed.

“We will not and have no intention of being in an arms race to provide NIL that really results in bidding wars. We can’t do that,” Anderson told Arizona Sports’ Bickley & Marotta in February 2022. “We’re not going to be able to compete with those who have very frankly endless resources and endless will to just pour money into where very frankly you’re in bidding wars for student-athletes.

“That’s not our interest. That’s not where we want to go, but we are certainly going to be prepared with appropriate NIL opportunities for our student-athletes to make sure they understand our commitment is here to provide them some things above and beyond what has been the old model.”

Dillingham reiterated the importance of getting the entire Phoenix area invested in the team’s success, whether that’s through the Sun Angel Collective, other partnerships with the university or whatever else it may be.

The coach expects an update on the indoor facility in the coming weeks.

When he first suggested the idea, it seemed like a fundraising impossibility. His urges seemed to will it into existence, and its groundbreaking will be a tangible sign of that progress.

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