No. 21 Arizona State on the rise with second-year head coach Kenny Dillingham

TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) — Caleb McCullough was there for the dark times at Arizona State, when the losses piled up and the cloud of an NCAA investigation was hovering over the program.

The senior linebacker opted to stick around, believing in coach Kenny Dillingham’s vision for a better future.

It came sooner than anyone outside the program expected.

“I’m doing whatever I can to win,” McCullough said. “I’m not really a stat player. This is my last year of college and my main goal is just to win.”

The Sun Devils are doing just that, becoming one of college football’s biggest surprises along the way.

Picked to finish last in its first Big 12 season, Arizona State (8-2, 5-2 Big 12) now controls its destiny for a spot in the conference title game.

The 21st-ranked Sun Devils have already clinched their first bowl berth since 2021, the year they were last ranked in the AP Top 25 before this week. Arizona State has taken down two ranked teams this season, 27-19 over then-No. 16 Utah on Oct. 11 and 24-14 at then-No. 20 Kansas State last weekend.

The Sun Devils will play their biggest home game in recent memory against No. 14 BYU on Saturday, the first home game between ranked teams in Tempe since 2014. Beat the Cougars and Arizona State can clinch a spot in the Big 12 Championship on Dec. 7 in Arlington, Texas, with a win over rival Arizona in the regular-season finale.

“It means a lot to these guys to come in here with that chip on their shoulder and do something that really nobody thought we could do,” Dillingham said.

Arizona State faced adversity on and off the field when Dillingham arrived in 2023.

After winning eight games in 2021, the Sun Devils went 3-9 the following year while under investigation by the NCAA, a combination that led to the firing of Herm Edwards during his fifth season here.

Dillingham had success as Oregon’s offensive coordinator and brought the requisite enthusiasm of being a young — he was 32 at the time — first-time head coach returning to his alma mater. Despite rallying the community around the program, Dillingham fell into hard luck his first season in the desert.

The Sun Devils were decimated by injuries, particularly at quarterback, and never recovered, finishing 3-9 for the second straight season.

But Dillingham had the pieces in place.

He proved to be adept at finding the right players through the transfer portal, landing former Sacramento State running back Cam Skattebo two years ago and former Michigan State quarterback Sam Leavitt prior to this season. The hard-running Skattebo has been one of the nation’s best running backs and Leavitt has been a perfect fit for Arizona State’s offense, making good decisions while extending plays with his legs.

The portal success extends across Arizona State’s roster and Dillingham has sprinkled in solid recruiting classes while convincing key players to remain, a combination that’s meshed into a team that could crash the College Football Playoff if the pieces fall just right.

“We were a three-win team twice,” Dillingham said. “We were under NCAA sanctions. Most head coaches, to be brutally honest, get fired if you take a job under sanctions. You don’t survive. You’re hired to be fired. That’s the nature of the beast and right now we’re sitting here at 8-2, and I couldn’t be prouder.”

Dillingham’s vision for a better future, one the rest of the country didn’t see coming, is here and now.