Despite being 18-point underdogs, Arizona State etched its name in program history with a 20-7 upset of the USC Trojans in 1978. (Photo courtesy of ASU)
Larry Kentera, a former Arizona State football player, served as the defensive coordinator during a 1978 victory over the USC Trojans in one of the team’s finest moments. (Photo by Kendall Flynn/Cronkite News)
TEMPE – As Arizona State looks to earn its first Big 12 win at home against Kansas University on Saturday, the Sun Devils could benefit from a look at the program’s past and its first Pac-10 win and historic upset in 1978 against USC.
The Sun Devils had moved from the Western Atlantic Conference and were set to join the Pac-8, helping expand it to the Pac-10 for the 1978 season. Like the 2024 Sun Devils squad, the 1978 team lost its first conference game on the road to Washington State at 51-26.
While ASU’s Sept. 21 loss to Texas Tech in its Big 12 debut was more competitive at 30-22, losing in the season’s first conference game and as a new member can be daunting. Former senior defensive lineman for Arizona State Al Harris remembered this feeling all too well.
“Our first Pac-10 game, our inaugural game in the conference, we played at Washington State,” Harris said. “They beat the brakes off of us. I want to say they put up over 50 points. I mean, they killed us.”
Harris remembered the game vividly because he felt responsible for the loss as a senior and leading defensive player.
“I was the best player on the team, and that was probably the worst game I played in the four years that I was at Arizona State,” Harris said. “As a leader, I felt like I had let the team down.”
After the loss to Washington State on Sept. 23, 1978, the Sun Devils rebounded to gain nonconference wins against Northwestern and UTEP but still wanted to pick up the pace for their Oct. 14 game against No. 2 USC, and it started with changing their mindset.
“We expected to beat USC; we weren’t hoping to beat them. We were expecting,” Harris said. ”We didn’t listen to any of the noise. We were at least 18-point underdogs, might have been worse than that.”
Little did they know then that their confidence made the win against the Trojans possible. ASU completed one of the biggest upsets in program history with a 20-7 win against USC as its defense held off one of the top college offenses in the country.
That same year, USC went on to share the national championship with Alabama, finishing No. 1 in one national poll while the Crimson Tide was No. 1 in another. USC’s only loss came against the Sun Devils, who kept the Trojans from a 13-0 record.
Going into the game against USC, many fans and teams didn’t realize Arizona State’s talent. Harris said the determination to showcase the team’s skills and extra motivation from players previously rejected by USC’s football program propelled them to a win.
At his Phoenix home, Larry Kentera’s memorabilia room is a tribute to his coaching career, featuring awards, trophies, signed footballs, and newspaper clippings. (Photo by Kendall Flynn/Cronkite News)
“It just meant so much because that was a level I always wanted to play at. I wanted to go to USC. Actually, I was one of the kids that USC didn’t take,” Harris said. “We had a bunch of kids on our defense that USC said, ‘Oh, we don’t need you.’ We got those. So when we were playing against them, we were extra sky high because we’re like, “Okay, you rejected us. We’re going to show you.’”
Going into that game, Harris felt a “good nervousness” about facing the Trojans. However, this feeling came from Sun Devils defensive coordinator Larry Kentera, who challenged him the week before the game.
“The meeting that Monday morning, going into the week of USC, he said in front of the whole defense, he said, ‘We’re going to win or lose this game because of Al Harris.’ Now, he hadn’t told me that,” Harris laughed. “I just found out with everybody else, and I’m looking around like, what?”
Kentera, an ASU graduate who played on the team from 1947-49, coached the Sun Devils on defense for 13 years. Relying on his expertise and eye for elite-level athletes, he knew the right buttons to push to challenge Harris to bring ASU the win.
“That takes a lot of pressure, telling him, ‘I’m going to put you against their best. I’m going to find out how good you are. You’re supposed to be an all-American. We’re going to find out,’” Kentera said. “See, I’m talking this way to him. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a young man, and he did. He did what he was called to do. He did it, and he did an exceptional job.”
Kentera’s defensive scheme focused on covering the USC tight end James Hunter and assigned Harris to block the run game through him the whole game. Harris knew Hunter couldn’t block him, and their strategy worked.
Later in life, Harris spoke to his then-Chicago Bears teammate, Keith Van Horne, an offensive lineman who played for USC during the 1978 game, and recalled how well Kenteras defensive tactics worked.
“(Horne) said that was the first time that the coach took the tight end out of the game because he was so disgusted with the tight end because he couldn’t block me,” said Harris, who earned the first unanimous All-American selection in Arizona State history after the season. “Keith was like, ‘I don’t know why he took him out. He’s going against an All-American.’”
Harris mostly remembers the 71,138 fans – the student section remained standing from start to finish – cheering throughout the game. This season’s Sun Devils can hope for a crowd that can match that energy Saturday after the season opener drew the second-most student fans in program history, 13,698.
In recognition of his coaching legacy from 1966 to 1978, Larry Kentera was inducted into the Arizona State Football Hall of Fame in 2012. (Photo by Kendall Flynn/Cronkite News)
Harris and Kentera recalled the fourth quarter of the game against USC as ASU approached a 20-0 lead. With 30 seconds left, another coach told Kentera to put in another senior defensive back because he had played well at practice that week.
“(USC) threw the ball right where he was to the receiver, and the other team scored the touchdown, which gave them six points, and that’s the only touchdown they had in that game with the team as good as they were,” Kentera said.
Fans nervously cheered throughout the fourth quarter, hoping that ASU would complete the upset, Harris said.
“Then it got to a point in the fourth quarter where they saw we were in control, and we knew we were in control, and USC knew we were in control, Harris said. “And so then it got louder.”
Harris, who played with the Bears for 11 years, competed in multiple NFL and college stadiums, but none of those game atmospheres compared to this moment.
“That was the loudest stadium I’ve ever played in, in my life, college or pro,” Harris said. “It got so loud that my helmet literally was vibrating on my head. We had to kind of like walk up to each other’s helmet and talk into the earpiece, the hole on the side, or hand signal because we couldn’t hear each other. It wasn’t a cheer; it sounded more like the roaring of an ocean.”
Kentera said that he doesn’t remember that aspect of the game as a coach because he was focused on winning and the defensive performance. However, everyone tells him it was the loudest that stadium has ever been for an Arizona State football game.
Arizona State’s win against USC reigns not only in the school’s history books but also in Kentera’s. He has a room dedicated to football and his time as a coach in his home, and it was the highlight of the year. He says he wouldn’t want to give away his success as a coach.
“I’ve had a lot of great players. We’ve had a lot of great teams. We had national ranking No. 2 in 1975,” Kentera said. “I just had an experience here, and it was great coming back to my alma mater and being able to experience all these phases.”
Compared to the 1978 team, who were 4-1 leading into the USC game, Arizona State football’s record this season closely resembles the past at 3-1 – the program’s best start to the season in years.
Behind their first SEC opponent win, the Sun Devils were also 3-0 for the first time since 2019 and hope for continued historic fan turnout. Even with early success, their season is just starting, and the future is unknown.
Whether the Sun Devils look to the USC upset of 1978 for inspiration or motivation, they need to lean on their stars, especially between the duo of redshirt freshman quarterback Sam Leavitt and senior running back Cam Skattebo.
Will Arizona State follow in the footsteps of the 1978 Sun Devils and earn its first Big 12 win at home against Kansas? Kentera has advice for his former team to stay on track and continue to grow.
“You got to play good football to win football games,” Kentera said. ”That doesn’t mean a difference in who you play, whether it’s a so-called mediocre team, a good team or whatever it is. You got to have the confidence.”