ASU President Michael Crow is closely involved in athletics at ASU, attending press conferences for new hires like women’s basketball coach Molly Miller. (Photo by Emma Jeanson/Cronkite News)
PHOENIX – The sun shone brightly over Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, where an overwhelming sea of maroon and gold filled the stands. Students, faculty and fans of Arizona State University gathered to witness Sun Devil football’s historic season. The tension was palpable as they watched their team fall just short in a heart-wrenching 39-31 loss to Texas, a game that would define the season’s legacy for years to come.
ASU president Michael Crow, who was in the locker room postgame, was exceedingly pleased with the way the football team represented the university.
“I don’t think I’ve seen more emotion on the field, more pluck, more drive, more resilience, more grit, in any compressed moment in my entire life,” Crow said. “And the emotion, both during the game and after the game, about what it’s like to fight hard, try to win, almost win and then lose. I mean, this is what competitiveness is all about.
“And so it was a fantastically inspiring thing for me to see our football team compete at that level and then demonstrate the grit and the drive and the ambition for competitiveness that ASU represents.”
The “Cinderella” season in coach Kenny Dillingham’s second season in Tempe marks a return to a level of national prominence the program hasn’t seen since 1996, when Pat Tillman took the 11-1 Sun Devils to the Rose Bowl. Fresh off of spring practice, Dillingham and the Sun Devils are expecting to return between 16-18 starters in the fall and will be looking to make an even bigger leap in the national rankings next season.
However, the university represented by the Sun Devil football team in 2025 is not the same as it was 29 years ago thanks to Crow and his model of a “New American University.” Named the No. 1 university in innovation for 10 straight years, ASU continues to be a nationwide leader in many areas and, according to Crow, it all has to do with competition.
The university aims to compete with other institutions in research rankings, it wants to help the nation compete with China in critical technology areas, but it also wants to compete with schools like Texas on the football field.
“If you aspire to be all you can be, you have to have a point of comparison related to that, and you have to have goals and aspirations,” said Dr. James Rund, senior vice president for educational outreach and student services. “You want to measure your success. You want to measure your product, your progress. That’s true in a classroom as well as on a field or on a court or in a pool.”
The progress ASU has made since Crow’s inauguration has set the institute apart from not only its former self, but from most other universities nationwide.
But what is the role of athletics in the New American University? How does athletic competition relate to these other forms of competition that Crow preaches so frequently?
The New American University
Nine coaches out of the 26 sports programs at ASU were Sun Devils, including football coach Kenny Dillingham and hockey coach Greg Powers. (Photo courtesy of Sun Devil Athletics)
ASU adopted its charter in 2014, which serves as a representation of Crow’s model of the New American University — an idea focused on the development of a university that would change admissions and teaching methods in order to widen access to higher education. The university charter reads: “ASU is a comprehensive public research university, measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed; advancing research and discovery of public value; and assuming fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities it serves.”
According to Crow, the current state of higher education has taken a step away from its original intent. In his book Designing the New American University, which was published in 2015 and written alongside William Dabars, a senior research fellow for University Design and senior director of research for the New American University, he argues that the goal of a public university should not be to emulate elite private institutions or serve only a narrow slice of society.
Instead, he writes, a true public university must be a “comprehensive knowledge enterprise” – one that serves the full spectrum of society, embraces inclusivity over exclusivity and commits to the public good through innovation, research and accessibility.
“Even in his (Crow’s) inaugural address, when he spoke about New American University, in many respects he was talking about the return to the fundamental objective of what a great public university was supposed to be about,” Rund said.
Crow’s model of the New American University emphasizes access over exclusivity. ASU has a large and diverse student body, and this principle of inclusion extends to its athletic programs, represented by the 26 varsity sports offered on campus. This uncommon number of programs allows students who play an atypical sport like water polo, triathlon and beach volleyball the same opportunities that a football or basketball player might have.
“Many of the top D1 schools have fewer sports where they can put more money toward their top revenue sports,” said Dr. Chris Howard, executive vice president and chief operating officer of ASU. “New American University, we have a different role, a different approach to that.”
An unexpected competitive edge
Michael Crow and athletic director Graham Rossini, an ASU alumni, introduce women’s basketball head coach Molly Miller, who knows her way around the Valley after coaching Grand Canyon University for five years. (Photo by Emma Jeanson/Cronkite News)
After being predicted to finish last place in its inaugural season in the Big 12 conference, the Sun Devils forcefully took down Iowa State in the Big 12 Championship game, and granted themselves their first playoff berth since the CFP’s inception in 2014. ASU was awarded the No. 4 seed in the College Football Playoffs and a first-round bye.
Dillingham, a 2012 ASU graduate, was hired in November 2022, replacing Herm Edwards as the new head football coach. Dillingham was previously the offensive coordinator at Oregon, where he led a top five scoring offense in the nation, before heading back to his valley roots.
His transition to a struggling ASU program would not be an easy task to tackle. One report after his hiring said, “Dillingham will take over one of the most challenging jobs in college football.”
Dillingham joined a Sun Devil program that had recently been bombarded with NCAA violations regarding recruitment during the COVID-19 dead period in 2020. The results of the investigation included a ban from 2023 postseason games, and eventually led to both the firing of Edwards and the resignation of former athletic director Ray Anderson.
Dillingham flipped the switch in just his second year, turned Sun Devil football into an unexpected powerhouse and was named the 2024 Big 12 Coach of the Year.
As a Valley native, he’s proud of what he’s accomplished with the football team in such a short period of time.
“Just walking around the Valley, you can feel the energy about Arizona State,” Dillingham said. “When people see the pitchfork or Sparky, people get genuinely excited, and I think that was kind of the mission when we got here two and a half years ago … was to create that excitement back. That is what’s a joy to me is to see our guys be a part of this transition from the stadium 50% sold out to two field rushes.”
The season not only boosted team morale, ticket sales and the attention on ASU sports, but a successful year such as this benefits the university as a whole.
“We take immense pride in a special season like that, and its impact reaches well beyond the football field,” Crow said. “It helps the ASU brand and our message reaches homes all around the country, with literally millions of people associating ASU with excellence, grit, determination and innovation.”
Crow didn’t exaggerate when he said “millions of people,” either. The Peach Bowl garnered 17.3 million viewers, becoming the most-watched football game with a kickoff before 3 p.m. ET and the second-most watched college football game last season.
“Who wouldn’t want to get behind that grittiness?” Howard said, referencing Cam Skattebo, who scored two more touchdowns for the Sun Devils shortly after throwing up on the sidelines. “It kind of demonstrates the grittiness of the Sun Devil.”
Football wasn’t the only program to shine in its first year in the Big 12, either. Volleyball and both men and women’s swim and dive were also named Big 12 Champions in ASU’s first year in the conference.
ASU provides a multitude of opportunities for the institution to connect with people from all over the world, and athletics plays a huge part in doing so, especially now being in the Big 12 conference.
“Hockey gives us the Midwest to Canada and Eastern Europe. Lacrosse gives us the Mid Atlantic. Volleyball gets into South America. Baseball and Softball get us into Mexico,” athletic director Graham Rossini said. “There’s a unique value that all 26 of our sports bring to the conversation. And ultimately, we look at them as connection tools to the university.”
Rossini, who graduated from ASU in 2002, emphasizes how hiring from within provides a way for both coaches to connect with players and fans to connect with the team. Since the addition of Dillingham, nine coaches out of the 26 total ASU sports programs were Sun Devils.
“I do think there’s a great way for us to connect to supporters and fans when the coaches leading our programs have put their blood, sweat and tears into ASU,” Rossini said.
Hiring the right coaches and higher-up athletics personnel plays a huge part in athletic excellence, and having people who are in alignment with what ASU aims to accomplish is crucial.
“In any organization, you want people who are committed to your mission,” Rund said. “In our case, the charter. You want people to reflect the values and share the values that you have as an organization … And so having personnel, whether they’re faculty or they’re coaches, understand the value of that, the purpose of that, and be committed to that … that’s critically important to us being successful institutionally and athletically.”
Academia vs. athletics: One in the same
ASU football defeated Brigham Young University on Nov. 23, 2024, in a thriller that had Sun Devil fans storm the field early, then again when the final whistle blew. (Photo courtesy of Sun Devil Athletics)
Howard shares a deep connection to both athletics and academics. A distinguished alumni of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Howard won the Campbell Trophy, the nation’s highest academic award for a senior college football player. He also served as a member of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee from 2017-19 and joined the National Football Foundation Board of Directors in 2021.
“For a long time, in the United States, excellence on the gridiron and excellence in the lab have just been commensurate, because people are just attracted to the dynamism of a competitive place,” Howard said.
Seven of the 12 teams who played in last season’s College Football Playoffs are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU), which is a group of 71 of America’s leading research universities. Howard says the correlation is not uncommon among the nation.
“The proof is in the pudding,” Howard said. “Michigan, Washington, the teams I’m naming – Oregon – you could be talking about top research institutions or top athletic/football programs. They’re kind of one in the same.”
Universities that excel in the classroom are typically the ones excelling on the football field or basketball court, and the reason for that is because the best schools develop talent. Students want to come to institutions that will make them better, whether it’s academically or athletically.
“The university, fundamentally, is a talent development organization,” Rund said. “We do a lot of things: create new knowledge and do meaningful and important and use inspired research, etc. But as people think about what a great education ultimately should provide, It’s to help individuals realize their full potential.”
This notion of helping people develop their talent and realize their full potential is just as true of a classroom as it is an athletics department.
“We demonstrate excellence by demonstrating excellence on the gridiron,” Howard said.
That philosophy of athletics as a talent development engine shows up in more than just wins on the field. It influences how ASU builds its programs and secures the resources to keep them growing.
One part of that long-term investment in athletic excellence came when Rossini helped secure a 15-year naming rights partnership for Mountain America Stadium, which was a foundational move in his first year that symbolizes the department’s vision.
“We want to win championships. That’s obviously the byproduct of our work,” Rossini said. “But at our core, we look at athletics as a talent development organization, and so we need resources to hire great coaches and run a student-athlete experience that prepares young people for the next chapter of their life, and you need resources in order to do those things.”
The Sun Devils’ home turf itself reflects the university’s broader mission. Rather than expanding the stadium for aesthetics or capacity, ASU transformed it into a living laboratory for sustainability, aligning athletics with innovation and education.
Students from engineering, business and environmental programs have used the stadium to collect real-time data of fan behavior, energy usage and environmental impact, turning game days into research opportunities.
Under Michael Crow’s leadership, athletics at ASU isn’t just about winning games – it’s about leveraging the visibility and community power of sports to drive broader institutional goals: sustainability, innovation, inclusion and entrepreneurship.
Performance and Purpose
All these forms of competition within the university – athletic, academic and economic – are different expressions of a deeper dynamic: the pursuit of excellence, adaptability and societal impact. A university like ASU, under Crow’s model, aims to harness these competitive energies into a coherent mission, one that builds both individual opportunity and collective national strength.
As Dillingham put it, “Your football program is your front yard of your university.” And with the Sun Devils rising to new heights, it’s clear that the front yard is just the beginning. As ASU continues to redefine what it means to be a “New American University,” the horizon keeps expanding for both its student-athletes and academic pioneers.
“I think the most successful athletic departments moving forward are going to be the ones that are in alignment with the direction of the overall university,” Rossini said. “And our direction as a part of the New American University, as a part of this growing enterprise that is ASU is dynamic, ever evolving, changing with the times and leading by example. And so when athletics is able to operate more in alignment with the overall university approach, I think the sky’s the limit to what we can accomplish here.”
Athletics at ASU isn’t separate from its academic mission. It’s a reflection of it, a proving ground where the values of the New American University play out on a national stage.
