For Arizona State, keeping Kenny Dillingham wasn't about sentiment—it was about the $11 million staff pool
There was a moment during his December 13 press conference where Kenny Dillingham just stopped talking. For a full 30 seconds, the room went dead silent while he tried to swallow the lump in his throat. In this profession, silence usually means one of two things: you’re out of plays, or the weight of the job has finally hit you square in the chest.
He talked about how much he loved the place. It made for good TV. But emotion doesn't block defensive ends, and it doesn't recruit Texas. Contracts do.
On Saturday, the other shoe dropped. Dillingham isn't going to Michigan to replace Sherrone Moore. He reportedly agreed to an extension to stay at Arizona State that could span 10 years and average $7.5 million annually. But if you look closely at the numbers reported by ESPN’s Pete Thamel, the head coach's salary isn't the stat that matters.
The real number is $11 million.
The Cost of Doing Business
That $11 million figure is the reported salary pool for Dillingham's assistant coaches. That puts the Sun Devils near the top of the Big 12 food chain.
For a guy like me who’s spent decades staring at budget spreadsheets and trying to convince a school board that we need a second strength coach, that number screams louder than the retention of the head man. It means Arizona State is done trying to win on the margins. You can hire a brilliant young offensive mind like Dillingham, but if you surround him with underpaid assistants who are looking for the next lifeboat, the program eventually capsizes.
Michigan offered prestige and the kind of resources that usually pull a 35-year-old coach out of his alma mater. By staying, Dillingham didn't just choose "home." He leveraged the threat of Ann Arbor to force Tempe to modernize its operations.
The Grind of 2025
To understand why Michigan wanted him, you have to look past the 22-19 career record. You have to look at the tape from this past season.
The Sun Devils went 8-4 in 2025. On paper, that looks like a step back from their 11-3 playoff run in 2024. In reality, it was a better coaching job. Dillingham lost his starting quarterback, Sam Leavitt, for five games.
When your QB1 goes down, the playbook shrinks. The practice reps get ugly. The margin for error vanishes. To drag a team to eight wins in a Power 4 conference with a backup signal-caller requires a level of schematic adjustment that most young coaches don't have in their bag yet. That grind is what separates the play-callers from the program-builders.
Clearing the Deck for the Sun Bowl
There is a practical timeline here, too. Arizona State has a date with Duke in the Sun Bowl on December 31.
Nothing kills bowl prep faster than a coaching search. I’ve seen it happen. The assistants are on their phones in the hallway checking their agents' texts instead of breaking down game film. The players are reading Twitter between reps. The focus evaporates.
By locking this down on December 20, Dillingham put the rumors in the ground. The Michigan job, vacant since December 10, was a cloud hanging over every practice rep in Tempe. Now, the staff can actually go to work.
Kenny Dillingham is staying home. That’s the headline the fans will cheer. But the reality is that Arizona State just bought him the tools to renovate the house.