ASU upholds legacy of Kush
Sun Devils bond over their mutual discomfort
CAMP TONTOZONA – We uphold traditions to honor those who came before us, and so it is with Arizona State football, maintaining a legacy started by the program’s godfather, Frank Kush.
Coach Kush started taking his guys to Payson for training camp in 1960, and today every Sun Devil worth his pitchfork knows the story of Camp Tontozona.
“There’s a lot of history, man,” sophomore defensive lineman Tyler Johnson said.
He described Mount Kush, the mementos left by previous teams and the notoriously spartan living conditions.
“You go up that hill … and you’ll see stuff from the 1980s and 1990s nailed to trees. Everything from footballs to pictures, and you’ll notice that you’re not the only person that’s had come here and go through this type of environment with your brothers.
“It’s really great just to get away from civilization. No cell service, nothing. You’re just with your guys, practicing the sport you love. It’s amazing.”
This camp is where the team bonds over mutual discomfort and one generation passes down the legends and myths to the next.
‘Inconvenience is a good thing’
There are no TVs or video games. Cellphones hardly work. And players have to sleep stacked on top of one another.
“They’re on triple bunks,” defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales said of a cabin packed solid with 33 guys.
Gonzales said the living conditions help players learn to “get comfortable in uncomfortable situations.”
It’s a life skill.
“You don’t worry. You don’t freak out. You can handle all of the hard things,” he said.
It might be inconvenient, but “inconvenience is a good thing,” Gonzales said.
In a lot of ways, inconvenience is the foundation of ASU’s program.
Decades ago, Kush forged a reputation as the quintessential hard-nosed, grizzled football coach.
He became known for stunts like kicking players off the team in the middle of practice and making them hitchhike back to Tempe or forcing them to climb a mountain if they jumped offsides or fumbled.
The results are hard to deny. Kush went 176-54-1 in 22 seasons. He went 7-1 in bowl games and wedged ASU into the top-10 rankings season after season, alongside traditional powers like Notre Dame, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
Sill, none of that old-school stuff would be allowed in the modern era.
ASU has found a way to acknowledge that without dismissing Kush’s legacy, entirely.
“I think tradition is super valuable … Times change, so you have to adapt in how you instill it,” Gonzales said. “But I think there’s a lot of advantages to doing things that have been successful.”
‘We want to be a part of this’
So, rather than make players scramble up a steep hillside, riddled with pine trees and scrub brush, they make it into a voluntary hike. Position groups go up together and reflect on the imprint they’d like to make.
“Just being able to go up there and see all the people that have been here in the past really just makes you want to leave your mark,” junior running back Eno Benjamin said.
“We grabbed a rock. We taped it up. We wrote our names on it. We want to be a part of this so that when people come back many, many years from now, they look back and they remember us and see us.”
These Sun Devils know they have to win.
Coach Herm Edwards has to validate the foundation he laid last season and make progress to keep silent all of the boo birds.
Gonzales needs to show that his 3-3-5 is no gimmick and that he can turn the defense from adequate to outstanding to remove any doubt that he should take over the program after Coach Herm decides to hang up his whistle.
The special assistant coaches — Danny White, Mike Bercovici, Kevin Mawae, Derek Hagan and Marvin Lewis — need to keep Benjamin, Cohl Cabral, Merlin Robertson, Darien Butler and Chase Lucas on track for their chances to play on Sundays to justify athletic director Ray Anderson’s vaunted “NFL model.”
But mostly, they need to do all this to honor the Sun Devils who came before them.
That’s the legacy of Camp Tontozona that should survive — winning through enduring.
It’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be. But to watching these guys get after it leaves the impression that they understand that.
“I tip my hat to Coach Kush,” Edwards said. “This was his vision … I think the setting of this is spectacular. There’s no doubt about that.”