Best quotes from ASU coach Kenny Dillingham
Arizona State football coach Kenny Dillingham is never short on words. He is one of very few coaches that meets with the media every day after practice. Here are some of his better takes from the last month:
On the move of ASU from the Pac-12 to Big 12
"There are two sides. I have the fan in me that is like, I grew up in the Pac, the rivalries, the traditions. That's the fan in me. The coach in me who came in here to do a job and get this place to where I know it can go, is excited and thrilled because I know this was by far the best thing for Arizona State. So there are two sides. When I go home at night it's a little sad. The 18 hours I'm here I'm pretty fired up."
On dealing with obstacles
"I’m a card player. So I play the hand that is dealt. If I’m playing spades and I have no spades in hand I’m going to bid one. So you play the hand that’s dealt and you play to the best of your ability and if you continue to play the hand that is dealt to the best of you ability, eventually you’re going to get dealt a good hand."
After what Dillingham deemed was not a great practice
“Too much complaining, too much complaining. Good teams don’t complain. Good teams just go whoop the person’s butt in front of them. There’s no need to complain, there’s no need to argue. You just go whoop somebody’s ass. “S--t teams worry about things they can’t control. Good teams worry about things they can control.”
On challenging his team to get in better shape
“We put in different cadence variations. And then instead of doing a fourplay rack, we did an eight-play rack. So we put in two different types of adversity in the same period. We put in the mental adversity of new cadences (that) are hard. Ask any tempo spread offense. It’s hard to show on one, on two, on three cadences when you put all those in
on one day and then make them go eight plays. Fatigue makes cowards of us all. I think that’s what it was today, is we
challenged them. I knew it was gonna be difficult, but we gotta get in better football shape and we gotta be more mentally tough as a football team, and that starts with myself. I gotta demand that.”
After a particularly bad day for his offense
“Just on offense, we gotta have more passion. We gotta have passion. If you don’t have passion, if it doesn’t piss you off if you don’t have a good day, if you don’t win a period, if you don’t do it right, if it doesn’t frustrate you, something is wrong. You gotta learn how to channel that passion, channel it and go compete.
“Defensively, we have the passion. Golly, we have the passion. Now we gotta be able to channel that passion when adversity hits and lock back in because on defense right now we have so much passion when adversity hits, adversity hits, adversity hits, that’s when we're making our [missed assignments]. Calm down, channel it. Offensively we’ve got to have it. You can’t channel something you don’t have. Right now we don’t have it, and we have no chance to be a good offense if we don’t have it. Zero, none, absolutely a negative chance of being a good offense if we don’t have passion.”
After dismissing two players from the team
"The football stuff, that’s great. There’s a lot of really good football players out there, there’s a lot of great football players. I want good people in this program to build a culture that we can be proud of. It’s very very simple. Culture wins. You’re either going to practice how we practice, live how we live, be a good person, compete, say yes sir or no sir, open doors for people, be genuinely a good person and do things, or you’re not. It’s really not hard to be a good person."
"When I say we, I mean myself, our staff, the alumni, the Valley. Everybody that watches us play will go, man, that’s somebody I’d let babysit my daughter and that player plays his guts out. He plays with a passion. Watch that kid play the game. That’s what I want to see people play and say. I want people to say about our football team is how hard they play, how they passionate they play, but good of people they are.”