College football expert picks Arizona State over Utah as upset of the week
Has Arizona State football arrived?
Kenny Dillingham thinks Friday's Big 12 game vs. No. 16 Utah (4-1, 1-1) will be very revealing in terms of the progress his program has made since he took over as head coach in November 2022.
Dillingham has been effusive in his praise for Utah coach Kyle Whittingham and how he has built his program around "a culture of toughness" - and he has made it clear he wants to build his ASU football program in a similar way.
"They never won recruiting. Up until this last few years, they never 'won recruiting.' They were never in the limelight," said Dillingham in his Monday press conference. "They signed the guys that they thought were the best players that fit their team. And then they repeated it. They didn't chase guys. They just trusted what they believed they wanted. They didn't care what other people thought, and they signed those guys and they built a culture of toughness."
To beat Utah, Dillingham knows the Sun Devils will have to be tougher and more physical than their opponent.
"You really can't force a team like this out of their element unless you match their toughness and physicality," said Dillingham.
Arizona State (4-1, 1-1) enters the game as 4.5-point underdogs, although the line continues to move, largely because of the uncertainty around the status of seventh-year Utah QB Cam Rising. The Sun Devils lost to the Utes 55-3 last year and have not beaten a ranked opponent in Dillingham's tenure.
Count CBS Sports' Jerry Palm among the pundits who believe the Sun Devils have arrived. In his weekly college football picks, Palm picked Arizona State over Utah as his upset of the week.
Here's what Palm wrote: "Utah hits the road for the third time in four games and may yet again be without starting QB Cam Rising. Arizona State is off to a 4-1 start but is lacking an eye-catching win. Even if Rising does not play, this would still qualify as a quality win. I like the Sun Devils in the desert."
If the Sun Devils can pull off the upset they'll be one game closer to bowl eligibility - and will have clearly arrived just 18 games into Dillingham's tenure.
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Ben Sherman has been covering the sports world for most of his journalism career, including 17 years with The Oregonian/OregonLive. One of his favorite memories was covering the 1999 Fiesta Bowl - the first BCS National Championship Game - at Sun Devil Stadium.