TEMPE — Kenny Dillingham wants his Arizona State players to stay focused on winning games as external talk grows louder about him being a candidate for other jobs.
After all, it’s how he’s handling the noise about his candidacy.
The upcoming coaching carousel is shaping up to be a hectic one, with premier vacancies such as LSU, Penn State and Florida, as well as several other Power Four openings.
Bruce Feldman of The Athletic and Pete Nakos of On3 have both listed Dillingham as a potential Brian Kelly replacement at LSU, and he’s previously been mentioned as a candidate for Penn State.
“I find it nothing, to be honest. It’s useless,” Dillingham said Monday of whether he took mentions as flattery or distractions. “I told our guys today: We live in a reality show.
“If you get lost in people making you the reality show, this thing is going to be miserable for you as a player because it’s not all real. What’s real is what’s in our building. I am so singularly focused on what is in our building.”
Kenny Dillingham is getting named as a potential candidate for college football job openings at LSU, Penn State and Florida.
What'd he tell his Arizona State players about all that noise?
"I am so singularly focused on what is in our building. Nothing is real out there," he… pic.twitter.com/gdYhJ2PPCm
— Arizona Sports (@AZSports) October 27, 2025
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It’s worth noting that Dillingham’s contract was extended after last year’s Peach Bowl run to go through the Dec. 31, 2029, raising his base salary from $4.1 million to $5.8 million.
It includes a buyout that drops from $5 million to $4 million after Dec. 1, decreasing an additional $1 million each calendar year.
It’s also worth noting that buyouts willingly paid out by universities and their donors have included $54 million for Kelly to step aside at LSU and $49 million for ex-Penn State coach James Franklin.
Dillingham grew up with season tickets to ASU games, it’s his alma mater and it’s where his coaching broke through to the college ranks while working under former ASU offensive coordinator Mike Norvell, whose own job at Florida State is at risk.
Dillingham has also personally lobbied for large projects, such as the new covered practice facility that will be built next to Mountain America Stadium. He has talked about how much construction work has gone into his family’s roots living on the same block as him.
As Feldman noted in The Athletic, “whether he’d leave that just as he’s got things rolling might not be a given, even for a job as big as LSU.”
Three SEC coaches — Lane Kiffin of Ole Miss, Eli Drinkwitz of Missouri and Clark Lea of Vanderbilt — are considered frontrunners to change programs when parsing through national next-coach odds lists.
Jimbo Fisher and Urban Meyer have been mentioned as heavyweight coaches who could return to the sport, and other wild cards include Nebraska’s Matt Rhule, Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman and Iowa State’s Matt Campbell.
“Ricky Bobby[‘s dad] said it best: if you’re not first, you’re last in this thing,” Dillingham said of the volatility of college coaching. “When you are first, how do I stay first or what do I got to do to stay first? ‘Cause eventually you’re probably going to be last historically over time, and then the key is how do you just not bottom out?
“The goal is to create a standard where your valleys are higher than they’ve ever been. The highs are going to happen when they happen, right? How do you create a program that is when you’re at the low, it’s still pretty dang good. When you’re not exceeding or hitting expectations, it’s still pretty gang good.”
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