Arizona State's Kenny Dillingham talks Big 12 competitiveness, mentions Rich Rodriguez's impact

Dominion Post

3 days ago

MORGANTOWN — The SEC meetings started off last week, and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey made his opinions heard about the current state of the College Football Playoff and how his conference wasn't getting the respect it deserved for how difficult the schedule is.
Sankey indirectly took shots at the Big 12 and ACC without both conferences being able to retaliate, but later in the same week, the Big 12 had their meetings. Big 12 coaches met together to discuss the transfer portal, and more importantly, the future of how the national champions will be crowned each year.
Defending Big 12 champion coach of Arizona State, Kenny Dillingham, took the podium with Kansas coach Lance Leipold to prove the conference is competitive.
Dillingham's argument centered around the caliber of coaches in the conference. There are a lot of notable coaches, who've had historic careers, like TCU's Sonny Dykes, Colorado's Deion Sanders and Oklahoma State's Mike Gundy. Dillingham didn't mention those names and focused on the newest coach to the Big 12 this season, West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez.
'This league is so competitive,' Dillingham said. 'How many guys in our league have won a national championship? It's unbelievable. When you look at the [Leipold] sitting to my right, you look across, and it's Rich Rodriguez. That's a guy who could go into the Hall of Fame. He changed the entire game of how to play offensive football for an era. Our league is so competitive because I think the coaches in the league are phenomenal. I think we have one of the best-coached leagues out there.'
The competitiveness of the Big 12 hasn't captured the eyes of the committee in the same way as the bigger conferences like the SEC and Big Ten, which helps Sankey's argument. However, the Big 12 is more competitive in some ways compared to the Big Ten. The Big Ten is top-heavy with teams that roll a lot of the weaker ones like, Penn State, Ohio State and Oregon. Whereas last year, the Big 12 had seven teams that were one game out of making the conference championship. Within the conference, the Big 12 is pretty competitive.
Outside of the conference, the story changes. The Big 12 had just one team make the playoff, Dillingham's Sun Devils, and they were knocked out in the first round by the SEC's Texas. Dillingham agreed that maybe they were seeded too high, and welcomed the new seeding change that gives byes to the best four teams.
'It was a great change,' Dillingham said. ' Even though it would have negatively affected us last year. We lost two games going into it, so I think that would have been the right thing to do. I'm about, you should get what you earned that season. Last season, maybe we didn't earn the right to be the fourth seed. Maybe we earned the right to be the eighth seed. We finished ninth, 12th, whatever that was. I believe you earn your way to those seeds.'
Dillingham liked the idea of the proposed five-plus-11 model that has five automatic qualifiers and then 11 at-large teams. Dillingham said he didn't care if there were more teams added, either.
'I really don't care,' Dillingham said. 'It's football. Football is fun. Sometimes we lose focus, and everybody focuses on the negative of college football and the negative of what all these things create. They don't focus on the positive. They don't focus on the fact that the experience our guys went through was one of the best experiences they'll ever have in their lives. It's just something they'll remember forever… If we add teams, it's an opportunity for those guys to be a part of something that they'll remember forever.'
From the short 15 minutes the media received of Dillingham and Leipold, it sounded like they don't care about what happens to the College Football Playoff. They didn't complain or request a change to the system.
All the Big 12 coaches want is to play football and for the games to be close.
'We just want competitiveness,' Dillingham said. 'We want the fact that you play games every year, and who knows who the best teams are going to be every year. I think that was more of the conversation of automatic qualifiers versus whether we just want to see the best teams every year. I think the coaches in our league, our ADs, just want the best teams. Whoever those best teams are in college football that year, let's have the best teams go for a championship.'