Kenny Dillingham has coached just one Big 12 game, and that’s all it took for the Arizona State head coach to realize that life on the road in this conference is just a bit different.
Last week, Dillingham’s Sun Devils traveled to Lubbock (TX) to take on Texas Tech and lost 30-22. Like most other venues in the Big 12, Jones AT&T Stadium is a tough environment to play in, let alone win.
The parity in the league is at an all-time high, and the home-team environment can be a great equalizer or advantage in every single game. The second-year ASU coach felt that first-hand last week.
“Every game could go either way,” Dillingham said of what it’s like in the Big 12. “It’s like you never know which direction… you think one team is going to win, then the other team wins and you’re like, ‘What the heck?’ Look at that score. Did you see that score? It’s the ultimate league of ‘Did you see that score?’
“One of the things – just playing one game at [Texas] Tech – is the home-field advantages in this league are real. They’re absolutely real. If you’re a team that doesn’t have a distinct home-field advantage, your football team is at a disadvantage in this league because there are real, real home-field advantages.”
Then, knowingly or unknowingly, Dillingham compared playing on the road in the Big 12 to what things were like in the Pac-12. As expected, the comparison was pretty one-sided.
“That environment we played at in [Texas] Tech was a real environment. It was loud. There were cowbells throughout the game. There were tortillas. It sounds comical, but that environment – they’re 18 to 22-year-olds. We gotta be able to respond to that environment better and keep our emotions lower with all of that. When the student section is behind your bench and they’re yelling at you and saying things… but you’re not used to playing in those environments all the time when you play at different games, you know, that we played in the past. Now, you’re in it.”
Arizona State will host Kansas in Week 6 and hopes to have a real home advantage in that game. They’re idle this week after getting out to a 3-1 start thus far.
