Sun Devils

Mountain America Stadium sits in Tempe with room for 53,599 now, well down from the 74,865 it could hold in 1989; the seating bowl was cut back and rebuilt between 2018 and 2019, and Sun Devils football has played there since the ground first opened under its old name, Sun Devil Stadium.

Frederick M. Irish took charge of the program from 1896, the year Arizona State counts as its starting point. Nobody at Arizona State talks about that stretch without mentioning Frank Kush, who coached from 1958 to 1979 and left with a record of 176 wins, 54 losses and a tie, five WAC titles in a row among them along with two unbeaten seasons.

The Sun Devils have never claimed a national championship, but 1975 comes closest to an argument for one: a 12–0 season that ended with a 17–14 win over Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl and a number two ranking in the AP poll. The Rose Bowl win over Michigan in January 1987, 28–17, carried its own weight too, since it delivered the school's first Pac-10 title.

Pat Tillman played defensive back here between 1997 and 1999, one name among a long line of players who went on to the NFL, and the roster over the decades has sent out names from Charley Taylor to Terrell Suggs to Brandon Aiyuk. The Territorial Cup against Arizona is the fixture that matters most on the calendar, billed as the oldest rivalry trophy in college football.

Arizona State moved into the Big 12 in 2024 after years in the Pac-12 and its predecessor conferences, and the first season in the new league ended with a conference title — the program's eighteenth altogether, following seven in the Border Conference and seven more in the WAC.