LONDON - Arizona State is about to step onto one of the most famous stages in sports, and the setting alone makes Saturday’s Big 12 matchup with Kansas feel different.
Wembley Stadium, the place where Freddie Mercury once rocked the building and Madonna performed before 70,000-plus fans, will host ASU and Kansas at 9 a.m. MST. It’s a first-of-its-kind neutral-site game, and the first in England to feature two FBS teams.
The Sun Devils are coming off a massive atmosphere of their own after playing in front of more than 102,000 fans at Kyle Field last week. That ended in a 48-20 loss to then-No.
10 Texas A&M in College Station, but Wembley brings a different kind of challenge. The stadium seats 90,000 and figures to have more of a mixed crowd than a true college football one, with NFL jerseys, other college gear and a pocket of maroon and gold trying to make the place feel like home.
Kenny Dillingham knows exactly what kind of opportunity this is.
“I’m expecting a fun crowd, like an unbelievable stadium and an unbelievably fun crowd that’s excited to watch college football,” Dillingham said. “Any time you get to play in an iconic stadium, it’s special.”
The football part is only one layer of this trip. The logistics have been messy from the start.
Because the game is in Week 3 instead of being staged as a traditional Week 0 matchup, Arizona State had to go straight from College Station to London without heading back home first. Kansas also had to juggle travel, though the Jayhawks had an extra day to recover after their 38-21 loss to then-No.
23 Missouri on Sept. 11.
Dillingham made no secret of how awkward the setup has been.
“There’s no advantage from a football perspective,” Dillingham said. “Week 3 of a season to fly across the country to play a football game.
There’s zero positive from a football perspective. The only positive is our kids get an experience that I wasn’t going to rob them of.
“Does it hurt? Yeah, that’s not a positive for my personal career.
No way would I want our team to fly across the country, Week 3, to play this game. But this is an experience.”
Kansas coach Lance Leipold echoed the sense that this has been a heavy lift for everyone involved. The Jayhawks left for England on Tuesday and have had to manage the same unusual schedule that comes with an overseas game.
“It’s a huge undertaking,” Leipold told reporters Wednesday. “A lot of different people have made this happen. … Our rosters are a lot bigger than the NFL rosters, so there are just more things that are happening.”
He also brushed off the idea that his team has an edge, and suggested ASU may actually have one because of the timing.
“The game ended at close to 11 p.m., and they kicked off at 11 a.m., so I don’t know if it’s exactly as much as we want to make it out,” Leipold said. “I think they got the advantage maybe to come here and get acclimated. I don’t know.”
Dillingham, who has never coached overseas, reached out to NFL contacts for advice on how to handle the trip and the week leading into the game. The main message he got: get there quickly, especially after already playing on the road.
“I’ve reached out to a bunch of people, not just one, to get advice,” Dillingham said. “Most of the teams that we spoke to that were our side were just saying to get out there fast, especially if you have an away game before. (There’s) no point to fly home and then fly back out two days later … that was the kind of advice I got from people was get out there fast.”
Once the Sun Devils arrived in London, Dillingham went straight into work mode, spending nearly two full days in his hotel before finally heading out to begin the Kansas prep.
On the field, both teams bring some of the same issues into Wembley. Kansas played Missouri tough for a half before fading after halftime, much like ASU did against Texas A&M. The Jayhawks were tied 14-14 at the break before Missouri pulled away with a 24-7 second half.
Kansas sophomore quarterback Isaiah Marshall showed flashes in that game, especially when he was throwing on the move or escaping pressure. He also looked like a young quarterback at times, including on two interceptions.
That makes Arizona State’s task clear: keep Marshall contained in the pocket. The Sun Devils handled a similar assignment reasonably well against Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed last week, and Dillingham pointed to that experience as a useful piece of preparation.
“There’s a little bit of help from playing a guy who’s athletic, but we’ll face a lot of athletic guys this year,” Dillingham said of the experience his team got playing Reed. “That’s kind of what college football has gone to. It’s a lot of athletic guys back there.”
Arizona State is also trying to carry over the offensive progress it has made through the first two weeks, and the strongest connection so far has been between sophomore quarterback Cutter Boley and senior wide receiver Reed Harris. Against Texas A&M, the two hooked up for 189 yards and two touchdowns.
“Reed’s been awesome. He’s a worker,” ASU wide receivers coach Hines Ward said of Harris. “For me, it’s just about trying to help him be consistent, week in and week out.”
At 6-foot-5, Harris is coming off the kind of performance that can put a player on the national map, and now he gets a chance to do it again on an international stage. Dillingham said Harris’ effort stands out every day in practice.
“He goes full speed. He has one of the higher workloads in every single practice we’ve had.
We have to tell him, ‘hey, hey, hey,’” Dillingham said, motioning to calm down with his hand. “I think that shows up on game day with not just how he catches the football, but I think that shows up with his effort, with how he blocks, and I think it’s an all-inclusive reflection of him.”
Arizona State’s biggest issue against Texas A&M was turnovers. The Sun Devils gave the ball away on three straight possessions in the fourth quarter, a stretch that helped sink them.
That kind of volatility is part of what makes Saturday interesting. Both teams have shown enough offense to believe they can move the ball, but both have also flashed the kind of mistakes that can flip a game in a hurry. For the crowd at Wembley, that could mean plenty of action on a stage that has never hosted a matchup like this before.
“They’re very talented. They were very similar to us with second-half turnovers, especially for them, it was in the fourth quarter,” Leipold said of ASU’s performance against Texas A&M. “They played toe-to-toe with them.
“I’m sure they came out of it with a lot of confidence they can play with a lot of people in the country.”
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Now the focus shifts to Kansas, and Kenny Dillingham has made it clear the next step is less about style points than cleanliness. The Sun Devils showed they can move the ball and stand up to a ranked opponent, but the margin for error disappears when execution slips in all three phases, especially with a trip to London on the horizon. [Read more 🡒]