Arizona State’s trip to Kyle Field is a road game on paper, but for a chunk of the roster it looks a lot more like a return trip home.
That’s the reality ASU is carrying into Saturday’s matchup with No. 10 Texas A&M, where the Sun Devils are preparing for the kind of crowd noise that can swallow a team whole.
The school even turned practice into a dress rehearsal, blasting crowd sound through six-foot-tall speakers. And all week, the questions kept coming about how ASU would handle the expected six-figure crowd.
For the East Texas players on the roster, though, the outside chatter barely registers.
"[ASU's East Texas natives] don't really have to get up to play this game, coming up as a guy from Texas, you always hear about the history of Texas A&M," assistant head coach Bryan Carrington said. "Those guys are excited about this opportunity. For them to have an opportunity to play [at Kyle Field] is awesome for these guys to get that experience."
Carrington, a Houston native, helped build ASU’s Texas2Tempe recruiting push, which brought a wave of Texas talent to Tempe. In all, the Sun Devils have 26 Texans on the roster, and about half of them come from eastern or southeastern Texas - close enough to College Station that Saturday’s game functions as a homecoming for plenty of them.
That list includes senior defensive tackle C.J. Fite, sixth-year defensive end Clayton Smith, sixth-year safety Lyrik Rawls and senior defensive back Montana Warren. Those four make up ASU’s East Texas group, and they’ve already left their mark inside the program.
"Every single East Texas that we signed have all served on our leadership council," Dillingham said. "We are four-for-four with East Texas kids on our leadership council. That's a pretty cool success rate for East Texas right now."
The Texans on ASU’s roster won’t just be playing in front of family and friends. They’ll also be part of a game that gives the Sun Devils a chance to keep building the recruiting relationships that have already helped produce current contributors and former standouts Keith Abney and Jordyn Tyson.
And there’s more than sentiment attached to it. This is the first of two trips to Texas for ASU in 2026, and it comes with a clear football goal attached: the Sun Devils are trying to land their first top-10 road win since October 2015.
That mission also ties back to last season’s loss at Mississippi State, a game that exposed ASU in an SEC road environment. Dillingham’s team entered that matchup at No. 11 after a Big 12 championship, with a quarterback getting Heisman buzz and the Sun Devils sitting second in the Big 12 in conference championship odds. Mississippi State knocked them back early and finished the job in the final minute, and ASU never fully recovered despite three straight wins afterward - all against Texas schools - before injuries and a lack of hunger caught up to the roster down the stretch.
This version of the Sun Devils looks different. Dillingham brought in 40-plus newcomers in the offseason, including several Texas products such as Rawls. Now ASU walks into a massive environment as a hunter, not the hunted, with a chance to make a statement that reaches beyond Saturday night.
"This is why you play college football," Dillingham said. "You want to play in environments that are fun.
You want that…this environment will be unbelievable, hundreds of thousands of fans watching you play. And the best part is, none of it matters.
Go play your game and focus on yourself."
For Dillingham, games in Texas are bigger than just one night. They’re part of the larger effort to keep ASU visible in one of the country’s richest recruiting grounds.
"It's awesome," Dillingham said. "Anytime we can get back into Texas to play a game, and hopefully play those games well, it's a positive to build our brand to be in that state and be seen by the coaches and the players that we recruit. I love playing in Texas."
In Other News...
Sam Leavitt Faces An Early Big 12 Test Arizona State Fans Should Track
Week 1 gave Big 12 quarterbacks a pretty favorable start, with most of them working against Group of Six or FCS defenses rather than the kind of fronts that expose real issues. For Arizona State fans, that makes the early conversation around Sam Leavitt especially worth watching, because the league-wide sample still says more about how these passers handled the moment than how theyll hold up when the schedule tightens.
Week 2 should tell a much clearer story, as several of the conferences top quarterbacks are headed into matchups against Power Four defenses. Leavitt is part of that group Arizona State supporters need to keep an eye on, because the first real test in league play can quickly separate a clean opening act from something more revealing about what the Sun Devils have at quarterback. [Read more 🡒]