Arizona State is heading into its season opener with almost an entirely new starting lineup, and the biggest change is at quarterback. Kenny Dillingham said Kentucky transfer Cutter Boley will lead the Sun Devils against Morgan State on Sept. 5 at Mountain America Stadium, part of a roster reset that leaves the coach evaluating a team he says looks nothing like the one that finished last season.
The timing matters because Dillingham is now days from the first game of his fourth season, and the opener is the first real measure of how quickly all of that turnover can come together. Morgan State arrives after a 17-7 win over North Carolina A&T, but Dillingham made clear he is not spending his time studying everyone else. He said he does not focus on other people and would rather obsess over Arizona State, because rosters now change faster than they used to.
That is a sharp break from the old rhythm of college football, when a staff could more easily predict who would be lining up on the other side. Dillingham said the transfer portal and NIL have made turnover so fast that familiar depth charts are no longer a given. For Arizona State, that means Boley is not just taking over a position; he is stepping into a starting group that Dillingham described as nearly all new, with the Sun Devils trying to build chemistry almost from scratch before the first snap.
There is also a reason Dillingham sounds less sentimental about openers than some coaches might. His first game at Arizona State ended in a 24-21 win over Southern Utah on a Thursday night, but it came with a halftime haboob that stopped play for nearly three hours and kept the stadium from emptying until almost 2 a.m. Dillingham later called it a horrible performance, even with the victory, and said he still remembers thinking, “Holy Cow, could it have started any worse?” Jaden Rashada made his debut at quarterback that night as a true freshman on his birthday, and Troy Omeire caught a 3-yard touchdown in the closing seconds of the first half.
That first season still ended at 3-9, a reminder that one strange night does not define a program. But the next year Dillingham won a conference title and received a contract extension, which is why this opener matters beyond one date on the calendar. If Arizona State is going to look like a contender again, it will start with whether Boley and the rest of the new starters can turn a rebuilt lineup into something stable before Sept. 5 is over.
