Arizona State was a big surprise debuting in the Big 12 with a conference championship and making the College Football Playoff after being picked to finish at the bottom of the 16-team league.

Kenny Dillingham, the 35-year-old coach now in his third season at his alma mater, bluntly told his Sun Devils they really didn’t do anything special last year.

“The reality is there’s been a lot of teams in college football who have done what we’ve done, who have won one year and then come back to reality,” Dillingham said. “What would be special would be to continue to build off of that. The real challenge was how do we not become what normal teams in our situation do, which is fall back to where we’ve always been.”

After a CFP quarterfinal loss in double overtime to now preseason No. 1 Texas,

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