Heisman winner and ESPN “College GameDay” analyst Desmond Howard had a mea culpa and legendary former coach Nick Saban talked ASU coach Kenny Dillingham from Ohio Stadium on the network’s pregame show Saturday.
ASU is finally worth talking about as the Sun Devils enter Saturday’s matchup against BYU with Big 12 title hopes in mind.
Arizona State football fans are well aware of second-year coach Kenny Dillingham’s catch phrases, perhaps the most prominent being “Activate the Valley.”
On ESPN’s “College GameDay” Saturday — hours before ASU’s homecoming game — the crew brought the phrase to a national audience.
After retiring from Alabama after 17 years and seven national championships, Saban joined “College GameDay” this year and compared the Alabama and Arizona State programs Saturday.
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“Arizona State has something going for it …” Saban said from the ESPN set before the Indiana-Ohio State game.
“When your team buys into something like Coach Dillingham said, ‘Activate the Valley’ … that reminds me of our team last year,” Saban said, adding his Crimson Tide were “getting killed” every week, setting up his speech.
“I just said, ‘We need to let all naysayers know.'”
Saban downplayed the gravity of the quote but said: “That became a rallying cry. ‘Activate the Valley’ is kinda their rallying cry, and when teams come in … you never know what can happen.”
Chris Fowler talked about Sun Devils quarterback Sam Leavitt’s lack of recruiting interest from BYU — and from Arizona State. Leavitt began his college career at Michigan State but left for ASU this past offseason.
After hashing out the Big 12 title scenarios, last week’s ASU “GameDay” enemy, Howard, owned up to Arizona State’s visibility and intimated the flood of messages from Sun Devils supporters.
“Last week,” Howard said, “when we did the picks, I jokingly talked about ‘Why are we picking Arizona State versus Kansas State?’ Boy did I find out how great Arizona State is … they had two losses but they were off everybody’s radar.”
Howard said he looked more closely at the Sun Devils and concluded “they can really contend” for the conference title.
He underscored the production in recent weeks from wide receiver Jordyn Tyson and said he’s now “buying in” to the ASU program.
As for the game predictions, all of the analysts — including Howard — picked ASU over BYU.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: BYU and ASU football: ESPN’s GameDay lifts ‘Activate the Valley’
