There’s a line in the song “Texas” by country singer John Rich that goes a little something like this:
You can take the boy out of Texas
But you can't take Texas outta the boy
― John Rich – Texas
If there were any question about how ASU football head coach Todd Graham feels about his home state, all one would need to do is simply look at the Sun Devil roster and find 16 names with one thing in common.
Graham hails from Mesquite, Texas, a Dallas suburb with a population of 143,484 — the 20th most-populous city in the Lone Star state.
The Sun Devils (2-0) will make their third regular season trip to Texas in four years, and play two Texas schools for the first time since 1990 — when ASU opened its season with Baylor at home and ended with with the Coca-Cola Classic against Houston in Tokyo.
“Texas is our third-largest alumni base,” Graham said. “Obviously, that is my home state, we recruit there and we have a lot of current players from that state so that’s why we like to play there.”
His recruiting footprint in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is impressive — Dallas native Lloyd Carrington (now with the Washington Redskins) followed Graham from Pittsburgh to Tempe in 2013. Redshirt junior wide receiver Cameron Smith (Coppell, Texas) is one of several players from the area known colloquially as the "Metroplex" on this year’s roster.
“It is hard to recruit in a place that we don’t play,” Graham said. “We get great support when we play there, and we have great turnouts. We need all of our Texas alumni to come out in force for this San Antonio game. Texas is a very significant area for us to recruit.”
Indeed. And it’s why the Sun Devils played in Dallas against Notre Dame in 2013 and in Houston against Texas A&M in 2015. Beating Duke in the 2014 Sun Bowl in El Paso didn’t hurt either.
In Graham’s earliest days at the helm of the ASU football program, junior college product Marion Grice laid the groundwork for a southeast Texas pipeline. The Houston native’s final season at ASU in 2012 was senior kicker Zane Gonzalez’s first as a Sun Devil.
Shortly thereafter, the third-best pro-style quarterback prospect in Texas committed to ASU after former offensive coordinator Mike Norvell visited freshman Dillon Sterling-Cole in his Houston home.
Sterling-Cole turned down offers from TCU, Texas A&M and Houston to sign with the Sun Devils.
"Being in the state of Texas, there's the population of Dallas, San Antonio and especially Houston," Graham said. "There's a lot of players to go around, and a lot of players that want to stay in-state."
The success ASU has had in expanding its competitive territory, in arguably the deepest state for football talent, is due at least somewhat to Graham's Texas pedigree.
As the head coach of Allen High School from 1995 to 2000, Graham built up the Eagles into a national powerhouse. In his final season, Allen went 9-3 and beat four of the top 10 teams in the state.
Six years later, Graham accepted his first and only college coaching job in Texas with the Rice Owls, leading them to a 7-6 season in his one year with the program.
Overall, ASU is 17-2 in games played in the state of Texas. Even though both of those losses have come in Graham's tenure, don't expect the Sun Devils to give up competing deep in the heart of Texas.
"We've done well," Graham said. "We have a lot of coaches with ties there and those relationships help us. It's very important to play there and definitely helps us in recruiting."
Reach the reporter at smodrich@asu.edu or follow @StefanJModrich on Twitter.
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