(Photo By: Marina Williams/ WCSN)
TEMPE – From his own 30-yard line on third-and-15, Utah redshirt senior quarterback Cam Rising was searching for any form of salvation. His No.16 ranked squad was down eight with under two minutes to play against unranked Arizona State in Tempe. Teetering on the edge of defeat he fired to his left hoping to reach his receiver’s hands.
It had been a long journey for ASU to get to this point. After nearly three seasons of being in a near-perpetual state of failure in which the team had won only three games in both of the past two seasons, there was hope. Up eight only needing only the punctuation on a different win of what has quickly become a program-defining season.
It was only fitting one of ASU’s longest-tenured players – and one of the unsung heroes who had witnessed it all – provided that exclamation. Redshirt senior linebacker Caleb McCullough jumped the route, bobbling the ball three times before securing the game-sealing interception.
Bedlam ensued.
“He was here when all the bad things were happening,” ASU head coach Kenny Dillingham said. “He was here for the three and nine (2022 season). I show up and tell him, ‘Just stay, just stay,’ He’s here again. We’re three and nine (in 2023), and we suck. Again, ‘just stay, just stay.’ He’s one of the few people who stayed, and for him to make that play is awesome.”
Pandemonium was reigning amongst a rapidly growing throng of students on the field of Mountain America Stadium. The Tempe night sky was bursting with the cheers of unbridled elation at what had just unfolded. ESPN was attempting to conduct a post-game interview with Arizona State (5-1, 2-1) head football coach Kenny Dillingham following ASU’s (5-1, 2-1) upset 27-19 win against the Utes (4-2, 2-2). It was a futile attempt.
After one question, millions of viewers at home were graced with the 25 seconds of him screaming with a mass of students behind him. They were celebrating the rebirth of a program. In McCullough’s time at ASU, the Sun Devils (5-1, 2-1) have undergone a head coaching change, NCAA violations and eventual sanctions, and a mass exodus and upheaval of roster personnel. Their game-winning linebacker had been one of five players that had persevered through it all.
McCullough joined the program in 2020 and saw every dark day in Tempe. Now the Sun Devils revel in the victory that has put them at 5-1 for the first time in three seasons and firmly in position to compete with their conference’s elite. Since Dillingham took over in 2022 the oyster has been completely defaced and reassembled it. The Oxnard, Calif., native never gave up on the vision.
The second of two picks capped of an incandescent day for McCullough and allowed him to live in the spotlight for a little bit. Considering he had been a backup linebacker all season not many would have seen him being the fulcrum point for the biggest win of the year.
He saw it though.
“Before the game, I kind of visualize things,” McCullough said. “(I visualize) Making plays and things that I’m gonna do. So when they happen, I’m not too surprised.”
The game-winning movement wasn’t a singular moment of aptitude for the long-time Sun Devil. Late in the second quarter Utah was driving attempting to reclaim the lead after having gone down 13-6 to ASU the drive before.
Rising fired a ball over the middle looking for what appeared as an open seam route. It was the first, and not the last time, McCullough showed Rising looks can be deceiving. He emerged from seemingly nowhere to snag his first of his two interceptions on the day and stop Utah’s reclamation attempt in the red zone, sending ASU driving in the other direction.
McCullough’s career day in which he set career-highs in tackles with 12 and of course the 2 interceptions. He was continuously flying around the fly attacking the ball-carrier with pointed aggression repeatedly giving possession back to his offense. His effort helped ASU hold Utah to a less than fifty percent third-down percentage, constantly giving the ball back to redshirt freshman quarterback Sam Leavitt and the Sun Devil offense. The biggest moment of them obviously being the last pick that allowed Leavitt to take victory knees to a cacophony of cheers as the stadium burst at the seams moments before its field was rushed.
“Great job for [McCullough],” Leavitt said. “Finding the play, finding the ball, and it looked like he bobbled it and then came up with it. Big time play.”
Maybe the most amazing factor of the linebacker’s impactful play was that he was only starting due to Junior linebacker and team captain Keyshaun Elliott being forced to miss the first half due to a targeting ejection in the Sun Devils game the week prior against Kansas. McCullough was already prepared for his moment to step into the starting lineup.
“I’m the [backup],” McCullough said. “So, I knew, once [Elliott] wasn’t playing, it was going to be me. In my head, I was thinking it was going to be me.”
Expectations were likely for McCullough to fill in until Elliott would reassume his role as the central cog for the defense in the second half. McCulloughs eight first-half tackles and the aforementioned late second-quarter interception said otherwise.
“He was playing well, he was in a rhythm,” Dillingham said. “Bottom line, he deserved it. Playing while in a rhythm, he deserved it, and guess what, game on the line, he closed it out.”
Dillingham told the media that he gave his long-tenured linebacker the game ball in the locker room, naming him a player of the game. It was finally decidedly his movement in the spotlight.
“It means the most to me to just be able to make plays,” McCullough said. “I’ve been dreaming of this since I was a kid. Finally at this stage, being able to make plays and the team is winning and we beat a ranked team, so I’m just happy.”
For the better part of nearly three seasons Arizona State football has been a story of Shakespearean tragedy. Coaches have changed, scandal has struck, and the program has reached rock bottom, in the form of a postseason bowl ban due to NCAA violations.
Since head coach Kenny Dillingham took over in November of 2022 he has woven the story of the program’s birth anew ever since. He has ripped the structures of the previously burning program that had seldom won and recreated it from the ground up with an entirely new cast of characters, retaining only those five players have remained from the previous regime under former head coach Herm Edwards.
McCullough is the physical embodiment of the slow death and rapid rebirth of the program. Through his personal story of toiling away on the bench for years before getting his moment to shine, one can truly understand ASU’s strife and now success. It was entirely fitting one of the only pillars on the team ended up being the man to send the Valley of the Sun into an epiphany.
“It means a whole lot,” McCullough said. “I put in a lot of work to get to this position, and I just tell my family that one day I’m going to get my opportunity. When you do get that opportunity, the work you put in will show. Tonight it showed.”
