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Ask a Sun Devil- What Does the Peach Bowl Mean to You?

For the last few years, I’ve had the pleasure of hosting an Arizona State Sun Devil fan community get together on Twitter/X called Sun Devil Spaces. The concept is simple, it’s an audio-based meet up where ASU fans can come together to commiserate, celebrate, or just kill a Wednesday night re-living the glory days of lugging a backpack up and down palm walk. Every once and a while we’ll get special guest speakers like current and former players, administrators, and for a long while, when he was an assistant at Florida State and Oregon, Kenny Dillingham was a frequent listener as well.

Since the Peach Bowl is being played on a Wednesday, we put together an impromptu Sun Devil Spaces on Monday, December 30th, where the topic at hand was “What does an appearance in the 2024 Peach Bowl mean to you?” I asked the participating members for permission to share some of their thoughts in an article, and here’s what some of our Sun Devil Spaces regulars (paraphrased, and listed by their social media handle) had to say:

Cole Streeper (@ASU_Uniformity)

“My dad was a first-generation college graduate, and he went to Arizona State. I was born into it, and we’ve been going to games since before I can remember. When we were under investigation… I was downtrodden and thinking it might be a decade before we come back from this.

I had gone to the 1997 Rose Bowl with my dad, and I just wanted to experience one more special season with my dad… and to have this happen… it’s so special to me, and it means so much for us to be in this position and watch this team do something, hopefully, really really special.”

Peach Bellini (@JAMBOY75)

“This season has been very special for me. I thought this was a 3-4 win tem, we clearly overshot that. Me living away from Arizona, and watching them week in and week out, I get revved up. They keep rattling off wins! My first game this year seeing them in person being the Big 12 Championship is something I’ll never forget, and I’ll be able to tell my kids I was there for the first time. Hopefully it won’t be the last, but I was there for the first time.”

Mikail Lane (@KailLane)

“This season means the world. I lost my father back in 2021, and a lot of local sports media noticed the obituary I wrote for him. Having lost him after my first son was born, and making the Peach Bowl after my second son was born, kind of feels like a crazy full circle moment. It’s awesome. It’s so amazing.”

Tim Gilloon (@SunDevilSoul)

“Being here in the Peach Bowl, it’s about overachieving. We were picked to finished last. For me it just completely resonates with my experience of before I got into the Special Forces. I graduated from Arizona State, and my recruiter didn’t believe in me. Nobody really believed in me, and I said to myself ‘I’m going to prove people wrong.’ I wanted to do it in spite of everybody else. It was the ultimate chip on the shoulder, and I remember getting through selection, calling my recruiter, and her being surprised that I made it through. That’s why this team resonates with me.”

Zach Schwartz (@zachzachzach)

“I think I cried twice watching the Big 12 Championship. You always hope for that, and I was still a student when we got to play Stanford at Sun Devil Stadium. Obviously that didn’t go how we wanted, but I was happy with that, and I hoped it happen again. Now here I am packing my bags to fly out to Atlanta tomorrow, and I’m putting every Sun Devil item I have in the bag. It’s amazing. I can’t believe what Kenny has done.”

Bobby Niiro (@BobbyNiiro)

“This team is so inspiring. All the talking heads that talk about football for a living were all convinced Arizona State was one of the worst teams in the country… I can relate in some way. In life sometimes people are going to try and put you in a box, and that;’s what they tried to do with ASU as a football team. These guys are not only NOT the worst, they were the best, and have gotten better and better, This is a huge opportunity and challenge with Texas, but Bruce Lee says ‘use no limitation as limitation…’ and it takes people of faith to be a planet or star when people are saying you’re a pebble.”

Chin Lee (@ChinLee)

“My first daughter was born the day before we beat Nebraska 19-0. I’ve been dragging my girls to games through the up years and the down years, and now my youngest is a junior at ASU, so it’s full circle.”

SharonS (@DanceMom128)

“I don’t know it the Peach Bowl means anything specifically to me, but I used to spend a lot of my childhood out in Georgia visiting my dad as a kid. When we made the Rose Bowl I was a senior in high school. It’s just really exciting to see us going to this meaningful of a Bowl game again. I used to watch ASU all the time with my stepdad, so when I saw my stepdad at Christmas it’s all we talked about, and we’re texting back and forth during the games. It’s just a special thing that we always share.”

Justin Prestegard (@Justin4ASU)

“I was lucky enough to be a student in 1996. All the anticipation that led up to the Rose Bowl was exciting, but it didn’t hit me until we took that tunnel concourse to get to our seats. When you see “Arizona State” painted in that end zone, it just hit me. So today when I was on social media and they showed a picture of that ASU end zone in that Bloomin’ Onion of a stadium, it just hit me, and it brought all those memories back.”

TL (@tltyrell)

This one you need to hear in full. I posted the clip below:

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Dillingham, Patchetts, Aguano, Nap Lawrence on my mind