Hey, Kenny Dillingham, slow down. You're doing great, so far

Kenny Dillingham is working himself sick.

Literally.

Arizona State’s new football coach is showing no signs of slowing down after finishing up spring practices. He’s recruiting, both high schoolers and potential transfers. He’s selling tickets and shaking hands, even when he’s out for dinner. And he’s learning all the administrative stuff that comes along with being a big-time football coach.

It seems like he’s trying to do everything, everywhere, all the way, all at once.

“Sorry, I’m a little bit sick,” he said, coughing. “I usually get sick after long stretches with no sleep.”

'Winning is fun. It's not fun to lose.'

Last season was a train wreck for ASU. There’s no other way to see it. Dillingham has been tasked with rebuilding and says he realizes that it’s going to be a process; he just doesn’t seem to be acting like it.

“It’s going in the right direction,” he said of his first few months on the job. “Anybody who thinks it’s just gonna flip — like, ‘Oh, man, I’m back!’ — is very short-sighted.”

It’s the right view, but nothing about Dillingham’s approach suggests patience.

“Everything matters,” he said, discussing his views on competition. “Winning is fun. It’s not fun to lose. Everything we do is about teaching guys that no matter what you do, you should have a sense of passion and energy and just wanting to win behind it.”

You’ve gotta love that, except it comes with a cost.

Dillingham is going to miss birthdays and anniversaries, science fairs and school trips, hospital visits and funerals. And he’s going to do it all in pursuit of goals that no one realistically expects him to accomplish.

You can hear the toll it’s taking on the youngest head coach in big-time football every time he coughs.

'I'm worried about us.'

ASU has been a sleeping giant since the 1970s. The thing about sleeping giants is that they don’t wake up easily.

Herm Edwards couldn’t do it. Todd Graham couldn’t do it. Dennis Erickson. Dirk Koetter. Bruce Snyder. None of them could turn the school in the desert into a perennial national power.

And now, here’s Dillingham, trying to outwork all of them all at once. It’s a bit like watching somebody try to lose 20 pounds on Jan. 2, even as they say their crash diet and Olympian workout plans are sustainable. It’s almost a guarantee that they’re going to be back to eating pizza and drinking beer by the national championship game.

I’m rooting for Dillingham to slow down.

A 3-9 record? An NCAA witch hunt? A coaching change in the middle of the season?

The 32-year-old Dillingham might not have had any gray hair when he took the job, but he’ll have plenty of it in a few months if he doesn’t relax and trust the process.

He’s going to have to resist the urge to try to prove himself in every interview, practice drill and snap.

And he’ll have to learn how to deal with expectations and comparisons.

“I know it’s coaching cliché, but I literally couldn’t care less about any other program,” Dillingham said. “I’m worried about us.”

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'I'm a football coach'

He’s off to a good start. More than 90 percent of season ticket holders have renewed their seats, and another 3,000 new fans have joined them. People around the program say there hasn’t been this much energy in Tempe since the Sun Devils won the Pac-12 South in 2013.

And he’s being received well in his return home. Dillingham is a graduate of Scottsdale Chaparral High School and ASU. His wife, Briana, is a Sun Devil, too. They’re getting recognized all over town.

“I run into people all the time,” he said. “People I know, people who know my mother-in-law, people who know my dad, people who know my brother, people who know my sister, people whose kids I coached … I was at a restaurant yesterday and met some people whose nephew I coached in dodgeball at Cocopah Middle School when I was 19. It’s just one of those deals. The city’s been great. Unbelievable.”

Something else that’s unbelievable is the amount of homework he has to do every day.

“Probably a little more administration stuff than I expected … that’s been a little bit of a shock,” he said.

He sees it as a temporary inconvenience, not that it will lighten his workload. He’ll deal with all the paperwork now so he can focus more on football later.

“In terms of moving forward … I’m gonna have to structure our schedule to where I keep the main thing the main thing, and that is I’m a football coach.”

I just hope that future structure includes rest.

Kenny Dillingham coughed in between each question for nearly 40 minutes speaking with reporters on a Zoom call from his new office at the ASU football facility in Tempe.

Each hack was a reminder that Kenny Dillingham wants ASU to be great so badly that he’s willing to work himself sick.

Literally.

Here’s hoping he learns to slow down.

More: Spring football is done but work continues for ASU coach Kenny Dillingham

Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona State football coach Kenny Dillingham has no chill