ARLINGTON, Texas — Cam Skattebo posed on the stage, arms out, head down, WWE championship belt around his waist, confetti of all colors piling up on his shoulders. He closed his eyes, took it all in.
He held the look of a pro wrestler or boxer after a big fight, short, stocky and ferocious at 5 feet 11 and 215 pounds. Still not completely known to much of the sports world entering Saturday, he might’ve been confused for a prizefighter. But given a spotlight, Arizona State’s running back left no doubt, leading the Sun Devils to a 45-19 win over Iowa State to capture the Big 12 championship and punch a ticket to the College Football Playoff.
The former Sacramento State back who had one Division I offer out of high school pounded his way to 170 rushing yards, 38 receiving yards, three total touchdowns and one really smart throwaway pass that left his coach with mouth agape, both in frustration and amazement.
The team picked 16th out of 16 in the Big 12’s preseason poll, coming off consecutive 3-9 seasons, is now headed to the biggest stage in the sport in the first year of the 12-team Playoff with an 11-2 record and a seed and round yet to be determined.
GO DEEPER
Unthinkable? A storybook season keeps getting better for surprise Big 12 champ Arizona State
“If you look at our resume with Sam Leavitt as our starting quarterback, you can look deep and hard to see where we stand with champions,” head coach Kenny Dillingham said.
The Sun Devils are red hot. Do you want to play them? The team we saw Saturday looked like one nobody should look past. A team willing to throw deep on fourth-and-1 inside its own territory. At the trophy presentation, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said the Sun Devils should head to Tempe, referencing the Fiesta Bowl and a first-round bye rather than their trip home.
This is what Playoff expansion was all about.
To give teams like Arizona State something even bigger to play for. To get a player like Skattebo in front of the larger sports world. Texts and tweets from people around the country rang out asking who exactly this bulldozer running back was. Everyone who watched Saturday’s game knows now, and they’ll know more if he ends up in New York at the Heisman Trophy ceremony. At the very least, he earned himself a lot of third-place votes as the first player with 1,500 rushing yards and 500 receiving yards since Christian McCaffrey in 2015.
“I’ve always been the underdog, and nobody respects that I’m the best running back in the country, and I’m going to stand on that,” Skattebo said after the game when asked about his Heisman pose after a touchdown. “If people disrespect that, I’m going to keep proving people wrong.”
(That quote came just a few minutes after Skattebo gave all credit to his offensive line. You can keep him polished up and on-message for only so long.)
The four-team CFP left almost no room for error, especially if you weren’t a big-brand program ranked in the top 10 in the preseason. In years past, the winner of this game would’ve gone to a New Year’s Six bowl and hoped not too many players opted out.
The Sun Devils were picked last in the Big 12 and won the conference, and a loss at Cincinnati without Leavitt, their talented starting quarterback, didn’t end their Playoff hopes. This trip to Arlington was essentially a Playoff game — win and advance or lose and miss the CFP. This was the program’s first outright conference championship since 1996, and it all started with that running back.
Skattebo’s first carry went for 28 yards. In the second quarter, he broke off a 47-yard run in which he broke six tackles.
It’s what he’s always done. As his play Saturday started to spread on social media, so did his legendary highlights. Like a 66-yard touchdown run in the California high school state championship game where he broke tackles of pretty much the entire opposing team.
For those watching Cameron Skattebo for the first time, here is the best run I’ve seen from a high school football player. This was in the California state title game in 2018. pic.twitter.com/dxqC98DGCu
— Cameron Salerno (@cameronsalerno1) December 7, 2024
“It’s not very fun to see him in practice,” ASU safety Xavion Alford said.
Skattebo’s always been hard to tackle. But he slimmed down this year and increased his speed. And he’s always been trusted to make the right play, even when he wasn’t supposed to. He’ll run, throw, catch, kick and do everything. On ASU’s second drive, he took a wildcat snap, ran into trouble, ran backward and threw the ball away, safely incomplete, avoiding an intentional grounding penalty. It saved valuable yards for a drive that finished in the end zone.
“(My thoughts were) don’t do it,” Dillingham said of his viral reaction to the play. “But that’s what makes Skat Skat. He does incredible things. To his credit, they pan out. I don’t know how. … He finds ways to be successful.”
He entered the stadium wearing a Boredom Kills-branded leather jacket, a fitting descriptor of his style of play. When the game ended, as teammates grabbed shirts, hats and signs, Skattebo grabbed his phone and started talking and mean-mugging the video screen off to the side, the wild side of him on display. On stage, after receiving his game MVP belt from WWE star Jey Uso, Skattebo grabbed a sharpie pen, walked back over to his teammates and started having them sign the belt.
“I don’t know how many yards I have this season but they’re the reason for it,” he said.
Then the pictures, so many pictures. Teammates, coaches, donors, fans, everyone wanted a photo with the star. He cut wrestling-style promos into phones for Big 12 and ESPN officials. He eventually told his teammates he needed to stop because he just wanted to find his dad, who was trying to get down from the stand and into the suite.
“C’mon guys, we’ll have all night,” Skattebo joked to teammates.
Eventually, Cam made his way over to Leo Skattebo in the sideline suite and the two embraced in a deep hug. Son gave the belt to the father to look over. Leo has a big Arizona State pitchfork logo and Sacramento State logo tattooed on his right forearm, an imposing character in his own right. Maybe an NFL team logo is the next one.
But the ride’s not over here. The Sun Devils are 11-1 when Leavitt plays, and they’ll head into whatever Playoff matchup with as much confidence as anyone else.
The expansion of the College Football Playoff has thus far accomplished everything it was designed to do. There can be debates over the last team in the field or the various seeds, but a team like Arizona State would’ve been left out of the limited field in the past.
In a season where seemingly nothing on the field has gone according to expectation, here come the streaking Sun Devils. Behind a do-everything truck of a running back. Best of luck to whoever has to slow him down.
(Photo: Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)
