Arizona State football has a great opportunity to recruit players over the next two weeks with Thursday’s road game against Texas State and a Week 4 game at Texas Tech, said Graham Rossini, first-year athletic director Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo.

Rossini said the game between Texas State and the other teams had been on the agenda for about a decade and the idea was to give ASU the opportunity to play in the state, a big football team, so recruits could learn more about it.

“Ten years later, ironically, we have another game next week against Lubbock and Texas Tech,” Rossini said Thursday before the game against Texas State.

“So we’re really trying to maximize our time on the ground. Some of our coaches are going to stay after the game tonight and get a chance to recruit in Houston and Dallas and Austin and some of the surrounding areas, San Antonio as well. … We’ve got to show up tonight. We’ve got to represent, but we also know that it’s a huge recruiting benefit if we play well tonight and next weekend.”

The Sun Devils enter Thursday night’s game 2-0 after wins over Wyoming and Mississippi State, while Texas State is also 2-0 after a blowout win over UTSA. The game will be shown on ESPN as the only nationally televised college football game of the day.

ASU now finds itself in a conference with four Texas schools (Texas Tech, TCU, Baylor and Houston) with no teams from California. Maintaining a foothold in the Golden State remains imperative, but taking advantage of Big 12 competition in new states is a priority for the program, Rossini said.

“We need to keep Southern California, and we will,” Rossini said. “But of course, with the Big 12 connection to the state of Texas … there’s just a great opportunity throughout the conference to give more exposure to ASU. And then you add Florida, with Central Florida in the conference as well.

“There’s a fair chance we’ll be on a lot of people’s radar because we’re competing with UCF, we’re competing with the four schools in Texas and we’re maintaining our presence in Southern California. So in many ways it’s the best of all worlds.”

Arizona State will take on UCF on November 9 at Mountain America Stadium.

ASU’s top-ranked 2025 recruit, wide receiver Adrian Wilson, hails from Texas, while the program’s next crop of freshmen features 12 players from California and Texas.

Watch ASU visit Texas State with kickoff at 4:30 p.m. MST. Tune into the Arizona Sports app, ESPN 620 AM or 98.7-HD-2 to listen.

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