TEMPE, Ariz. - September 16, 2026 - Sun Devils fans, we need to talk about a date that just won't die.
Spend five minutes in an Arizona State football forum or a Big 12 Twitter thread and you'll run into it: Oct 5, 2024, Tempe, Arizona, USA: the last time Arizona State Sun Devils and Kansas Jayhawks faced off. It sounds official. It sounds documented. It sounds like a game that happened.
Here's the problem: it didn't.
The Date Everyone Cites - and Why It Doesn't Add Up
A Blank Slate Between Two Programs
When Arizona State officially joined the Big 12 in August 2024, Sun Devils fans grabbed their calendars and circled first-time conference clashes with the old-school powers. Kansas sat near the top of that list. Yet as of September 2026, there is no verified record of an ASU - Kansas football game on October 5, 2024 - or on any date before it.
The reason is simple. These two programs have never met on the gridiron. ASU spent decades in the Pac-12. Kansas has been a Big 12 lifer since the league's founding in 1996. Their paths never crossed. The Sun Devils' move to the Big 12 created the possibility of a matchup, not the reality of one - and both athletic departments have treated ASU vs. Kansas as a future fixture, never a completed one.
So the phrase "the last time Arizona State Sun Devils and Kansas Jayhawks faced off" is, technically, an oxymoron. There is no last time. There's only a next time.
📊 Zero - the number of verified ASU - Kansas football meetings in the history of both programs, making this the rare modern matchup with no score, no box score, and no bragging rights.
What Was Actually Happening on October 5, 2024
Rewind to that weekend for real. The 2024 season was ASU's Big 12 debut tour under head coach Kenny Dillingham - a brutal welcome to a conference that doesn't do warm-ups. Kansas, meanwhile, was grinding through a season that began with enormous expectations and quickly became a fight for relevance.
Had a cross-divisional or protected matchup placed them on the same field that October weekend, it would have been a genuine curiosity - two programs with nothing in common except a brand-new conference badge. But the Big 12's 2024 scheduling formula didn't pair them. No game. No trip to Tempe. No final score to debate.
Who Owns the Historical Edge (Spoiler: Nobody Yet)
Why Fans Keep Searching for This Game
The search traffic around "Oct 5, 2024, Tempe, Arizona, USA: the last time Arizona State Sun Devils and Kansas Jayhawks faced off" tells its own story. Fans want this matchup. The curiosity is real - desert heat against Midwest grit, Dillingham's tempo offense against Lance Leipold's disciplined, run-first system, two fan bases discovering each other for the very first time.
But curiosity isn't confirmation. And it's worth asking why this particular phantom date keeps resurfacing. The likeliest answer: October 5, 2024 was a real college football Saturday, ASU was in the middle of its first Big 12 season, and somewhere along the way a fan-made graphic or speculative schedule post got laundered into "fact." That's how internet mythology works. One screenshot, a thousand retweets, and suddenly a game that never happened has a date, a venue, and a vibe.
Table: ASU vs. Kansas - The Real Record
| Category | Arizona State | Kansas |
|---|---|---|
| All-time meetings vs. each other | 0 | 0 |
| First season as Big 12 rivals | 2024 | 1996 (founding member) |
| Verified game on Oct 5, 2024 | None | None |
| Official schedule source | thesundevils.com | kuathletics.com |
📊 16 teams, 9 conference games - the Big 12's current football math means every cross-divisional pairing rotates, and an ASU - Kansas meeting is a matter of when, not if.
