What it is
Sun Devil Stadium, which has been Mountain America Stadium since a naming-rights deal in August 2023, is Arizona State’s football stadium, built in 1958 into the cut between Hayden Butte and the smaller butte east of it, at the north edge of the Tempe campus where the river used to run. The site does the work: the two hills frame the bowl, the A on the butte looks down on the fifty-yard line, and the Tempe Town Lake towers and the Phoenix skyline fill the open north end. It held 30,000 when it opened, grew to nearly 75,000 by 1989 when the Cardinals and the Fiesta Bowl shared it, and was rebuilt between 2015 and 2019 into a steeper, shaded, 53,599-seat bowl that is better for a college game than the old one ever was.
ASU plays Big 12 football here six or seven Saturdays from early September to late November; the 2026 season opened against Morgan State on September 5 and runs through the conference schedule to the Territorial Cup against Arizona. Outside the season it is a campus landmark, a stop on the walk up the butte, and the site of the Pat Tillman statue, for the Sun Devil linebacker who left the Cardinals for the Army after 2001 and was killed in Afghanistan.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because the only big-crowd sporting events within twenty minutes of a Scottsdale hotel are this and spring training, and they do not overlap. The Cardinals are forty-five minutes west in Glendale, the Suns and Diamondbacks are downtown, and a fall Saturday here, with the butte, the band and the pregame on Mill, is the one game-day afternoon that is also a day out in a college town. Our ASU lexicon entry explains what the game does to the whole East Valley.
The practical version
Eighteen minutes from Old Town on a normal day, forty on a game day: Scottsdale Road south, which becomes Rural Road and passes the east side of the stadium. Buy west-side seats for any afternoon kickoff, in the shade. Park at a light-rail station in Tempe and ride to Veterans Way, or rideshare to Mill and walk. Arrive two hours early and climb the butte.
When to go
September games kick off in the evening for the heat and are still hot; October and November are the season, and the Territorial Cup against Arizona, the oldest rivalry trophy in college football, is the game everyone wants, played in Tempe in alternate years. Big 12 opponents since 2024 include Kansas, Baylor, Texas Tech and the rest of the conference that the old Pac-12 fans are still learning. The student section is at the south end; families and alumni sit on the west side. Tickets for most games are available the week of, and the resale market is soft for anything but the Cup.
Game day
- Get there two hours early. Mill Avenue, three blocks west, is the pregame; the lots and the tailgates around the stadium start at noon for a late kickoff.
- Climb the butte. Hayden Butte rises from the stadium’s west side; the twenty-minute climb to the A looks straight down into the bowl and across the lake.
- The Tillman statue is at the north end, by the tunnel the team runs out of. Pat Tillman played linebacker here in the 1990s, then for the Cardinals, and enlisted in 2002; he was killed in Afghanistan in 2004.
- Shade. The west stands and the upper concourse are shaded for afternoon games; the east side is not, until the sun drops behind the butte.
- After. Four Peaks is a ten-minute walk east on 8th Street and the game-day line is part of it; Casey Moore’s is the same walk west, and quieter.
With kids
A college game is three and a half hours and the stadium knows it: the Coca-Cola Sun Deck at the north end is the open, walk-around section, and a child who gets restless can see the band, the butte and the lake from the concourse. Night games end late for Scottsdale bedtimes.
The story
The stadium was built in 1958, the year the teachers’ college became Arizona State University by statewide vote, and it was built where it is because the gap between the two buttes was the one piece of the campus that needed no grading for a bowl. It opened on October 4 with 30,000 seats and grew with the school and the city: an upper deck in the 1970s, the Fiesta Bowl from its first game in 1971, the Phoenix Cardinals from 1988, and by 1989 a capacity of 74,865 that made it one of the largest stadiums in the West. Super Bowl XXX, in January 1996, put 76,347 in it to watch Dallas beat Pittsburgh, the biggest crowd the place ever held. The field was named that same year for Frank Kush, the coach who had made ASU a football school between 1958 and 1979 and who had, in his first years, made his players run the butte as punishment.
The Cardinals left for Glendale after the 2005 season and took the Fiesta Bowl with them, and the stadium spent a decade too big for a college team. The answer was to shrink it: a five-year, 304-million-dollar rebuild between 2015 and 2019 took the capacity to 53,599, steepened the lower bowl, added shade structures and a wide upper concourse, and left a stadium built for the team that plays in it. The naming deal with Mountain America Credit Union in August 2023 paid for some of that; ASU moved to the Big 12 the following summer.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale is ASU’s bedroom community and has been since the 1960s: the alumni, the season-ticket holders and a good share of the faculty live north of the river, and Scottsdale Road becomes Rural Road at the lake and runs straight to the stadium’s east gate. Scottsdale Stadium, the city’s own ballpark, is the other half of the Valley sports year; the Cardinals and Coyotes entry in the lexicon explains why the pro teams ended up everywhere but here.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road south across the river, where it becomes Rural Road, to Veterans Way: the stadium’s east side, and the campus garages, are on your right. From North Scottsdale, the 101 to the 202 west and off at Scottsdale/Rural. The light rail stops at Veterans Way and College Avenue, a block from the gates; on a game day the smart Scottsdale move is to park at a Tempe station on the line and ride in, or rideshare to Mill and walk. Our getting around note has the rail map.