Xavion Alford was last in AT&T Stadium five years ago, snagging an interception that helped Alvin Shadow Creek win its first state championship, capping a 31–1 run in its first two seasons as a Varsity program. 

Alford is one of 23 former Texas high school football players on Arizona State’s Big 12 Championship team, the spearhead of head coach Kenny Dillingham and defensive backs coach Bryan Carrington’s ‘Texas2Tempe’ recruiting movement. Arizona State’s mission to reach Jerry’s World for the conference championship game wasn’t new to them; the pinnacle of their high school career was to play there in December. 

But only some, like Alford, actually achieved it. In this week’s practice, he’d prepped his teammates for the jumbotron, the lights, the stage and the moment, because he’d experienced it all at 17 years old. He was the blue-chip recruit off to the blue blood program, the University of Texas, nicknamed the ‘100 Yard Landlord’ because he had every square inch of turf locked up.

In a way, the Alford that returned to AT&T Stadium on Saturday was the one everyone projected him to be, a First Team All-Conference safety playing for a Big 12 Championship. Yet his journey back to Arlington was not linear. It encapsulates the Sun Devils’ season, winning the Big 12 after being picked last in the preseason conference media poll. From written off to remembered.

And that’s what makes it so much more meaningful.

Bryan Carrington has pitched Xavion Alford wearing three different schools’ logos on his collared shirt. Carrington felt connected to him since he watched the young safety at Shadow Creek, and he harbored a lot of guilt for how Alford’s career had panned out up to this season. 

Carrington got Alford to Texas when he was the Director of Recruiting, and Alford made four tackles in four games as a reserve safety. When Carrington became an offensive analyst at USC, he recruited Alford in the Transfer Portal for the 2021 season. Alford appeared in 11 games and made two starts. He was expected to be a key contributor for the Trojans going forward.

Little did he know that when that season ended, it’d be his last football game in 1,000 days.

Alford underwent an undisclosed medical operation and sat out the entire 2022 season. When he entered the Transfer Portal at the end of that season, he decided to follow Carrington, now the defensive backs coach at Arizona State, for a third time.  

“I look at him as family, as an older brother that’s been in my life since I was 17 years old,” Alford said.

A relationship like Alford and Carrington’s is what many miss when they denigrate the Transfer Portal as a transactional group of mercenaries. Alford chose Arizona State because he trusted Carrington, and Carrington kept recruiting him because he knew that despite the results, Alford was still the same kid from Shadow Creek.

“When the talent is even, it’s all about your mentality,” Carrington said. “I knew at an early age that Xavion Alford was wired the right way.”

He’d need every ounce of that mental makeup in the 2023 season when the NCAA forced him to sit out the entire year after a second transfer. Now in his fourth year of college, the former four-star served as a scout team running back for a 3–9 team.

But Alford insists that the hiatus, while challenging, made him a better player this year.

“It raised my IQ because all I could do was watch,” Alford said. “I’d have to pick up things with my eyes instead of doing things (on the field).”

Carrington says Alford's defensive leadership this year on a national stage was established when no one, not even the diehard Arizona State fans, could watch him.

“He’s a light to a room,” Carrington said. “Even in the midst of us going 3–9 last year, Xavion Alford was always optimistic about this season. This is not going to happen next year.”

Beneath that positive exterior, however, was a different kind of animal that grew hungrier the more games it was caged.

“It made a monster in me,” Alford said.

It made him the poster boy of Arizona State’s “Texas2Tempe” movement that prioritizes Texas high school football recruits. That recruiting strategy earned its biggest victory on Saturday afternoon in the Big 12 Championship in Arlington, where the Shadow Creek legend Alford finished with a team-high 7 tackles. 

“When people believe, it’s amazing what you can achieve,” Carrington said.

Because this Arizona State team never stopped believing when they were 3–9, Carrington never stopped believing in Alford when he was on his third school, and Alford never stopped believing in himself.