Canzano: Exclusive 1-on-1 with Oregon Ducks coach Dan Lanning

Lanning talks CFP, dreams, and goals.

Dan Lanning and Curt Cignett shake hands after their regular-season meeting. (Photo: Naji Saker)

I talked with Oregon Ducks football coach Dan Lanning on Monday in an exclusive interview. He sounded relaxed and was candid in front of Friday’s College Football Playoff semifinal matchup at the Peach Bowl against the Indiana Hoosiers.

Watch the full interview on YouTube:

Some quick takeaways:

Against Reseeding of Teams

— Lanning has some big ideas about tweaks that should be made to the CFP format. He’d like to see higher-seeded teams host in the first two rounds. He’d love to see the season calendar moved up. But he pushed back when I asked if he’d support re-seeding the teams after each round of the CFP.

Said Lanning: “I don’t like that. I think that’s hard to prep. If you think about it, the people in our organization are already breaking down the next game… We broke down every single game of Indiana. We broke down every single game of Alabama. If we had to break down seven teams, that would be a lot of work. I like the idea of once it’s seeded, it’s seeded.”

Fallout from First Indiana Loss

— I put the photo of Lanning and Indiana coach Curt Cignetti on the screen at one point in our video interview. The picture was taken by my photographer, Naji Saker, immediately after IU’s 30-20 victory at Autzen Stadium earlier this season. The coaches are leaving the field and shaking hands.

I asked Lanning what he was thinking in that moment.

He shot back, “I got beat.”

Then, Lanning just sort of wryly smiled. It was obvious he still had some feelings about losing that game. I like the competitive fire. Then, I asked him how quickly he pivoted after that loss to wanting another crack at IU.

Lanning said, “It’s not necessarily a vengeance thing for me or a ‘Let’s go get retribution’… ‘It’s what can we learn from this game?’”

Take… the… Points?!?

— I asked Lanning about his refusal to take the points in a few fourth-down field-goal situations against Texas Tech. Is laying up against his nature? I found it interesting that Lanning took my question and pivoted into a conversation about having the right play call on.

Lanning said, “It always goes back to what’s their call vs. what we’re in… I didn’t think we had the right call, and we couldn’t change it in that moment. That’s why I feel like we should take the points. It’s not that I minded going for it on fourth. They just had a better play call.”

I don’t think he’s going to easily decide to kick a bunch of field goals. It’s just not his style. I do wonder if that bites him at some point.

Goals and Dreams

— We talked about goals and dreams during the interview. Lanning isn’t sleeping enough to get deep sleep and said he couldn’t remember the last time he had a dream. When I asked him about goals, he provided a terrific answer. He keeps his goals written on his bathroom mirror with a dry-erase marker.

Last season, Lanning had “Beat UW. Beat Michigan. Beat Ohio State” on the mirror. He quipped, “I should have put 'Beat Ohio State' twice.” I found it interesting, but maybe not surprising, that Oregon’s coach didn’t have “Win a Big Ten title” among his goals for this season. The Ducks learned something from winning that conference title and getting a first-round bye last season, didn’t they?

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