Late last fall, a bitter 30-degree chill nestled in Eugene, Oregon. The Oregon Ducks football team ran out on the icy turf at the Hatfield-Dowlin Center. As their cleats crunched, some players were paying more attention to the freeze than others. Distracted, the team's energy had been noticeably killed by the cold.
Oregon football coach Dan Lanning did something that no one expected – He took off his warm Nike sweatshirt and started calling plays without a shirt on in the frigid air.
His players looked at each other through fogged breath and realized they did not have a normal coach. Lanning's move fired up his team and heated practice back up to his standards. His players still talk about that day.
Oregon linebacker Bryce Boettcher smiles as he describes Lanning as “psycho in his own way.”
“Lanning is a great coach and cares about his players,” Boettcher told Oregon SI’s Bri Amaranthus. “He has this like, I don't want to say psychotic, but it's almost like psychotic edge to him that makes him so fun to be around.”
”When he coaches you, he always has this look in his eyes that he's ready to go for anything,” Boettcher said.
The buck stops with Lanning, who earns the respect of his team through his own grit.
When he was 24-years-old, Lanning drove through the night across to the country from Missouri to Pittsburgh in pursuit of his first D1 College Football coaching job. Lanning changed into a suit at a gas station as the sun rose, and turned a cold email into a foot in the door with the Pittsburgh Panthers, where his ambition and tenacity shaped his coaching career.
While his Duck players may not know the lengths he’s gone to get the keys to the Oregon football program, but they do revel in Lanning’s competitive nature.
“It gets you fired up just to know that he would be equally as willing to throw the pads on and play with you as he is to coach you,” Boettcher told Amaranthus. “When you have a coach that's wanting to throw the pads on with you and play, it makes you want to play for him. That's what I respect about him.”
Oregon wide receiver Tez Johnson echoed Boettcher’s sentiment about Lanning’s quest for greatness.
"It's so competitive (at practice)," Johnson told Amaranthus. "You would think we're out there in a national championship game playing against whoever – we're so intense at practice."
One of college football’s brightest young coaches and a top defensive mind, Lanning's focus is not just on competition. His team DNA stems from accountability and toughness.
This season, Lanning leads Oregon into its inaugural season in the Big Ten conference. As questions whirl about how the Ducks will stack up against the likes of Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and others – Lanning has built a roster to be envied, with the best transfer class in the conference.
But more importantly, Lanning has stamped the Oregon football program with his work ethic that his players now follow by example, in their own “psycho” ways.
BRI AMARANTHUS
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