Dan Lanning Adds Fuel To Clash With Coach Prime
By 750 The Game Staff
Is it football season yet?
Oregon Ducks head coach Dan Lanning raised eyebrows at Ducks media day in Eugene when asked his opinion on Colorado’s decision to leave the Pac-12 for the Big 12 Conference in 2024.
“Not a big reaction,” Lanning said. “I’m trying to remember what they won to affect this conference, I don’t remember. You remember them winning anything? I don’t remember them winning anything.”
Did Lanning go out of bounds with his comments?
“I like it,” John Canzano said Monday on 750 The Game. “Look, it’s honest. I’m so tired of coaches and athletes pretending — giving us what they think we want, not what we actually want. I’m OK with it.”
Canzano says Lanning is far from the only head coach in the conference who hold similar feelings about Colorado.
“If the coaching staff at Utah was honest, if the coaching staff at USC was honest, you’d probably get a very similar sentiment,” Canzano said. “But they don’t want to give Colorado the bulletin board material.”
Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders has gone into full upheaval mode with the Buffaloes roster since taking over as head coach. As a result, Vegas sets the Buffs win total at just 3.5 wins this season.
“Here’s the problem – I don’t know if Coach Prime has the talent to make it matter,” Canzano said. “And I think Dan Lanning knows, ‘I only have to play him one time, at home? Bring it’.”
Canzano thinks the lack of physicality in the trenches will likely bring struggle for Coach Prime’s program in their final season in the Pac-12. On the other hand, losing another program to a competing Power 5 conference is a tough blow for the Pac-12.
“I think it’s cool that Dan Lanning is speaking is mind,” Canzano said. “But I also think you got to recognize, it’s a loss to the Pac-12 that Colorado is leaving. I don’t want to be one of these people that’s trying to frame it as, ‘Oh, we didn’t want them anyway.’
“It’s true, they never had any success. But they brought the Denver TV market into the fold, and those television households were worth something to the Pac-12 Conference. And in the end, you got to acknowledge that.”
We’ll see how many households tune in to watch Coach Prime’s first — and likely, only — visit to Eugene on Sept. 23rd.
Check out the comments as part of the 5 at 5 at the 1:34:00 mark of the podcast below.
John Canzano delivers the Bald Faced Truth afternoons 3-6 p.m. exclusively in Portland on 750 The Game.
