Growing up in the game of football, rivalries are part of it. Whether it’s developing a contentious relationship with the only other good team in Pop Warner Football, or repeatedly getting chippy with the cross-town high school in your teenage years, anyone who has played sports has likely been a part of a rivalry.
As you grow with the sport, the importance of rivalries grows, though. Through his several stops in college football, Oregon Ducks head coach Dan Lanning has been a part of several rivalry games. He’s seen the Duel in the Desert with Arizona State vs. Arizona; he’s seen Memphis vs. Louisville, and Georgia vs. Florida in the ‘World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.’
Now he gets to see what takes place in the Pacific Northwest when Oregon Ducks and Washington Huskies meet.
Dan Lanning, welcome to Husky Hate Week.
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It’s a rivalry game that has been played regularly since 1900, with the two campuses a bit more than 280 miles apart, split down the I-5 Corridor. It’s a matchup that’s been dominated in history by Washington, but has seen the Ducks carry all of the water in recent memory, winning 15 of the last 17 games. It’s a rivalry that gave us “The Pick,” and “The Streak,” and a 71-point game that one fanbase is still trying to dine on.
To say there’s some history in there is quite an understatement.
“No love lost. That’s really clear,” Lanning said on Monday night when I asked what he knew of the rivalry. “There is no love lost in this game. And that’s something that’s exciting. It makes games like this fun.”
I’m sure that when Lanning took the job with Oregon, he was aware of who his biggest rivals would be. It’s more than likely that on a few occasions, he was encouraged by others to beat both Washington and Oregon State in his first year if nothing else. Going 2-10 with wins over those two schools would act as a small victory, at the very least.
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As we’ve learned in his first year, though, Lanning sought out the opinions and stories of those who came before him and has worked hard to get in touch with former players and coaches, trying to tap into what makes Oregon such a special place to be. I’m sure you aren’t surprised to learn that the Washington rivalry came up a time or two in those conversations.
“You know, I’m getting to talk to some former alumni that have played here. Coach Bellotti, Dan Fouts, guys that I’ve been able to kind of link up with and just communicate with on what this game has been like over time,” Lanning said. “It’s been exciting for me because this game means something to people. And you know, not just our players. Our players are gonna go out there and execute every single game but it means something to people outside of that arena. I’m excited to see our fans come up and make an impact, but also our players get out there and take care of business.”
This rivalry means something, certainly, and this particular meeting in the grand scheme of things might mean a little bit more.
I wrote a column on Monday about just that. How, with Lanning and new Washington coach Kalen DeBoer at the helm, a new chapter in this rivalry is going to be written starting on Saturday. We’ve seen past chapters feature a lot of vitriol and hate thrown about, with one coach undercutting the other’s academic standards, while the other retaliated with absolute savagery.
“Those (expletive) guys right there, they represent everything that’s wrong with football,” Mario Cristobal said after the Ducks’ win in 2021. “So when you kick their ass, you let them know it.”
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Lanning was asked on Monday if he was going to embrace that past hate as part of this rivalry and carry some of it with him into Saturday. As you would expect, he gave the answer that is unlikely to show up on a poster board in Seattle. That being said, I couldn’t help but feel the competitive fire burning beneath his words.
“I can’t really speak to anything that’s necessarily happened in the past,” Lanning said. “I think that there’s a thing called pride in performance in the way that we prepare and the way we execute the game. But generally, for us, we want our pads to talk. And that’s the plan. We hit the grass, our pads are going to do the talking.”
Oregon fans are going to hope that the talking is loud and violent, and at some points potentially vicious. It’s the nature of the rivalry, and when there’s bad blood between two schools, you can throw common courtesies out the window. Don’t expect handshakes. Don’t expect players to help each other up. Expect competitive hatred, anger, and fire.
None of those things are unique to Oregon vs. Washington. They’re things that Lanning has experienced a number of times in his career. He’s about to experience his first game against the Huskies, though, and he’s learning quickly the magnitude of what’s at stake.
“This game means a lot to us. This is a game we want to win and I know how important it is to all Duck fans.”
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