One of the most noteworthy events that took place during the 2023 college football season for the Oregon Ducks came in Week 4 during their first conference game against the Colorado Buffaloes.
It was Dan Lanning vs. Deion Sanders, and after the noise that both teams had made in the weeks prior to the game, as well as the hours leading up to the game, all eyes were tuned into Eugene for this clash between undefeated teams.
Of course, the lasting memory for almost everyone who watched that game was Dan Lanning’s quote from a pregame speech that was aired by the telecast in the first quarter.
“They’re fighting for clicks, we’re fighting for wins,” Lanning said to his players. “There’s a difference. This game isn’t going to be played in Hollywood, it’s going to be played on the grass.”
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The clip of Lanning saying that in Oregon’s locker room quickly went viral online, and in the days after Oregon’s blowout over the Buffaloes, sports media talking heads had a field day with the topic, leading the Ducks’ head coach to ultimately address the surprising backlash that he received from the comments.
This past week, Lanning talked about the events in an interview with Ryen Russillo on The Ryen Russillo Podcast, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. The Oregon head coach said that he was ultimately surprised that was the clip of his pregame speech that the TV network decided to air.
“At that point, I think I had coached 17 games as a head coach,” Lanning said. “I’d never had a crew ask ‘Hey, can we be in the locker room?’ And I’ll be honest, I thought that there was a lot that would be trimmed out — because you leave the locker room and go straight to the field — and obviously, that didn’t happen. So if you’re asking me ‘Was that gonna play out like it played out?’ It didn’t play out like I thought it would play out. I thought there were some really cool things in there about us talking about connection with our team, and the roots of a tree and what that looks like, but I guess that’s not as good for TV.”
It’s not hard to see why the TV production crew chose to use the sound bites from Lanning that they did. With all of the hype that Coach Prime had built around the Colorado program in the first three weeks of the season, having an opposing coach passionately declare that “the Cinderella story is over” certainly makes for good television.
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“Now that being said, I don’t regret anything that happened in that locker room,” Lanning said. “But I don’t know that I’ll ever have a camera in the locker room again that does not come from our staff or our people. That was for our team and I was talking to our team and so people happened to capture a moment that got released.”
As was the case all year long, the Ducks did have a crew of their own cameras in the locker room, and some incredible footage was released as part of Oregon’s cinematic recap for Week 4. That video, which depicted more of Lanning’s locker room speech, as well as a lot of trash talk that was coming from Buffaloes players before the blowout ensued, ended up being among the most-watched videos that the team released this year. It garnered millions of views on various platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
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As a recruiting tool, it certainly worked, giving the college football world an inside look at Lanning’s program, and some of the braggadocious style with which they carry themselves. Lanning seems to have learned from the entire process, though.
“People have asked since, ‘Hey, can we throw a camera in a locker room?’” Lanning said. “I learned my lesson. So no, you can’t have a camera in our locker room anymore. That was the first time I was ever asked to have a camera in our locker room and it was the last time I’ll probably ever have one in there.
“Was it a bad thing for Oregon? No, I mean, at the end of the day, it ended up being a good thing for Oregon. But it was never about any other team than us.”
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