Dan Lanning shares Oregon has spoken with Big Ten about uneven preparation in his team's schedule

Plenty of people in the offseason spend time analyzing schedules. Attempting to find unusual trends is quite common, even for the coaches themselves. Oregon head coach Dan Lanning is one of them, noticing something about how much time opponents are getting to prepare compared to Oregon.

“There’s seven games where our opponent has more time to prep,” Lanning said. “Or equal to us. But they always have more additional time… We go to Iowa and Minnesota has a bye week before us and then we play Minnesota on a Friday.”

Heading into Saturday’s game against Northwestern, this is already the second of the seven occurrences. The Wildcats played their Week 2 game on Friday night while Oregon faced Oklahoma State Saturday afternoon. Go back a week, and Mike Gundy saw his team open the season on a Thursday night, giving them two extra days over Oregon.

Obviously, the extra preparation did not show up on the scoreboard. Oregon walked off the field massive winners and many expect them to again vs. Northwestern. However, it’s still something Lanning wants to make sure the Big Ten looks into moving forward. Oregon contacted the league and made its thoughts known.

“It’s a good question for the conference,” Lanning said. “It’s been communicated on our end.”

The original scenario Lanning brought up, involving the Minnesota game, does not take place until early November. Oregon heads to Iowa City to face off against the Hawkeyes — kick-off time not yet determined. PJ Fleck gets the advantage of watching the game from home before taking his squad out West to play Oregon.

Going up against teams on bye weeks is nothing new and at times, unavoidable when creating any schedule. But Lanning likely has an issue with Minnesota-Oregon taking place on a Friday night. His team will be on a short week, while the Golden Gophers are fully rested and then some.

For now, there is nothing the Big Ten offices can do. Schedules are set well in advance and must play out accordingly. The only aspect the league might control is when the games officially start, working alongside some television partners such as FOX, NBC, and CBS.

The future is where Lanning wants to make sure Oregon is not at a disadvantage. The 2026 schedule and beyond is one for Duck fans to track, seeing if the communication between the program and the Big Ten came through.