David Pollack predicts Dan Lanning will be next young coach to win a national championship

The Oregon Ducks have been knocking on the door of a national championship since Dan Lanning took over as the program’s head coach. Now, he’s hoping to find a way to get over that hump and find a way to actually win a national championship.

One person who believes that Dan Lanning can get that job done is David Pollack. On his show See Ball Get Ball, Pollack broke down some of the young coaches around college football. That included Lanning and it’s where Pollack predicted he’d be the next young coach to win a national championship.

“I remember Dan being a young coach at Georgia,” David Pollack said. “And watching him grow his family and then take the Oregon job and move. He’s on this list and he, to me, is by far the next one to win a title.”

Dan Lanning began his coaching career in 2008 at the high school level. By 2019, he was the defensive coordinator at Georgia. That’s where David Pollack, a Bulldog himself, would have likely first become acquainted with Lanning. In 2022, coming off a national championship as an assistant coach, Lanning became the head coach at Oregon.

In three seasons at Oregon, Lanning has gone 35-6. That includes going unbeaten in the 2024 regular season, winning the Big Ten, and going to the College Football Playoff as the one-seed. However, they’d get bumped out in the Rose Bowl.

“He’s the next one in his 30s,” Pollack said. “To me, that stood out to win a title.”

Dan Lanning has, undeniably, made Oregon one of the best teams in the country during his time in Eugene. However, where the Ducks have struggled during his time there is in big games. That included losing his first three games against rival Washington, including in the Pac-12 Championship Game, as well as that Playoff loss last season. Finding a way to get over that hump is going to be vital to winning a national championship.

Dan Lanning takes accountability for Rose Bowl loss, commits to improvement

The Rose Bowl loss was a shocker, not just for the fact that Oregon lost but for how they lost, getting blown out by Ohio State. That’s followed the Ducks into the spring, and Dan Lanning even addressed the loss again, taking accountability for it.

“I think the easy thing in those moments, especially afterwards, is like, ‘Let me make excuses for why,’ but if you’re a growth mindset guy, if you’re wired like we are here, to me it’s like, how do I make sure this doesn’t happen again, right? You’ve got to learn from that moment. As rough as it is now, on the same note, in the middle of the game, what am I saying? ‘Hey, I remember a Georgia–Alabama game earlier this year, it wasn’t close, and those guys came back in the second half.’ We certainly played a lot better in the second half than we did in the first, but I just — I’m that guy that I want to fight until there’s, you know, no time left on the clock,” Lanning said.

“So, that’s the mindset. When you leave that game, after the game’s over with, you’re like, ‘Okay, how do we make sure that doesn’t happen again?’ Ohio State’s an unbelievable team. You know, really well-coached. Coach Day did an unbelievable job this year… There are things that they did in that game that we didn’t prepare our players well for. That’s the part. Like, can you take the medicine? Can you figure out what didn’t go right? But if you’re wired the right way — watching Houston (men’s basketball) the other night, and you’re watching Coach [Kelvin] Sampson, he’s been coaching for a long time, that guy’s deserving of a national championship, how hard he’s worked — he’s never touched it. That shows you how hard it is to get. So hard to get. But if you’re motivated the right way, those moments — those are growth moments. That’s a chance to say, ‘I’m going to improve.’”