Dan Lanning, Joey McGuire Preview Orange Bowl Matchup

On Wednesday both head coaches in Dan Lanning and Joey McGuire met with media. This will be the final availability with the game set for a 9 AM PST kickoff on January 1.

Both coaches had plenty to say about this experience with mutual respect for one another. There were questions about mindset, the long layoff and the current CFB calendar.

Here are some of the top responses and a video included below.

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McGuire: Opening Comments

“Thank you. Man, we’re just, we’re really excited and honored to be here. You know, I’m kind of one of those guys like can fanboy really easy over great coaches, you know, and I’m a huge fan of Dan’s. I watch a lot of his stuff that he puts out on social media or anytime, you know, there’s a press conference. It’s kind of one of my, I don’t have a lot of hobbies, but that’s one I pay attention to a lot of coaches around the nation, especially the guys that are doing it right.

And so we’re really honored and excited to play in this game and play against such a great team like Oregon. And so I think it’s going to be the best game without a doubt in these quarterfinals. You’ve got two great teams. We were talking earlier. I mean, it’s like looking in a mirror. You’ve got great defenses. You’ve got explosive offenses. I think both of our offenses probably produced the most explosive plays in college football this year. And so it’s going to be a lot of fun tomorrow. We’re excited to be here and we got a big day today. It’s our fast Friday on a Wednesday and then we’ll be ready to go tomorrow. So just thank you for letting us be a part of this. I promise you we’ll be ready to go.”

Lanning: Opening Comments

“Yeah, certainly honored to be here. First, I want to thank the Orange Bowl. The hospitality has been first notch. Really honored to get the opportunity to share a stage with Coach McGuire. You know, both of us started off as high school coaches. I’m sure he’s very similar to me in the sense that we pinch ourselves every day to get to do what we do and who we do it with.

Obviously, Texas Tech has an unbelievable team, and he’s right when you watch it. You know, something we’ve talked about since we arrived here is our ability to create explosive plays and eliminate explosive plays. When you look at both these teams, they’re two of the best in the nation at doing that, creating explosive plays, and certainly two of the best in the nation at eliminating that.

So this will be an exciting game, certainly an exciting opportunity for us. A lot of these last few weeks for us has been about creating that rhythm that you have as a team. And you heard Coach just say it’s Fast Friday. I had somebody text me this morning about it being Wednesday. I said, what are you talking about? It’s Friday. Your clock’s off a little bit as a coach, but our players have prepped really, really hard, and there’s a ton of respect for Texas Tech and what they’ve been able to create this year, the way they play, and I think that’s a true indication of the way Coach McGuire coaches.

But our guys are really excited about this opportunity to share a field, and it’s an awesome venue to get to be a part of.”

Lanning: On Coaching Exits

“Yeah, I talk about it a lot. You know, I set goals personally for myself. And my number one goal is to help people reach their dreams and goals, and when you see a guy like Tosh Lupoi that I’ve got to work with for a long time, and Will Stein, who I’ve got to work with with the last three years, work their tail off to earn opportunities. You’re really excited, you know, and I tell every recruit that walks in our office,
look, I can’t promise you who will be here as your coaches because I want to help create their dreams as well but I can promise you I’ll be here as your head coach. That’s a piece that’ll change and I’ll say both those guys have had unbelievable focus on our team I think they both recognize they’d never have the opportunities they have if it wasn’t for the players at Oregon and the place of Oregon and I think they feel you know a term of endearment. They feel like they have they owe it to our players to give their absolute best on the way out.

And you know I remember this kind of sentimental for me leaving Georgia I went through kind of the same process and the hotel we’re staying in this week I remember hiring my strength coach Wilson Love in that hotel. You know I remember reaching out to coaches on staff and hiring them during this same process in the Orange Bowl when I was at Georgia so it’s kind of a full circle moment to see them going through the same things. But I’m very appreciative to the detail that they put in, the work that they put in. It’s led to some long nights and not a lot of sleep. But I always tell our coaching staff, you can sleep when you die. So these guys have worked really hard. They’ve earned it. I’m excited about their opportunities. I’m excited about the opportunity to grow through our team.”

Lanning: On CFB Calendar Changes

“Well, I think there’s clearly a better way. And I think it really starts with the season moving up and the playoffs not having, I mean, how many days coach is it for you between us and your last game? We played December 6th, you know, and, and I’m a hundred percent with him about moving the date.

Ultimately in my, in my mind my mind, the vision for this should be, you know, every playoff game should be played every single weekend until you finish the season. Ideally, the season, even if it means we start week zero or you eliminate a bye, the season ends January 1st. This should be the last game. It should be the championship game. And then the portal opens. Then coaches that have to move on to their next opportunities get the opportunity to move to their next opportunities.

Certainly, there’s some conversation about when, conversation about when high school signing day should be. I think that could go either way because most of us now try to get guys in as mid-year players and you want them to be able to join your program at semester, which is a challenge. But I think the first really clear indicator of a place that we can make this better is to wrap the season up.

Our national championship game this year is January 19th, and that’s really hard to envision as a coach that’s going out and trying to join a new program and start a staff. It’s hard for players to understand what continuity looks like and where they’re going to be at and to manage that with visits, the portal, everything else that exists. I think the clear indicator and the clear way to do that is to bump the season up, right?

And make sure these playoff games happen a lot faster, you know, and I’ve got a ton of respect for the NFL, but we’re a prep league for the NFL, we do a lot of favors for the NFL, right, we’re the minor league in a lot of ways, but there’s no money paid from the NFL to take care of college football, right, and in that sense, we’ve given up some of our days, right, to the NFL, we said, oh, this is, you guys get to have this day. You get to have this day. You get to have this day. Saturday should be sacred for college football, right? And every Saturday through the month of December should belong to college football, in my opinion.”

McGuire: Balancing Transactions vs Relationships

“Well, you know, I’m lucky. I think I have the best general manager in the country and James Blanchard and his staff, and we have a personnel staff. And I’m never in any meeting whenever it comes to money. You know, I try the best I can to keep the coach-player relationship as traditional as it has been whenever I was coached by Harris Brownlee and Tom McCone and the relationships I had with those guys.

And so I’m also a very emotional person so it’s better for me to not be in those meetings you know they keep it very James keeps it very black and white and as you said it’s it is very transactional but I also think there’s a lot of things that are still going on at Oregon at Texas Tech that are incredible for young people you know that we’re creating better men, you know, and I have 33 college graduates will take the field tomorrow.

We just set the all-time, we hold every GPA record in 100-year history at Texas Tech, but we just broke the record, and my team has a 3.23 GPA, so all the people saying that they came for money and, you know, we paid this and this and this man turn on the tape and see how hard we play and then guess what my guys went to class and excelled in the classroom so I think that’s still such a huge part of what we’re doing and I think whenever people come into your building and they feel that and they see that they want to come to places like Oregon and Texas Tech because it is about the money. There’s no doubt about that, but it’s also about that we can help them reach their goals and their dreams and be better people.

Lanning: Transactions vs Relationships

“Yeah, venues like this are a great example of the value that players have for organizations. And, you know, we don’t get to coach if there aren’t players. So as much as the game has changed, a lot of it still has stayed the same. You know, in year four here at Oregon, we’ve never lost a starter to the transfer portal. I think retention is the biggest piece. I think that’s really important, and that’s twofold. And it always starts for me, what can I control, the relationships.

And I want to make sure we have great, strong relationships with our players. A lot of times guys are going to choose to stay for less, right, but we also want them to be treated fair and if they have the opportunity to have success we want to make sure we’re able to maximize that opportunity and that’s not just what a school can give a player it’s the recognition a school can create. It’s the story that a school can tell.

I think Oregon and Texas Tech have both been elite at that and then it starts at high school recruiting development. You know our team has a lot of freshmen that are contributing this year right a lot of guys that they’ll make an impact and I always say if you’re good enough you’re old enough when you make an impact you know I think stepping out into that water of okay I’m gonna try this again somewhere else when you know the known right we know what exists at Oregon you know if you work your tail off you’re gonna get an opportunity I think that can be scary even if the the dollar or the price tag might be somewhere else. The known of being in a program like Oregon, getting the opportunities that you get, that’s something you want to take advantage of. And then that’s where you hope the relationship matters.

And we’ve had some really mature kids. You know, these guys have to make really mature decisions that I don’t know that I could make when I was their age. I know I’d probably screw it up. And, you know, I’d probably have a dorm room full of natural ice if I was 19 years old. But it’s changed, right? And these guys handle really, really tough decisions. And they lean on people. And you hope they get really sound advice.

But, you know, what warms your heart is the text message you get from a mom about what you’ve done for my son, from a high school coach of how you’ve, you know, created confidence in this kid. You hope all those things pay off, and they’re able to make mature decisions that are big boy decisions, right, that a lot of these guys don’t get faced with, and sometimes that means making a sacrifice, and maybe not make it as much as you might somewhere else, or being able to maximize your value at where you’re at, and I think we have had a lot of guys that have been able to maximize their value here.”

McGuire on Dante Moore:

“Well, I mean, no disrespect to any quarterback that we face, but he’s the best quarterback we’ve played all year long. And, you know, it’s, he extend plays with his feet, you know, you see that. But, you know, whenever you turn on the tape, he’s as accurate as anybody that we played or really more accurate whenever he throws the deep ball. He’s got great skill around him, but he throws a great deep ball. You know, and I just love his story.

And so you know he’s a mature person and he’s really grown because there’s not a lot of people in this day and age who would sit behind, you know, especially at the quarterback position, sit behind people. I’m really lucky. My quarterback’s been here from day one. He was born in Lubbock. He’s got a Texas Tech degree. There’s not a lot of people that do that. They don’t want to sit. They want to play right now. And, you know, he redshirted and, you know, grew as a quarterback.

And then I just think he’s dynamic. I mean, whenever you see him, he just continues to make plays. Whenever it’s time to make a play with his feet, he makes a play with his feet, makes a play with his arm. He’s tough. Just watching what they do offensively, schematically, and he also has a high football IQ because he can really digest what they do and play at a really high level.”

Lanning: On Navigating the Portal with a Win

“Yeah, more than anything, just being honest, right? Be honest with your players. The one thing I expect from anybody that enters the portal for our team is communication. You know, the University of Oregon has given you an opportunity. We’ve coached you really hard. We’ve built relationships. We expect you to be able to communicate with us on what that looks like.

You know, similar to Coach McGuire, we talked about as you come in here, you win this game, you’re going to send other people on the road in your organization than normal to help do some of the recruiting for you, and that’s why it’s important to have a really strong personnel department that can help you with that because if you continue to prepare for games and there’s opportunities to recruit, you want to make sure you’re able to take advantage of those too. And then you hope you’ve built a strong enough roster that they can manage and handle some of the distractions that exist in college football. But these guys are used to it. They’re tough. They’re resilient. They’ve dealt with it before. I think every one of them recognize how special it is to be a part. There’s only eight teams left right now. And after this game, there’ll be four teams left. To be a part of something like that doesn’t happen a lot in anybody’s lifetime.

So I hope they recognize the importance of that, the opportunity for that. And then the academic calendar is something we’ve all you know got plans for and we’ll be ready to adjust and adapt as we go but that’s college football over the last you know four years that I’ve been a part of it as a head coach is adapt right and you have to be willing to adapt and adjust and there’ll be some learning lessons this year this offseason. That we learned just like there were last season that we’ll continue to adapt to.”

Lanning: Being Prepared for January 1 Game

“Our team certainly played in a lot of big moments. You know, it’s funny, Matt, you don’t sit back and really think about what you’ve been able to accomplish because you’re always worried about what’s next.
But there’s a, you know, this is the winningest group in Oregon history over their four years. There’s some new faces in there, too. Some guys that weren’t necessarily there for the entire ride. But there’s been a standard created and an expectation created, you know, for this group. And now it’s about taking the next step.

So really excited. We want these guys to lean on their experience and what they’ve been able to do. Again, they’ve prepped really well and obviously you’re playing a great team. At this point, there aren’t any bad teams. You’re playing great teams from here on out and really excited about seeing our guys go out there and execute.”