"We showed the clip of Geno the other day": Dan Lanning gets real about how he navigates through new NIL landscape
Dan Lanning is one of the most versatile coaches in college football and has managed to navigate through NIL and maintain the culture at Eugene. For coaches like Kirby Smart and Nick Saban, it has been a difficult ride since top players from their teams' rosters got lured by hefty offers, affecting the program.
While speaking to former NFL stars Will Compton and Taylor Lewan on Tuesday, Lanning mentioned how he keeps the team motivated and maintains the high standards despite having a constant fear of player poaching in NIL-driven athletics.
Lanning claimed that it is all about the mindset. It's a reality that college football has changed drastically; however, he maintains a close relationship with all the players, and it's never a coach-player bond but more personal.
Drawing inspiration from legends like Geno Auriemma and other prominent figures from the sports fraternity is a tradition at Eugene.
“It's all part of the deal," Lanning said (1:15:00), via 'Bussin' With The Boys.' "I think we're just really open to talk to our players about it. Ultimately, to be a successful player, you better love football, right? You better be infatuated, and you can be unbelievably taken care of in college and now in the pros, if you attack that every single day. “We showed a clip of Geno the other day, just winning his 12th national championship, and he's talking about the standard performance and what practice has to look like to be able to compete at the highest level in a championship.
"Because what's going to happen is that the standard in practice has to be here, because you're going to fall down a little bit at the level of competition when the pressure is so high. So if you practice here all the time(low intensity), you're never going to reach that standard.”
Dan Lanning claims NIL has revealed true character of players
Dan Lanning also mentioned that his relationship with the players has always been the same. Whether he was a graduate assistant at Alabama or a coach at Oregon, his attitude with players remained constant, but the biggest thing he learned from NIL is the true character of players. The pretenders can be separated from the true ones.
He mentioned on the podcast that the true quality of a player comes out when coached differently. His coaching tactics for Bo Nix and Dillon Gabriel were different. Molding the players their way brought in a sense of uniqueness that helped the program a lot. Last season's 13-1 record is a good example of this notion.