Despite rumors over the past 24 hours that Oregon Ducks head coach Dan Lanning was in Tuscaloosa Wednesday night to take the Alabama job vacated by Nick Saban, it turns out that he’s not interested.
Lanning released a video Thursday stating his intentions to stay in Eugene.
“I want to be here in Eugene for as long as Eugene will have me,” Lanning said in a voiceover in the video. “This place has everything that I could possibly ever want. This is a little bit of a problem in society today with people looking for what’s next and where there’s an opportunity, and the reality is the grass is not always greener. In fact, the grass is damned green in Eugene.”
It may come as a shock that Lanning isn’t interested in leaving Eugene but the former Georgia Bulldogs coordinator is building his own program at Oregon and may want to focus on that. Plus, at 37 years old, that would make him the youngest coach in the SEC. While Oregon is certainly a high-pressure job, especially now that they’re joining the Big Ten, it’s not the pressure cooker that working in Tuscaloosa would present. It’s understandable he’d want to stay put and finish what he’s started there.
About Stacey Mickles
Stacey is a 1995 graduate of the University of Alabama who has previously worked for other publications such as Sportskeeda and Saturday Down South.