Oregon Ducks head coach Dan Lanning certainly made his feelings about the Colorado Buffaloes clear before and during their game against Deion Sanders’ squad on Saturday.
“Rooted in substance. Not flash. Rooted in substance. Today, we talk with our pads. We talk with your helmet. Every moment,” Lanning told his team. The Cinderella story is over, man. They’re fighting for clicks, we’re fighting for wins. There’s a difference,” he said. “This game ain’t gonna be played in Hollywood. It’s gonna be played on the grass.”
Naturally, much of the college football world weighed in on the Oregon Ducks head coach’s speech to his team and of course, reactions were mixed.
Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban added his two cents to the whole ordeal and his comments may surprise some people.
Saban seemed to be OK with the comments, but his issue was the comments getting out to the public.
Saban said as much during his weekly appearance on The Pat McAfee Show Thursday.
“In the modern world, I think you can use the media to send a message to your team,” Saban said. “I don’t think you need to do that right before the game. That’s something you do on Monday when you talk to the press or whatever and you want to get a message out there because your team’s going to hear that message, so you can reinforce it in a team meeting, but you want everybody to be thinking that way, and sometimes you want your fans to be thinking that way too so that rat poison doesn’t get to them.”
Saban has definitely used the press to his advantage to get his message across over the years but one thing the public rarely sees his is pre-game speeches and Lanning was fortunate that his speech didn’t fire up the other side before the game started.
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.