On Friday, it sounded like the Oregon Ducks made a surprise move in hiring Georgia Bulldogs defensive coordinator Dan Lanning as their next head coach.
The move came out of nowhere if only because so much attention had been on Oregon’s push to bring back Chip Kelly. They also recently interviewed with Cal’s Justin Wilcox and BYU’s Kalani Sitake.
However, almost as soon as the news was announced by Chip Towers at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a rebuttal report by The Oregonian’s John Canzano came in via Twitter. Canzano threw cold water on the report, saying that while Lanning is a candidate, he has not officially been hired.
From there it became a cascading rollcall of tweets from reporters refuting the report that Lanning had been hired by Oregon.
It’s not often that you say major insiders and big-name newspapers differ so much on a story and all feel strong enough to go public with what their sources are telling them. Usually, one of them says something is happening and then they all follow it up with confirmation.
When in doubt, it seems like a good idea to assume the reputable reporters who follow the school in question are the ones more likely to have the story right. And in their case, they’re all saying that Lanning has not been hired. At least not yet.
Meanwhile, the AJC report has been updated to say that the official announcement won’t come until Monday. So we’ll see.
We’ll see how this wild situation resolves itself. We know that Chip Kelly was considered a major candidate and John Canzano said that there was at least one candidate currently coaching in the NFL. But in the meantime, the college football world is working overtime to figure out what’s happening.
https://twitter.com/A_G_Haubner/status/1469427470600650753
[AJC, John Canzano]
About Sean Keeley
Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Managing Editor for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.