Dan Lanning staying at Oregon
With the news of Nick Saban‘s retirement, the rumor mill has been swirling since Wednesday with speculation on who would be Alabama‘s next head coach. There were even reports late on Wednesday night that Oregon coach Dan Lanning was had traveled to Tuscaloosa for an interview, but BamaOnLine’s owner and publisher Tim Watts pushed against those reports after being unable to confirm from UA’s end.
“As we said last night, multiple people near the Oregon program have insisted Dan Lanning was in Eugene with his family last night,” Watts said on Thursday morning. “This is solely addressing the numerous reports that said he was in Tuscaloosa, which we said we couldn’t confirm (and took a little heat for it.) I’ve had several ask me about those reports, but we don’t know why it was reported. Best to ask those that did report, but it should be noted that Lanning wouldn’t have to come to Tuscaloosa to interview anyway. He would either be taking the job or not if offered.”
Well, now we know that those rumors of Lanning’s trip east were, in fact, false. Lanning himself announced that he’d remain the head coach at Oregon with this video posted to his social media on Thursday:
— Dan Lanning (@CoachDanLanning) January 11, 2024
Watts pointed something else out soon after the news broke. When you think about it, where did these rumors even start? No one from Alabama’s side has given any potential candidates, so was the interest in Lanning — or at least to the degree that was being reported — ever real?
“You don’t know if a shot was missed if you aren’t even sure a shot was taken,” he said in a post on the Round Table message board. “Not a single person has identified a coach as a UA target or confirmed contact with a coach.
“The Lanning stuff started with a group of coaches who made sense as ‘possible’ targets. Then, several false reports that he was in Tuscaloosa, a mere two hours after Nick Saban retired (despite living across the country) and then now him saying he was staying. If the ‘Lanning was in Tuscaloosa’ reports didn’t happen, I don’t think this would have ramped up the way it did so fast.”
Obviously, Lanning is a young coach who’s done a fantastic job at Oregon. Plus, he’s got Alabama and other SEC ties. So the fit makes sense. I wouldn’t be shocked at all to learn that Greg Byrne and company had interesting in him, but we do need to be careful with information being put out — and by whom. BOL isn’t going to jump the gun on any of this. The goal is to provide correct information, and we’re striving to do that to the best our ability.
Stay tuned.
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