Why Dan Lanning Will Have Epic Pregame Speech Against Michigan

Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham made some interesting comments about Oregon's NIL situation. 

It's pretty well known in college football that Oregon has one of the highest NIL budgets in the game. There's even an argument being made that Oregon has the best NIL situation out of any team in college football, so it's also important to remember that NIL doesn't necessarily translate to or guarantee wins. 

As we saw this year for Oregon, there's a scenario in which a team can get injured at any given moment. 

Just because guys are making tens of millions of dollars doesn't mean that they can't go down. That was the unfortunate reality for quarterback Dante Moore, who many figured was going to be one of the best quarterbacks in all of college football this season. Unfortunately, Moore went down with a tough injury, and his season is over.

Perhaps more interesting than anything else in a situation like this was Dan Lanning's response. 

Lanning has always been somebody who's going to stick up for this program, and while he faces a ton of pressure because of not winning a national championship yet despite spending all this money, Whittingham's comments are interesting. 

Let's be honest for a second: Michigan is paying a ton of money to a backup quarterback now, a head coach that it had to fire because of problems within the program that were created by him, and other factors.

"I've got nothing to say to Coach Whitt other than I think he's an unbelievable coach," Lanning said, per USA Today. 

"I get it. They're spending more of their money right now on their coaches they're letting go, so maybe it makes it hard to sign players. But I know they’ve signed a couple of guys that we weren’t able to compete with what they decided to do, and maybe a lot of that money is tied up for them in another player. I don’t know. But Coach Whittingham is an unbelievable coach. He’s a Hall of Fame coach. I’ve got nothing but respect for him.”

I think this is going to add some fuel to the fire in this game against Michigan on Saturday. This was already a major game for the Ducks, as one could strongly argue that winning this game would put them in a position to make the College Football Playoff, if they're not already in that mix. 

Lanning has also shown us in the past that he's not going to let comments like that just slide by. I can almost guarantee that we're going to get a video from Oregon after the game, especially if it wins, that shows Lanning speaking about this prior to his team taking the field. 

Perhaps Whittingham did that to try to save his own job, suggesting that he doesn't have the same NIL budget that others around the country do, but it was certainly interesting, to say the least.