EUGENE, Ore. — Somewhere in those 6.5 hours of perpetual pain, Dan Lanning’s phone lit up. But he didn’t see it. He was wincing.
was breathing deeply. Alec Turner, the artist tasked with completing the massive tattoo on the left side of Lanning’s chest, saw the name on the screen, and his eyes bulged.
The incoming call? Phil Knight.
So Turner removed the needle piercing the ribs of Oregon’s gregarious football coach and deadpanned: “Hey, man, you should probably answer this.”
When Phil Knight calls, you stop what you’re doing. Lanning sat on the table, swiped his phone screen and took a respite to talk to the founder of Nike and Oregon’s most famed alumnus and donor. Lanning told Knight where he was and what he was cramming into one session.
The permanent portrait of Lanning’s wife, Sauphia, is sprinkled with various homages to their journey through life —and football — together.
Before Turner dipped the needle in ink on Jan. 4, 2023, he offered Lanning numbing cream. Lanning declined but now admits that, as the hours dragged on, he regretted that decision. He thought to himself: I’m a football coach, right? I should be able to handle this.
“I just didn’t have a big window of time,” Lanning says. “Pain is weakness leaving the body. Let’s go. Knock it out.”
He had just finished his first year as head football coach at Oregon, where the Ducks won 10 games, were in the College Football Playoff conversation most of the season and had a top-10 recruiting ranking for the 2023 class. He was already hooked on life in Eugene.
These were the first steps in Lanning’s project to not only build Oregon into a winner his way, but to sustain it for years to come.
His second season with the Ducks in 2023 was another step forward, showcased by a record-setting offense that wowed even a fan base accustomed to them.
But nearly a year to the date he had his map charted in ink, the ultimate test of allegiance arose.
On Jan. 10, 2024, Alabama’s Nick Saban announced his retirement, rocking the college football universe. Lists of candidates to replace the seven-time national championship-winning head coach were formulated by the sport’s insiders almost immediately. Most put Lanning at the epicenter of the speculation cycle.
The Lanning-to-Alabama conjecture lasted not even 24 hours, despite false reports that he was in Tuscaloosa interviewing to replace the legend for whom he’d once worked.
It ended with a close-up of Lanning, puffing smoke from a cigar, announcing that he was — as he says again and again — “10 toes down” in Eugene.
Ask Lanning if he turned down Alabama, and he flashes a grin. “When you’re in a situation where your answer is already going to be no, people don’t ask you those questions.”
At Oregon, Lanning enjoys a fully guaranteed deal that pays more than $7 million a year through the 2029 season and requires a $20 million buyout to leave early, in addition to the perks of running a program with the support of Nike’s deep pockets.
But conventional wisdom posits that most coaches linked to the highest profile and most illustrious job in the sport would at least open up a lane for communication.
Lanning, turns out, isn’t all that conventional.
The digital clock inside Lanning’s office runs vertically on the wall to the right of his vast desk. The Ducks-green seconds tick away alongside the minutes and hours to tell Lanning how much time he has. On this visit, he would turn 38 the next day, but Lanning would rather talk about anything else.
“Twenty-one is the last time I celebrated a birthday,” he says.
So what about how, at 19, on a waiter’s salary at Outback Steakhouse, he purchased a house on Elizabeth Street in Liberty, Mo., while balancing life as a Division II linebacker at William Jewell College? He had four teammates move in who helped pay the mortgage.
It’s been nearly 20 years since they huddled together for Nintendo 64 tournaments. If a roommate was short one month, Lanning would cover for them. But he wouldn’t forget about it.
Leaning forward in a chair, Lanning says, “Realizing early you can create your own success with hard work is something that stuck out with me.”
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