Looking back at a college football coaching carousel can be a wild thing. 

Head coach Dan Lanning’s 2021 class is the perfect example, with one coach’s decision affecting the others and the landscape of college football molded significantly for the foreseeable future.  

Each one is different, with surprising risers everywhere and some of the most obvious hires (like Wisconsin and head coach Luke Fickell) likely being regretted a few years down the line. 

When USC and Oregon meet up in a top-20 nationally televised showdown, it’ll be another meeting between two programs that have taken two drastically different paths to their current success.

USC poached head coach Lincoln Riley from another typical college football superpower, The University of Oklahoma, and quickly reached a false peak in a sugar-high 2022 season; USC soon crashed back down to earth before rising again to an 8-2 record in 2025. 

Oregon, on the other hand, lost its head coach in that same cycle and actually came out better off for it. Mario Cristobal is likely to remain without a College Football Playoff berth through four years at the University of Miami. 

Riley had to redefine himself and his program’s image — the Trojans lost all three of their five-star recruits in the 2023 recruiting cycle to the transfer portal — to achieve success again. 

Lanning, on the other hand, has been a perfect example of a perfect fit, making a hiring decision successful, more than any other factor. For Lanning, it was parlaying his gritty and tough culture with the glitz and investment that Oregon has in athletics. 

Now, every team with a head coach opening is looking for someone with a Lanning-like combination of “it” factor and loyalty.

That, coupled with incomparable loyalty and being damn good at his job, has left Lanning among college football’s elite. 

It’s reasonable for skeptics to ask what Lanning has really won thus far, but patience and acceptance that what Curt Cignetti is doing at Indiana in just year two — while some coaches are yet to win in years three and four — is further proof that comparison is the thief of joy. 

Still, it’s not hyperbole or looking at the situation with green and yellow colored lenses to say Lanning has risen among the rest of his coaching class and into the top class of college football coaches as a whole. 

For one, he wins. 

Lanning is 42-7 in his head coaching career, a number only outdone by his two regular season losses — one to Washington and one to Indiana this season — since his first season as the head man. 

Secondly, Lanning has done what very few coaches have done at Oregon, which is establish the Ducks as a sure-fire perennial contender in the same category as University of Georgia and Ohio State. 

He’s done so while shutting down surfacing rumors anytime a major head coaching job has come up. 

“I feel like I have the things necessary here to win. So, how much money does a person need to make? What do you really need in your life?” Lanning said in a 2024 interview with ESPN. “For me, I want to be in a place where I can win championships. I feel like we’re close to that here. And then there is a level of loyalty to people who gave you an opportunity. Why should anybody ever trust me again if I do leave here for something else?”

Winning in college football can come in a variety of ways. It’s just that under Lanning, it’s come a little easier than most for Oregon. 

That brings the Ducks to the home stretch of the final season, and don’t feel bad, Minnesota defense. No one can really fully drag Oregon down right now. 

With the ball on the 40-yard line in the second quarter of the Ducks’ 42-13 win over the Golden Gophers, offensive coordinator Will Stein called a run to Noah Whittington. After being handed the ball from Dante Moore in the backfield, the senior running back appeared to be stopped for a sizable gain before slipping out and running into the end zone. 

Watching the replay, at least seven Gophers were in near contact with Whittington and still none could take him down. Whittington lost control of the ball in the end zone but retained possession and the touchdown stood.

“I think it’s a culture play up until that moment where we didn’t have good ball security at the finish,” Lanning said. “So, we can coach that moment. I know Noah will be hard on himself, but we got to handle the ball better there.”

Perhaps no better play can sum up Oregon’s season than that. Oregon’s been in rainy cage matches with Wisconsin and Iowa, and will now head into the final two games of the season ready to take USC and Washington’s best punches. 

Oregon out-Iowa-ed a Hawkeyes program built on running the ball and dominating the trenches, then six days later, with Minnesota off a bye, dominated a team that prides itself on stopping the run and using multiple tight ends at their own game. 

In getting those key late-season wins, Oregon has had to manage significant injuries to its two best receiving weapons in Dakorien Moore and Kenyon Sadiq, all while balancing a shuffled offensive line, short weeks and freshmen scattered throughout. 

“Yeah, we’ve said strength in numbers all season, and you know, these last couple games, it’s really starting to show up where, you know, we need other guys to step up and create opportunities, and they’ve done a great job of that,” Lanning said after the Minnesota game. 

The Ducks have played far from perfect football, but peaking in Week 12 is overrated. Just ask Oregon last year. And who’s to say Oregon doesn’t have its best football ahead of it? Evan Stewart and Dakorien Moore’s returns seem inevitable. 

If Stein can engineer 510 total yards against Minnesota’s previously-respectable defense, imagine what he can do with the addition of two of the best weapons in college football. Much like Whittington, Oregon will have to be better down the stretch, mainly due to its opponents. 

Watch out. The Ducks are surging through the Big Ten yet again and very few have been able to bring them down.