Nick Saban Questions the ‘Timing’ Of Dan Lanning’s Pregame Speech About Deion Sanders & the Colorado Buffaloes

Dan Lanning went viral for his pregame speech where he called out Deion Sanders for focusing on clicks while he plays for wins. However, Lanning was called out by many for taking shots at Coach Prime, and recently, Nick Saban too questioned the timing of his speech.

Alabama coach Nick Saban recently, in his appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, dished his honest thoughts on Oregon’s Dan Lanning’s speech addressing Coach Prime. Saban wasn’t impressed by it at all since he felt the speech wasn’t for everyone in the world to hear.

Nick Saban Wasn’t Amused by Dan Lanning’s Speech on Deion Sanders

The Dan Lanning pregame speech story has made its way back to the Oregon Ducks. The murmurs began after ABC aired just a quick snippet of Oregon’s locker room chatter before they trashed the Colorado Buffaloes by a score of 42-6 last Saturday. Now, the buzz has been recharged after Alabama Crimson Tide head man Nick Saban chimed in about it on “The Pat McAfee Show.”

Saban said, “There’s still this sacred time in the locker room that you should be able to say things to your team, to motivate your team that maybe they’re not disrespectful to the other team, but it’s not for everybody else to know. I understand what Dan, I think, was trying to say. And it was probably good for his team to hear in some ways. But it probably wasn’t good for everybody else to hear. Where do you draw the line and say? ‘Okay, there’s gotta be some time when you can talk to your team and say what you have to say, and it’s really not for everybody else to hear.’”

Even Pat McAfee nodded in agreement with Saban’s take. He felt that “apparently” even Lanning wanted somewhere for this clip to go viral. McAfee feels Dan’s ‘intent’ was to show his ‘good side’ for the world. But Saban thought using “media to send messages” just before the game might not be right.

Nick Saban Didn’t Like the Timing of Dan Lanning’s Message

Before the high-stakes showdown between Deion Sanders’ Buffs against Oregon Ducks, Coach Dan Lanning delivered a message not only to his team but also to potential recruits watching at home. He said Colorado was “fighting for clicks” while Oregon was “fighting for wins,” drawing out the difference between Buffs “social media attention” and ‘their’ on-field results. Reflecting on this, Alabama’s Nick Saban stated that while there was nothing wrong with Dan delivering the message to his boys, the timing he chose for it made little sense.

On the Pat McAfee show, Saban shared, “I think you can use the media to send a message to your team. I don’t think you need to do that right before the game. That’s something you do on Monday when you talk to the press. You wanna get a message out there because your team’s gonna hear that message, so you can reinforce it in a team meeting, but you want everybody to be thinking that way, and sometimes you want your fans to be thinking that way too, so that rat poison doesn’t get to them.”

In the end, there weren’t any shots fired by Coach Prime towards Lanning, simply because the Buffs were thrashed brutally by the Ducks a little while back, and even Dan recently showed appreciation towards the CU coach for changing the landscape of college football. All in all, it would be fair to say that things have truly mellowed down between the two star coaches.