Every football coach who starts at the high school or college level dreams of coaching in the NFL one day. It’s a natural goal… after all, the NFL is reserved for the best of the best. University of Oregon head coach Dan Lanning once shared that same dream. But life events have since steered him away from pursuing it.
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We all have goals in life, and most of us like to keep track of them. For Lanning, he writes his goals on his mirror. It’s a great way to constantly remind himself every morning of what he’s pursuing as he gets ready.
“This is my mirror when I’m at Arizona State [shows a picture of his mirror]. That’s all my goals, I still put my goals on my mirror,” Lanning shared with the Inner Circle Podcast.
Lanning worked as a graduate assistant and recruiting coordinator for ASU in 2012 and 2013. It was a crucial early step in his coaching career that gave him valuable experience. At the time, though, he still thought he wanted to be an NFL coach one day.
That all changed when Lanning took the head coaching job at Oregon.
“My next goal on there was ‘Head coach, 35.’ I wanted to be a head coach, and I thought that was really important to me. Well, I became the head coach of Oregon at 35. The next goal on there is NFL coach,” Lanning shared, before dropping a major truth bomb. “That ain’t on my goal board no more. It’s off my board, and it’ll never be up there again.”
It was a surprising revelation. In his four seasons with the Ducks, Lanning has a record of 46-7. He’s also taken the team to three bowl games, going 2-1. On top of this, he’s had Oregon ranked inside the top 10 of the AP poll regularly, and as high as the #1 team in the country.
This is to say that if Lanning wanted an NFL job, it probably wouldn’t be too hard to get one if he put his name out there. But he believes he owes it to his wife not to make life as hard as it once was when they were moving around so often. That belief was cemented when she was diagnosed with cancer in May 2016.
“I was selfish about my goals early in my career. Everything was really more about me than my wife and my boys. And that completely changed when my wife got sick. When we were in Memphis, she got diagnosed with cancer, osteosarcoma,” Lanning shared. “Now you’re on your knees praying every night, like, I just need this mom around my boys.”
It must have been a scary time for the Lanning family. Thankfully, his wife, Sauphia, completed chemotherapy and made a full recovery by May 2017. She even had surgery to remove a tumor.
That said, it wasn’t just his wife’s cancer diagnosis that made Lanning stop pursuing the NFL. He also mentioned feeling bad for his kids, who moved around 7 times throughout their childhood.
“When I took this job [at Oregon], I made a promise to my kids that they’re going to graduate from the same high school, middle school. Those things are way more important to me than getting the opportunity to coach in the NFL. I used to have that dream; that’s not a dream of mine anymore. I truly believe this will be my last job,” Lanning concluded.
A massive statement coming from one of the biggest coaches in college football. It sounds like Lanning wants to coach at Oregon for as long as he possibly can. He’s been so good for the program when it comes to recruiting, winning, and setting a culture. Surely, the school will allow him to coach for the foreseeable future.
All in all, not every coach has a dream of making it to the NFL, and not all should. Nick Saban, one of the greatest college football coaches ever, coached the Miami Dolphins from 2005 to ‘06. That didn’t go to plan, as he went 15-17 in that span. This is to say that some coaches are built for the college landscape, and Lanning fits that mold perfectly as well.
