Oregon insured future under Dan Lanning with high buyout number

Oregon head coach Dan Lanning may have coached the Ducks for only one year but the administration has already liked what it has seen. The school and Lanning agreed to a contract extension last week.

The move should give the Ducks some stability as it enters an unknown future. ScoopDuck’s Justin Hopkins hopped on Andy Staples podcast Wednesday night to discuss the contract extension.

One aspect of the deal that sticks out to Hopkins is the buyout number.

“It’s funny. Just talking to fans on my message board, it was like, hey, look, if something happened to Nick Saban, Kirby Smart and they wanted Dan Lanning, there’s no buyout that could keep those schools from coming,” Hopkins said. “Well then the $20 million buyout comes out and I think, yeah, that might do it. By the time the $20 million buyouts there; by the time, let’s say you’ve got to increase his $7 million salary than it is currently — you’re talking probably 8 million, 9 million, whatever the number is – you’re talking about $30 million if you want to hire Dan Lanning.”

The contract extension runs through the 2028 season. It will play him $45 million over the next six seasons

He was making $4.6 million this past season when the team went 10-3 on the season.

“I would imagine that he would have needed to (win) two national championships at that point for that to make sense to anybody,” Hopkins said. “I think Oregon kind of got it right here. It was a great contract for both sides. Obviously Dan Lanning is earning more money. The cool part is this is something Rob Boland has never done in the past. He’s never been this ambitious this early on in a coach’s career to kind of re-up or re-negotiate their salary. So it shows a commitment from that side. Then Dan Lanning reward him and said, Hey, look, I’ll agree to a $20 million buyout. So both sides got something at the table and it gives Oregon that continuity that they’ve been chasing since the Chip Kelly, Mark Helfrich years.”

Kelly coached the Ducks from 2009-2013 while Helfrich coached the team from 2013-2016. Neither of which were long tenures but felt longer due to their impact and also because of what came next.

Willie Taggart lasted one year before taking the job at Florida State. Mario Cristobal then took over and held the reigns until 2021 when he left for his alma mater Miami.

Staples said he thinks the situation with Lanning even as other jobs open up will be different than Taggert and Cristobal because he doesn’t have any deep roots anywhere.

“I also think Dan Lanning is a little bit different situation than Willie Taggart and Mario Cristobal, who were guys that had been tied to a geographical region before they went out to Oregon,” Staples said. “Dan Lanning’s from Kansas. He’s coached at Memphis. He’s coached at Georgia. He’s been at Alabama. He’s been at Arizona State. He’s been in different places. And so there’s no necessarily ‘I’m going home situation.’ Well, I don’t think Kansas can afford it. Let’s be perfectly honest. But it feels like that that also makes this situation different.”

Hopkins agreed with the statement.

“Lanning’s not tied to any one school,” Hopkins said. “For me, I said, Georgia and Alabama just because it seems like well, if he’s leaving, he’s going somewhere that’s a proven winner. Those are the two that came to mind. But he doesn’t have any special ties to those. He coached them briefly, but it’s not like he was tenured there for 10 years or anything like that.”