Dan Lanning claps back at Kirby Smart for SEC Media Days joke about Oregon NIL

Dan Lanning took a shot back at Kirby Smart amid the conversation surrounding Oregon’s NIL situation with Nike founder Phil Knight.

Former coach Rick Neuheisel suggested Knight was ready to pour in unlimited resources to Oregon to win a national title, which included NIL money. Smart had a witty comment about his former assistant last week.

Well, when Lanning joined Thursday’s edition of The Pat McAfee Show, he fired back.

“I think it’s impressive that you know, guys like Kirby have been signing the number one class in the nation without any NIL money this entire time,” Lanning said.

McAfee brought it up when he said “he heard” it was the case Oregon had unlimited funds. Apparently, that’s what Georgia head coach thought, or at least joked about at SEC Media Days.

“And this year, we took Nike, who I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting Phil Knight and his wonderful wife Penny,” Smart said at SEC Media Days. “And I wish I could get some of that NIL money that he’s sharing with Dan Lanning. But that’s another note.”

It seemed to be all water under the bridge for Lanning though. The Ducks head coach was appreciative of his time at Georgia, coaching under Smart.

“Obviously, Coach Smart took a little shot at us,” Lanning told McAfee. “If you wanna be a top 10 team in college football, you better have great support. We have that … It’s one plus one plus one, right? It’s also the … 300 teams that we went to this spring to visit, the 23 satellite camps. It’s when they come to your campus. It’s our staff, it’s our alignment with our entire university that makes recruiting.”

Lanning echoed those same comments this week, even making an ice cream reference. Interpret that how you want.

“The reality is, find a top-10 team in college football right now that doesn’t have great support,” Dan Lanning told ESPN. “Do we have a lot more than everybody else? I think that’d be an exaggeration or we’d never lose. Everyone else right now is focused on our ice cream cone, and if I’m busy looking at theirs, that means mine’s melting.”

Notably, Oregon does have an excellent NIL apparatus, which helps and makes the Ducks a unique program. Being unique is part of the goal for Dan Lanning and Oregon, though, be it changing uniforms weekly or bringing a giant inflatable duck to Big Ten Media Days.

“We don’t want to come in and be a team that follows the trends; we want to be a team that sets the trends,” Lanning added. “That just means studying yourself and how you can improve. It’ll be a learning experience.”