Orange Bowl coaches Joey McGuire, Dan Lanning cut from the same cloth
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MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Take away the Texas twang in Joey McGuire’s voice and it would be hard to tell the head coaches of the Texas Tech and Oregon football teams apart.
Dan Lanning and McGuire are cut from the same cloth, two men who began their coaching careers cutting their teeth in the high school ranks, then badgering their way into the high-level jobs they have now. Lanning’s break came when he posted up outside Todd Graham’s office, looking to be a graduate assistant at Pittsburgh. McGuire’s happened when he became the undeniable choice to be the Red Raiders‘ new head coach.
Sitting on the dais in the Orange Bowl media hotel ballroom, Lanning and McGuire even sounded the same. They both have ideas for how to fix college football’s calendar (start the season earlier, end it on New Year’s Day) and rely on personal relationships with their players in what’s become a transactional era of college sports.
McGuire admitted Wednesday he doesn’t have a ton of hobbies outside of football. One of them is watching other coaches press conferences. He inevitably winds up watching Lanning on a regular basis.
“I just think he does it the right way,” McGuire said of Lanning earlier this month. “You could just tell by the way his players play for him. They play with an edge, and they play with such great effort. You know that comes from him and his coaching staff.”
Lanning shares the appreciation for McGuire.
“I think Joey’s enthusiasm is infectious,” Lanning said. “You see his team play with the passion that he coaches with. He’s not afraid to get in there and coach his guys, speaks his mind. Think he speaks a lot of common sense for the game of football.”
McGuire and Lanning have been two of the more outspoken coaches about the current structure of the college football calendar. Lanning’s predicament is different, having to navigate both of his top assistant coaches having been hired as head coaches elsewhere while preparing the Ducks for the CFP quarterfinals.
The two coaches also agree that while going to Miami is a fun experience, their matchup should be in Lubbock’s Jones AT&T Stadium, not Hard Rock Stadium. To Lanning, he takes his role as a prominent coach seriously, knowing his voice carries considerable weight.
“I think honesty always pays off,” Lanning said. “And every coach, regardless of who you are, you’re sitting here and you want to try to speak for the best interest of your program, but there’s also some thing that are in the best interest of football. I think that’s where you have a stage and you have an opportunity to speak your mind. You should take advantage of that opportunity as well.”
McGuire said “it’s like looking in a mirror” when comparing the two football teams, and that extends beyond the playing field. Oregon and Texas Tech also occupy a space in the NIL market, the Ducks having been a program at the forefront of the movement long before paying players was legalized thanks to their connection to Nike. Texas Tech, meanwhile, is the new kid trying to put itself into contention of national contender on a yearly basis.
While both coaches have the greater good of the sport they love on their minds, Lanning and McGuire know everything starts at home. That means keeping the focus and attention on their teams, their programs and their players.
“As a parent, it certainly always starts with the players,” Lanning said. “And I always think about my three boys, if they were playing football. For me, what would I want that to look like? What lessons would I want them to learn? So, for me, it probably starts from the landscape of a father first, and then as head coach of Oregon and what’s best for Oregon.”
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Lanning, McGuire lead Oregon, Texas Tech football in similar ways
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