'He's always looking for an advantage': How Dan Lanning's William Jewell years shaped his meteoric rise
From having his teammates pay his mortgage to late-night whiteboard sessions, Oregon's new coach has always thought — and acted — outside the box.
Dan Lanning needed a place to live.
Between shifts at Outback Steakhouse and lifting sessions with football teammates, the 30-mile commute between his home in Richmond (Mo.) and Liberty, where he attended William Jewell College, wasn’t cutting it during the summer.
He had lived in the dorms as a freshman and then rented a place with a few teammates as a sophomore — a two-year course in adulting that left the future Oregon coach confident in the next logical option, something teammate Zach Cunningham learned of when Cunningham showed up to meet the linebacker at a single-level home a few minutes from campus on Elizabeth Street.
“I get there and Lanning and his dad are walking through the place. Typical ranch house. Nothing too great about it, but his dad kept saying, ‘If you buy it. If you buy it,’” Cunningham said. “And I go, ‘What?,’ and he’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to buy this thing.”
Renting was a waste of money, Lanning figured, and he had a better idea: Buy the house, rent the extra rooms out to his teammates and eventually leave Liberty with a diploma and nest egg.
“He was certainly more of a forward thinker than the rest of us,” said Nick Persell, a tenant and teammate of Lanning’s at William Jewell. “He saw an opportunity. It’s probably no more different now than ever.”
Now, Lanning is the coach of a program with complex terrain to navigate. The Ducks have an aging mega-booster and a fanbase shell-shocked after two departures of coaches to Florida in the last four years. There’s talent on the roster and win-now expectations, even with major ground to cover in pursuit of programs like the one Lanning left at Georgia. It’s a nuanced job that requires deft handling. It’s not one to take without fully knowing what’s at hand.
And while yes, Lanning is only 35 and has never been a head coach and has few ties to the West Coast, his old tenants will say that there’s nothing Lanning gets into without a plan.
“The guy oozes confidence,” Cunningham said. “There’s never a time where I’ve ever talked to Daniel where he didn’t know what he was doing.”
NFL dreams don’t go far at William Jewell.