Dan Lanning began his Monday press conference talking about something considerably larger than the football game Oregon will play Saturday. He had spent part of the bye week recruiting locally when he learned about the traumatic injury suffered by Sweet Home football player Mason Flores, and Lanning, himself the father of two sons who play football, offered his thoughts to Flores, his family and teammates before allowing the conversation to turn toward UCLA.
“Life is a lot bigger than football,” Lanning said. “So that’s certainly something that hits home and want to keep them in our thoughts.”
There was an unexpected symmetry to that opening because UCLA coach Bob Chesney spent part of his own press conference talking about essentially the same thing. Chesney had reached out to Lanning after Dante Moore remained in Los Angeles following the USC game, explaining that he understood what it might feel like for a team to travel home while one of its players remained behind receiving medical care.
“I think that in this profession, that’s probably one thing we share is the idea of being a team and coaches to players,” Chesney said. “Not a lot of people in the world understand what it takes to be part of a program.” He said he simply wanted Moore to know that, if necessary, someone from the football world was close enough to help.
Chesney later described coaching as a “human element business,” pushing back on the idea that everything should be reduced to Xs, Os and Saturdays. Players are sons, coaches are fathers and families throughout both programs make sacrifices that have little to do with whatever eventually appears on a scoreboard.
That mutual respect should not be confused with softness once the ball is kicked off Saturday afternoon. Lanning sees a UCLA team capable of stressing Oregon in ways that look increasingly familiar, while Chesney sees an Oregon roster without the kind of obvious weakness a staff can build an entire game plan around. Both teams used their bye weeks to study themselves, both coaches believe their teams are still becoming something and both arrive at Autzen with considerably more information than they had when September began.
