Mighty Ducks: Oregon HC Dan Lanning has warning for Big Ten teams

Oregon Ducks head coach Dan Lanning isn't one to shy away from a hot take or two.

Last season, he famously called out Deion Sanders' Colorado squad for "fighting for clicks" while his Ducks were "fighting for wins." That was his pregame speech, and it could have gone poorly, but his team backed up his words — beating Colorado, 42-6.

In fact, Oregon backed up its head coach for most of the season. Unfortunately, the Ducks fell to No. 3 Washington in the Pac-12 Championship Game, but they didn't go down without a fight. They also finished their season off with a 45-6 demolition of Liberty in the Fiesta Bowl.

Lanning has built a program that can talk the talk and follow it up by walking the walk, which is clearly one of the reasons he feels good about the Ducks' ability to transition to being in the Big Ten. Yes, the Ducks will be dealing with a little bit of a different travel schedule (they play at Purdue, at Michigan and at Wisconsin), but Lanning doesn't think it will be that big of a deal.

"There’s going to be some things that are different about the Big Ten. I have to do some studies on travel, what travel will look like, and how that might be different, but there isn’t as much travel as most people think. We travel a good amount in the league we were just in," Lanning said on "The Ryen Rusillo Podcast" (h/t On3). 

Lanning also believes the Ducks will present more problems to the rest of the Big Ten than travel will present to the Ducks.

"I think, at the end of the day, the Big Ten’s going to have to prepare for us and what we do different for that league," he said.

Lanning is correct in that regard. Traditionally, the Big Ten is a defense-first, hard-nosed, grind-it-out conference. That's not to say the Ducks don't play tough football, but they also play a brand of explosive football that most Big Ten teams not named Ohio State don't usually feature.

The Ducks had the No. 2 scoring offense in college football last season, putting up 44.2 points per game.