Oregon Coach Dan Lanning Has Zero Regrets After Taking Shots At Colorado, Says It's 'Great' If Deion Sanders' Team Uses Them As Motivation

Oregon football coach Dan Lanning took vicious shots at Colorado during the summer when reflecting on the Buffaloes leaving the Pac-12 for the Big 12 beginning next season. Now that his Ducks are set to host the unbeaten and media darling Buffaloes this weekend, Lanning isn't backing down from his jabs. Instead, he's leaning into them.

As my fellow OutKicker Zach Dean poetically put it in July, "Lanning dug a hole, put the Buffaloes in a body bag, and buried them six feet under."

“Not a big reaction. I’m trying to remember what they won to affect this conference,” Lanning said when asked about Colorado leaving the Pac-12. “I don’t remember … do you remember them winning anything? I don’t remember them winning anything.”

Lanning's claim that Colorado never won anything during its Pac-12 stay is accurate. The Buffaloes did win the South division in 2016, but were throttled by Washington in the conference title game 41-10. If you take away Colorado's 4-2 record during the pandemic-plagued 2020 season, the program has had exactly one winning season since joining the conference in 2011.

Dan Lanning isn't walking back his previous comments about Colorado football. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

Speaking ahead of this week's showdown with Colorado, Lanning insisted that he wasn't speaking about Sanders' team when he made his comments earlier in the summer. Sanders had already been hired by Colorado at that point, but Lanning claims he was strictly talking about the past.

"I don't regret anything I've said on behalf of this program," Lanning told reporters on Wednesday. "At the end of the day, obviously I wasn't talking about Deion's team. I'm talking about the past, and the future for our team. But if that serves as material for them, great.

"I don't think it's going to have any bearing on the game."

Dan Lanning Gives Colorado Free Bulletin Board Material

Past trash-talking aside, Lanning electing to say it's "great" if his comments serve as motivational material for the Buffaloes is a bit bold.

Sanders' message to his team through three weeks of the season has been about the opposition 'making it personal' and that message has worked seeing as how Colorado is 3-0 to start the year.

Interestingly enough, Sanders and the Buffaloes have been relatively quiet ahead of their matchup at Oregon. Which is by far and away the toughest test they've faced this season.