EUGENE, Ore. — Dan Lanning walked into his postgame press conference with a big smile.
“Does anyone have a heart rate monitor?” – he joked.
Lanning is all of us, anyone who loves college football and on Saturday witnessed what makes the game so incredibly great: the tight wins and the big makes, the passion and the pageantry, the upsets and the lows. Heart racing. The pulse is beating.
Four teams in the top 25 won in overtime, two teams won by two points, and one team won by one point.
Perhaps none was crazier than what happened here in the Pacific Northwest, at roaring and rocking Autzen Stadium.
College football's two most expensive teams went to war on this field, with each estimated to have spent close to $20 million on their squads. Two big franchises in the Big Ten have been at loggerheads. Haymaking here. Top cut there.
Eight combined touchdowns. Almost 1000 meters of attack. Seven changes at the top.
Great fishing. Wild runs. Big hits.
Also crazy events. Reproach for spitting! An onside kick in the second quarter deflecting off a player. Questionable game-ending decisions. Costly late-game offensive penalty.
And finally, a long-time classic: No. 3 Oregon 32, No. 2 Ohio State 31.
“You don't get a lot of them,” says Oregon receiver Tez Johnson. “You dream of playing games like this.”
A dream, that's what it felt like. The college football dream. An epic play that paid off. Lanning described it as a heavyweight fight that went every round.
His Oregon Ducks delivered the final blow. Defensive stop, after which the opponent's quarterback was lying on the pitch. The clock is at zero. And fans flowing all over the pitch. It was pure madness. Shirtless students. Crowd surfing mascot. Even the elderly ones. The man used a cane to push through the crowd: “It makes me feel young!”
And among them, in the madness, a hero walked across the field: transfer quarterback Dillon Gabriel, minutes after a 373-yard, three-touchdown performance, a nationally televised prime-time appearance that could get him the Heisman Trophy conversation, and put the Ducks in fight for the title.
In front of a spirited, record-breaking crowd, the Ducks took the win from the Buckeyes in a game that represented the Big Ten's move: a clash against the biggest franchises in front of a national, prime-time audience.
That's why you join the Big Ten.
It ended in stunning fashion: the best player on the pitch was called for a costly penalty. After Ohio State scored the game-winning field goal, Jeremiah Smith, the Buckeyes' extremely talented freshman, pushed a defender away and took it at the Oregon 30-yard line. The flags were flying: offensive pass interference. He took the Buckeyes out of bounds in 20 seconds.
Coach Ryan Day did not decide to take a timeout. As time expired, quarterback Will Howard threw incompletes to set up the final play. After six seconds, Howard dropped back to pass, felt pressure and ran out of the pocket. He inexplicably tucked the ball, ran, and slid as the clock struck zero.
The fans poured out onto the playing surface. The Buckeyes sulked. Oregon scored a signature victory against the powerhouse of its new conference — the most significant validation yet of what Lanning has built here in Eugene. Nike-backed NIL project, cool college town, young, risk-taking coach.
Lanning pulled off a surprise in the second quarter by calling a field goal that deflected off an Oregon player and was recovered by the Ducks (leading to a field goal – which was the final difference in the game).
Then the 38-year-old coach breathed a heavy sigh. Many emotions flowed through him. The strongest of them? “Relief,” he said.
Breathe calmly. Midway through the season, the 6-0 Ducks are now in the lead in the Big Ten title race after facing their toughest test of the regular season. There's no Penn State or undefeated Indiana the rest of the way. However, an away match at the Big House is approaching.
This is obviously not the time to talk about it. It's time to discuss an epic Saturday in college football. Seven of the top 25 teams won in overtime by either two points or one point. No. 13 LSU, No. 4 Penn State, No. 23 Illinois and No. 8 Tennessee survived in overtime. No. 22 Pitt and No. 7 Alabama each scored two points.
Then it was the third-ranked Ducks and their one-point victory in electrifying conditions, and it was a perfect day for football. It was seen by a record number of 60,129 people. And they sounded like 100,000.
Lanning, who wears a headset in one ear, sometimes had to cover his open ear to hear. “It's a good thing,” he said.
They sang, danced and swayed. Finally, they charged in, leaping over barriers to reach the game surface and embrace their heroes – one in particular, Gabriel.
“A lot of F-bombs,” the quarterback said of the aftermath. “The clock strikes zero and you just enjoy it.”
He blew the Buckeyes away, completing 23 of 44 passes and throwing some of the most beautiful long balls you'll see. Ohio State came in without allowing a pass of 30 yards or more. Gabriel and his receivers had four.
Johnson caught 48 yards. Evan Stewart caught one for 69. Two more receivers caught passes for 32 yards.
“Bombs out,” Johnson said.
“We wanted to give them a show,” Stewart said.
Boy, did they do it. A 496-yard showing with seven third- or fourth-down conversions, a 100-yard rusher (Jordan James, who runs like he's “pissed off,” his coach said) and an offensive line that pushed the opposition away.
In the locker room before the game, Lanning gave his team a message: Leave it in the field. Give me everything you have.
There was also one more message.
Lanning said, “You can sleep when you die.”
