Todd Graham: Letting Dan Lanning leave Arizona State was ‘dumbest thing I ever did’

Dan Lanning enters his third season with the Oregon Ducks leading the third-ranked team in the preseason Associated Press poll. He’s coming off an offseason where he remained committed to building at the new Big Ten school despite overtures to lead Alabama into the post-Nick Saban world.

He is arguably one of the top three coaches in college football, and an ESPN feature story on Lanning written by Paolo Uggetti includes a what-if scenario regarding Lanning’s ties to the Arizona State Sun Devils.

Lanning was given his first college coaching opportunity at Pittsburgh under head coach Todd Graham, who ultimately brought Lanning to Tempe for Graham’s first two years leading ASU. Graham expressed massive regret in how Lanning’s career forked up and away from the Sun Devils. Writes Uggetti:

After those two years as a graduate assistant and recruiting coordinator at Arizona State, Lanning got his first full-time job as a defensive backs coach and co-recruiting coordinator at Sam Houston State. Graham, who credited Lanning for the defense ASU played over his two seasons there, still rues allowing him to leave.

“Dumbest thing I ever did was let him do that,” Graham said. “I should have fired somebody and hired him. I should have hired him there and kept him there. Then he goes from there to Alabama as a GA and then goes to Memphis. And then I offered him the defensive coordinator job. Heck, I’d probably still be at Arizona State if he’d have taken it.”

But Graham knows there was nothing he could have done to keep Lanning around for long. This was just the beginning.

At Memphis from 2016-17, Lanning worked as an inside linebackers coach under Graham’s former top assistant, Mike Norvell, who is now at Florida State.

Lanning made the jump to Georgia as a linebackers coach in 2018, then got another promotion to defensive coordinator for three seasons before landing at Oregon before 2022.

How Lanning got his first opportunity under Graham paints the picture of his work ethic.

A high school teacher and coach who had met Graham at clinics with the Tulsa program, Lanning drove uninvited from Kansas City to Pittsburgh when Graham was hired there.

He got into the building, impressed Graham and earned himself a volunteer opportunity on the spot.

Above all, Graham remembered Lanning’s persistence, which led him and (defensive coordinator Keith) Patterson to allow Lanning to stick around and volunteer. The door was now ajar — Lanning drove all the way back to Kansas City and resigned from his high school job the same day.

“He’d saved money for a year to do this, and his wife stayed in Kansas City. He wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Graham said. “Then he immediately starts outworking everybody in the building.”

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