Oregon Coach Dan Lanning Roasts Teams Complaining About Missing Out On CFB Playoff, Gets One Thing Wrong

Dan Lanning does not have a lot of patience for teams complaining about missing out on the College Football Playoff. 

His Oregon Ducks team opens their playoff on Saturday, December 20 in Eugene against James Madison after finishing out an 11-1 regular season. Oregon deserved to get in as clearly one of the best handful of teams in the country. Its one loss was to an undefeated No. 1 Indiana Hoosiers team. The Ducks had quality wins over a good USC team, tough Iowa Hawkeyes group in brutal conditions, and on the road against the Washington Huskies. And helped pave the way for James Franklin to get pushed out at Penn State by winning at Beaver Stadium. 

Nobody argued that the Ducks should be left out of the playoff field. But those last few spots in the top 12 were widely debated, and those debates and disagreements have continued in the days after the committee announced their selections. 

Alabama is in, despite finishing 10-3, looking awful in their last two games, including a humiliating defeat in the SEC Championship Game. Notre Dame is out, despite losing two games by a combined four points to top-10 programs. Miami is in, despite not reaching the ACC Championship Game thanks to some convoluted tiebreakers. BYU is out after losing in the Big 12 Championship Game to top-4 Texas Tech, because the loser of some conference championship games deserve to be punished, apparently, but not others. Vanderbilt is out, despite finishing 10-2 in the SEC.

Several of these programs, particularly Notre Dame, have expressed their frustration with the process and the outcome. The Irish declined a bowl bid, essentially taking the ball and going home. Lanning was asked how he feels about the Playoff Committee and the outcomes during a recent appearance on "The Jim Rome Show" and made some pointed comments about the teams complaining after being left out. 

EUGENE, Ore. - Oregon Ducks quarterback Dante Moore (5) passes the ball during the college football between the Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers on September 20, 2025 at Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon. (Photo by Brian Murphy/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Dan Lanning Says Complaining Teams ‘Didn’t Win Enough'

"Well, I think it's flawed," Lanning said about the process. "But again, the one thing you control is winning. So anybody that's complaining they're not in means they didn't win enough. It's your fault if you don't make it, but there's definitely some things that could be different. If you're in it, that means you won enough, if you didn't, that means you didn't win enough. There's always going to be, if we made it 24 teams, everybody would talk about who the 23rd and the 24th team was. It doesn't really matter, it was no different when it was four. There will always be a discussion there. Ultimately, you always control your destiny if you win enough games."

Here's the thing about his answer, there's some truth to it, and there's some major inaccuracies to it.

Obviously, winning is the most important thing. Except, of course, a 13-0 Florida State Seminoles team was left out of the field just a few years ago because their quarterback got hurt. "You didn't win enough" doesn't really hold water when you go undefeated and are pushed out. "You always control your own destiny if you win enough games" is simply not true.

Oregon went 11-1 in the regular season. BYU went 11-1 in the regular season. Oregon is in the playoff, BYU is out. That's the problem with his argument in college football. Records are not created or made equally. Notre Dame went 10-2 in the regular season, and they're out. Miami is 10-2, and they're in. Alabama went 10-2 before getting obliterated by Georgia to finish 10-3. They're in. 

How do we determine what "winning enough games" means when teams can finish with the exact same number of wins and either be included or excluded? Sure, going undefeated would get a team included now, but it didn't for Florida State a few years ago. And there's only one undefeated team in a Power 4 conference this year. 

Because it's all but impossible to finish out a 12-0 or 13-0 season in the NIL era, we're going to necessarily be debating between teams that have the same records. And when that's the case, you can't control your own destiny. Even schedules that are often set years in advance, can change how the committee views your resume. Notre Dame has a scheduling agreement with the ACC for five games. The ACC this year was very weak, meaning that its "conference" schedule included Miami, NC State, Boston College, Syracuse, Stanford and Pittsburgh. The games the Irish scheduled on their own, "controlling their destiny," as Lanning says, were Texas A&M, USC, Purdue, Boise State, and Navy. That's a tougher non-conference schedule than almost any SEC team played. It still wasn't enough to control their own destiny with a 10-2 record.

Oklahoma, which did make the playoff at 10-2, scheduled Michigan, but then also Illinois State, Temple, and Kent State. In competitive games against actual college football teams, the Sooners went just 7-2. That was enough. It's easy to say "win and you're in." The reality is that's not even remotely close to true.