Oregon football ready to face Deion Sanders’ Colorado: ‘One of those marquee games’
Never one to admit looking ahead, Oregon football coach Dan Lanning couldn’t wait to get out of his postgame press conference after a dominant 55-10 win over Hawaii Saturday night.
The Ducks’ next opponent, the No. 19 Colorado Buffaloes, were likely playing on a nearby TV screen as they battled with Colorado State on ESPN.
“I’m hoping you guys will stop asking me questions so I can go watch the rest of their game,” Lanning quipped.
But after the Buffaloes opened their season with a victory over then-ranked TCU, and subsequently defeated Nebraska and eked out an overtime win over Colorado State, Oregon’s conference opener against the Buffaloes will have a different kind of attention on it than any game the Ducks have played this season.
After ESPN’s FPI projected the Buffaloes to win 2.7 games this season, Colorado has already eclipsed that mark and cracked the AP Top-25 under first-year coach Deion Sanders.
“I'd be a fool not to recognize all of the success they have created on a team that didn’t have a lot of success before,” Lanning said. “He’s done a phenomenal job and recruited a lot of players that I am familiar with personally, that are there playing for him, they’ve got a good roster, and they are winning games. It doesn’t matter how but they're winning games.”
The Buffaloes have had a tumultuous nonconference season but will arrive in Eugene Saturday a perfect 3-0. The latest win was a come-from-behind, 43-35 victory over rival Colorado State in Boulder, which included more than its fair share of antics on and off the field.
After Rams head coach Jay Norvell made comments about Sanders’ tendency to wear a hat and sunglasses at press conferences, Sanders gifted his entire team a pair of sunglasses in an Instagram post, and said the game had become “personal.”
The actual game between the Buffaloes and Rams featured 27 penalties and included a pregame scuffle between the two rivals.
Now Sanders and his undefeated Buffaloes are waltzing into Eugene to take on the undefeated No. 10 Ducks.
“We’re excited to go play a great opponent,” Lanning said. “This is going to be an awesome atmosphere for the Oregon Ducks and this is one of those marquee games that we are really excited about, so we know we’re going to get everybody’s best which is exactly what we want. I have a lot of respect for that team and obviously they are a completely different team than they were last year so let's see what they look like when they go out on the field. I hope we get their best and we are certainty going to try and give them ours.”
Alec Dietz covers University of Oregon football, women's basketball and baseball for The Register-Guard. You may reach him at adietz@registerguard.com, and you can follow him on Twitter @AlecDietz.
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Oregon football ready to face Deion Sanders’ Colorado Buffaloes
