Oregon's Dan Lanning takes hypocritical shot at SEC's soft late-season schedule

It's no secret the SEC plays some questionably soft games around this time of year. Three teams ranked in the Top 10 faced low-level non-conference opposition you'd typically see in the opening weeks of a season.

In fact, they paid a combined $3 million for the late-season buy games to pad their records. That only provided easy fodder for petty critics like Oregon head coach Dan Lanning who took a shot at the Big Ten's pseudo rival during his post-game press conference after the No. 7 Ducks defeated No. 15 USC.

"I think proof's in the pudding. We played a good team, we beat them. All we can do next week is try to do the same thing. And this conference is a really good conference, it's competitive. We didn't play Chattanooga State today like some other places," Lanning jabbed. "We competed. It's tough playing nine conference games, it's tough playing in this league and we got to take advantage of playing a good team today and attacking that."

Lanning's not wrong by any means. Seeing No. 3 Texas A&M destroy Samford, No. 4 Georgia pummel Charlotte and No. 10 Alabama beat up on Eastern Illinois doesn't exactly create great optics for a conference that claims "it just means more." But the Big Ten is no better with it's scheduling, it just does a better job at hiding it.

Dan Lanning & Oregon need to look in the mirror before criticizing SEC's scheduling

Oregon began its season with four weeks of cushy opposition against Montana State, Oklahoma State, Northwestern and Oregon State. The Ducks scored a combined 203 points and only gave up 37.

The Big Ten also has its own competition issues with consistent basement dwellers like Rutgers, Maryland and Purdue offering little to no resistance in recent years.

Most SEC squads played at least one non-conference game against another Power Four opponent. Specifically -— of the teams in question this week — Alabama faced Florida State (and lost) and Texas A&M beat a ranked Notre Dame, but Georgia will have it's big test against Georgia Tech in Week 14.

This kind of scheduling is permitted by virtue of the SEC playing just eight conference games in a season, as Lanning so dutifully pointed out in his remarks. He would be intimately familiar with that dynamic considering he spent the 2018-21 seasons taking full advantage of it and winning a national championship with the Bulldogs.

Nobody's disagreeing with Lanning about how soft the SEC gets to play in the closing weeks of a season. But he's not necessarily the voice that should be taking such a sharp attitude on that position.

Oregon faced a tough opponent and won, absolutely. But the Ducks should have no qualms about making the CFP like those SEC teams. The seedings may be affected, sure, but the selection committee will take schedules into account and Oregon will see a significant boost for beating a ranked foe this late in the year.