Modern Big Ten supremacy on line in Rose Bowl between Ohio State, Oregon

A little more than five months ago, during the third week of July, the opening soliloquy for Oregon head coach Dan Lanning at Big Ten Football Media Days in Indianapolis lasted nearly nine minutes.

It began with a customary expression of gratitude for conference commissioner Tony Petitti, who welcomed the Ducks into their new league earlier this year, and included an overview of the Lanning family's summer: a family vacation in Missouri, a stint at church camp for his three sons, a wife "ready to send me back to work" after a bit too much time together. He detailed the tragic loss of former cornerback Khyree Jackson in a multi-car accident that shook the program, a coaches’ retreat for his staff in Central Oregon and some of his team’s off-field efforts to strengthen the culture, from reading "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu to working with Sleep in Heavenly Peace and providing more than 200 beds for children in need.

For some of the reporters in attendance at Lucas Oil Stadium that morning — and for the television audience watching live on Big Ten Network — this was a formal introduction to a coach who would quickly become one of the conference’s leading figures.

Oregon was set to enter the 2024 season ranked No. 3 in both the AP Top 25 Poll and the AFCA Coaches Poll — the highest of all Big Ten teams not named Ohio State, and that meant Lanning shouldered much loftier expectations than his counterparts at USC, UCLA and Washington — the other three exiles from a crumbled Pac-12. Lanning concluded his opening remarks by leaning into everything Oregon already claims to be and the new heights it's hoping to reach.

"What should the Big Ten know about Oregon?" Lanning asked rhetorically. "We're mighty different … in a lot of