Dan Lanning: Spending on player retention is ‘necessary challenge’ amid rising roster costs
· Yahoo Sports
CHICAGO – Heading into the second year of the revenue-sharing era, roster costs are still rising across college football. The idea of a $40 million team seemed like a “myth” last season, but is now very much a reality.
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To Oregon head coach Dan Lanning, that trend seems like it will continue. He called for more structure in the space to help stop the surge in spending and also voiced his support for a potential pool of money for player retention, calling it “reasonable” and “necessary.”
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Lanning said most of the money programs spend on rosters goes toward bringing players back for the upcoming season. He stressed the value of retaining key talent, which he called one of the big challenges of the modern era. Though it’s not necessarily easy, it’s still important.
“Some of the most spending that occurs right now in building a roster is roster retention,” Lanning said Wednesday at Big Ten Media Days. “If you ask any coach – at least for me, personally, I would much rather keep a good player in my program that I think is going to be a good player in the future, than see them go somewhere else because they can get paid more [somewhere] else. I think we would all agree the amount of players in the portal is not necessarily a great thing for the sport.
“The more you can retain the guys that are on your current roster, I think that helps. Does it create a little more of a challenge for programs? Absolutely. Is that a necessary challenge? Absolutely.”
Dan Lanning warns of ‘consequences’ when making rules
The idea of a retention “cap” has become a key part of the dialogue on Capitol Hill with Protect College Sports Act negotiations continuing. A $25 million pool is among the revisions to the bipartisan Senate bill, On3’s Pete Nakos reported. The Big Ten and SEC remained in negotiations with legislators as of Thursday morning, though time is ticking with a recess looming.
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Dan Lanning said both the Big Ten and officials at Oregon have listened to what coaches had to say about the bill, which the conference has said it still does not support in its current state. With that, he had a warning about the impact new rules could have.
“In college football, a lot of times, we make rules and then we don’t think a lot about the consequences of those rules until afterwards,” Lanning said. “And it’s always hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
“There’s certainly been a lot of conversations. I trust that they’ll do the best they can to make sure it’s the best possible for everybody in the sport.”