College Football

Lamborghinis, Uncle Phil and inflatable ducks: Inside Oregon's induction into the Big Ten

Updated Jul. 31, 2024 6:06 p.m. ET

College Football and College Basketball Writer

INDIANAPOLIS — A few minutes after taking his seat behind a microphone at Big Ten Media Days last week, new Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel was asked about his decision to pursue a sixth season of college football. Gabriel, who will turn 24 in December, spent the last two years racking up incredible numbers at Oklahoma, with more than 6,800 passing yards and 73 total touchdowns. He'd exceeded those statistics in three prior seasons at UCF from 2019-21. There's no question that an NFL team would have drafted Gabriel, even if he's undersized at 6 feet tall and 200 pounds.

Why, then, did Gabriel bypass the chance to turn pro in favor of entering the transfer portal a second time, ultimately landing at Oregon? What prompted his original plan of leaping from Oklahoma to the NFL to change?

"Once you think you've got a plan," Gabriel said, "God has got another one for you and [he] has always kept me guessing. But I wouldn't want it any other way. I think I'm right where I need to be. And when I made that decision to leave, you know, Coach [Dan] Lanning called, Coach [Will] Stein called and there was immediate alignment with one another, just in terms of clear vision of what we want to do — which is a national championship — [the] offensive fit and then the returning pieces, but also the pieces coming in. It wasn't a matter of if [we were going to make it happen], it was just how we were going to get it done."

The last piece of Gabriel's quote dripped with rhetoric that, until recently, was all but reserved for coaches and professional athletes. It was exactly the kind of comment a successful coach or big-time quarterback might make when the lucrative contract extension that everyone saw coming is officially signed. So, while Gabriel didn't explicitly say he was referring to name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation when he described transferring to Oregon as a matter of "how" rather than "if," the implication was there given the Ducks' pioneering approach in that space and the desirability of the player involved. Gabriel also spoke to Ohio State head coach Ryan Day about potentially joining the Buckeyes.

As the Ducks enjoyed their official Big Ten unveiling at Lucas Oil Stadium last week, the collection of assembled media foisted upon them an aura of perceived financial superiority. Everywhere Gabriel and Lanning went during a tour de force of interviews across all mediums — television, radio, print outlets and podcasts — the questions about Oregon's robust NIL efforts seemed to follow. That's what happens when a newcomer with decades-long ties to Nike and its billionaire co-founder, Phil Knight, unseats perennial overlord Ohio State to enter 2024 with the league's best recruiting class (No. 3 nationally) and transfer portal haul (No. 2 nationally) alike. Everyone wants to know about the money.

"With the NIL side of things," Gabriel said, "I think people are a little more — I wouldn't say jealous, but it's not like resources where everyone has got a training room, a weight room, a locker room, things they can show off, uniforms. It's a little different with NIL, and you've either got it or you don't. It's just the new day and age of college football. You're either catching up or you're taking advantage of it. And hopefully you're not on the wrong end of it."

Such conversation was fueled, at least in part, by a comment from Georgia head coach Kirby Smart at SEC Media Days earlier in the month. Smart, under whom Lanning worked as the Bulldogs' outside linebackers coach and, eventually, defensive coordinator from 2018-21 before leaving for Oregon, brought Knight into his conversation with reporters by saying, "I wish I could get some of that NIL money he's giving Dan Lanning." Predictably, the quip gained immediate traction when shared on social media.

Smart's remark came roughly six weeks after new Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen made headlines when referencing the purported NIL budgets of rival Big Ten schools during a speaking engagement with The 1890 Initiative, a collective supporting the Cornhuskers. Dannen, who was the athletic director at Washington from 2023-24, told those in attendance that Oregon and Ohio State had NIL budgets of $23 million each last season. Nebraska, meanwhile, distributed "not even $10 [million]" to its roster, according to Dannen.

At Big Ten Media Days, incoming Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork clarified the number by telling Yahoo! Sports that the Buckeyes had distributed "around $20 million" to players. Neither Lanning nor anyone from the Ducks' traveling party shared specifics about the program's NIL resources. That didn't stop new UCLA head coach DeShaun Foster from joking that "Oregon doesn't have [a salary cap], but we do," when discussing the revenue sharing spending limits set to be introduced during the 2025-26 season as a result of the landmark House v. NCAA settlement.

"I think generally when somebody doesn't win in recruiting," Lanning said when asked if those kinds of comments from competitors about Oregon's NIL resources stem from a place of insecurity, "it's easy to throw out an excuse that doesn't really fit their narrative, right? And I think it's easy to say the low-hanging fruit is, ‘Well, it didn't work out for us, they must have beat me because of this.'

"We lose recruiting battles. And what we do is we say, ‘OK, why did we lose? What do they have that's better?' And you don't really worry about who you don't get, right? You worry about the [players] you do get. But I can't speak for somebody else's thoughts or preconceived notions. I don't know that. But I'm not really worried about it."

Oregon's representatives were unapologetically themselves from the moment they touched down in Indianapolis until the time they exited Lucas Oil Stadium for the long flight home. They marked their arrival by deploying a giant, inflatable duck in the White River as Big Ten Media Days began, and Lanning said he hoped to bring it on every road trip this season. Gabriel, who is part of a transfer portal class that lured four of the top 25 prospects and five of the top 80 to Eugene, referred to Knight as "Uncle Phil" and said he plans to spend time with him in the near future. There was even a question about linebacker Jeffrey Bassa's ability to blend "style and substance" after he posted photos of himself driving a Lamborghini earlier this spring, several months removed from earning second-team All-Pac-12 honors last season.

The Ducks might be joining a new league, but they're still going to do things their way.

"What should the Big Ten know about Oregon?" Lanning asked rhetorically. "We're mighty different, mighty different in a lot of ways. ... We're mighty different when it comes to the jerseys we get to wear or the facilities we're in. We're innovative. We've always been on the cutting edge of everything we do. We certainly positioned ourselves to be on the cutting edge, and we're grateful for the opportunity to compete in the Big Ten."

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Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him on Twitter at @Michael_Cohen13.