Eugene, Oregon, served as the site for ESPN’s
College GameDay
on Saturday, as the Ducks prepare to take on Ohio State this evening. While Pat McAfee’s fun-loving antics and even Santa costume-donning llama owners provide plenty of unconventional entertainment value, a human interest story that ran about Oregon head coach Dan Lanning’s family served as the best segment of the pregame show. Jen Lada and her team put together a phenomenal five-minute segment that detailed his humble coaching beginnings and rise to his current position. However, the bigger story was in the midst of all that, Lanning’s wife Sauphia was not only a rock at home for their three sons, but she overcame bone cancer during Lanning’s stint as linebackers coach at Memphis. https://twitter.com/CollegeGameDay/status/1845112301902287155 Sauphia described how challenging the early years were as a young married couple, with her husband having to work long hours in an effort to prove his worth and move up the coaching ranks. That obviously paled in comparison to the adversity of osteosarcoma, an aggressive type of bone cancer that came from a tumor in Sauphia’s knee. Lanning noted that the stint at Memphis under Mike Norvell was the first time he’d had insurance, and that of course helped the family along as Sauphia went through months of chemotherapy. Norvell implored Lanning to stay away from work while attending to his wife as she fought for her life, even though Lanning thought he might be better off diving into work to keep his mind busy. Among the many moving moments in this story, the one that probably got me was when Sauphia Lanning talked about how her husband didn’t look at her any differently throughout her treatments.