Dan Lanning and the Ducks will be asked 100 times about their long road trip, early start time and cross-country plane flight to play in the Orange Bowl against Texas Tech, 9 a.m. New Year's Day on ESPN at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.
Oregon's charter from Eugene will cover about 2400 miles and involves a flight time of roughly seven hours. Lanning appeared on "The Pat McAfee Show" Tuesday and the McAfee regulars asked him about the difficulty of traveling for an early morning game on the East Coast.
The 39-year-old head coach pointed out that the Ducks had already won games at Penn State and Rutgers earlier in the year. "We've flown across the country more than any other team and we're prepared for these moments," he said.
"They've got a football field there, right?"
The message was any place, any time. Their first action getting off the plane will be to get loose and get some movement. The team normally practices in the morning, so the early start time won't be an issue.
"Let's play football," he said.
Ducks have a cohesive plan for the 11-day layoff, long road trip
During the 21-day layoff between the team's final regular season game against Washington and their first-round College Football Playoff game versus JMU at Autzen Stadium, the team used a mock game in Autzen Stadium a week out, pumping in crowd noise, running through the tunnel behind the Harley, everything they could do to simulate the energy of an actual game during a spirited practice.
The players won't go home again in the eight days ahead of the quarterfinal against Texas Tech, choosing to work, eat, and fellowship as a team during the lead-up.
"There is a there's definitely a skill and an art to making sure that your team's prepared when you have long breaks," Lanning said at his Monday press conference.
The team won't be going home again for Christmas break, he said. "Our players bought into that right when we hopped in playoff mode that, hey, we're going to kind of take our break now at the beginning. I think it was a good reset for them, but we will be working. They'll get some time just right around Christmas and we'll get some time to fellowship with each other, but beyond that, it's going to be really intent and focused on Texas Tech."