Joel Klatt thought what happened before this past weekend’s Oregon-Colorado game was far more interesting than what actually happened once the ball was kicked off.

The Ducks dismantled the Buffaloes in front of a national TV audience, going up 35-0 at halftime and eventually winning 42-6. They sacked CU quarterback Shedeur Sanders seven times. They held Colorado to 21 yards of offense in the first half.

Oregon was ready to play. Colorado got punched in the teeth and never recovered.

Of course, that might be attributable to what Oregon head coach Dan Lanning said in the locker room before kickoff. “They’re fighting for clicks, we’re fighting for wins,” he said passionately to his team.

Oregon let ABC’s camera crew in to film the moment, and it was shared on the broadcast.

You have to give it to Lanning. If he wasn’t confident in what his team was about to do, those cameras would not have been in the locker room.

“Why would he invite the cameras in to see the speech unless he also wanted the attention for what he was about to say?” Klatt asked on his podcast this week.

Klatt said Lanning wanted to prove a point. More specifically, he said there are college football coaches all across the country who do not like what Deion Sanders has been able to do at Colorado.

“They don’t like it at all,” he said. “That’s the emotion we saw in the pregame speech. (Lanning) doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like the attention they’ve gotten. In their mind, they’re like, ‘For what?’

“… They want it to end, and in (Lanning’s) mind, he was ending it. They were gonna go out there on Saturday and embarrass Colorado. THat was the entire goal. The entire goal was to embarrass Colorado. It was to embarrass Deion Sanders. It was rehearsed. All of it. They don’t like it, and there’s a lot of coaches like that.”

Sanders told reporters after the game he feels like teams aren’t necessarily trying to beat the Buffaloes, but rather they’re trying to beat him specifically.

Klatt agreed.

But he also said Lanning proved his point in the best way possible.

“You embarrassed them out there. You did. And you’ve got a team that you knew could do it,” Klatt said. “How good is Oregon? Well, you know what? This makes me believe. Not because of the final score, not because of what was going on on the field, but Dan Lanning’s approach to Saturday’s game with Colorado makes me more of a believer in Oregon than I would have been if he didn’t say anything and they would have won by the same margin.

“Dan Lanning doesn’t do any of that unless he knows his team can embarrass Colorado. … He knows. Why does he know? Because this team is freaking good. And he has seen the standard.”

Oregon is 4-0 and ranked ninth in the country. Up next? Stanford. Unless something crazy happens, the Ducks will head into their bye week at 5-0 with all the attention on Seattle, Washington, on Oct. 14.

You can see the rest of Klatt’s breakdown of the game below: