The hidden motivation that could lead dominant Oregon Ducks back to Miami for CFP title game| Bill Oram

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — There is more than you know inside the walls of Hard Rock Stadium.

The legends and ghosts of five Super Bowls and four college football championships, yes. Also, on Thursday, the fresh smoke of victory cigars that hung on the air inside the visitor’s locker room.

For the Oregon Ducks, following their dominating, demoralizing 23-0 quarterfinal win over Texas Tech in the Orange Bowl, there may also be something more tangible in those walls.

Something they plan to come back for.

Intrigued?

First I need to tell you a quick story about Doc Rivers.

Because it was Rivers, the veteran NBA coach, who was on my mind on Thursday as Oregon’s Malik Benson juggled oranges, Dillon Thieneman tossed them into the stands and Matayo Uiagalelei made snow angels in green and yellow confetti — still clinging to the Texas Tech-stamped game ball he had so forcefully ripped away from Red Raiders quarterback Behren Morton.

In 2010, with his Boston Celtics struggling, Rivers famously collected $100 from every player and staff member following a game against the Los Angeles Lakers at the then-Staples Center.

Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen? They all paid. So did Rasheed Wallace, in the last year of his career. Then Rivers, with the help of an assistant, lifted a fiberboard ceiling tile and stashed the cash — a sum of $2,600 — where it would remain hidden from cleaning and maintenance crews.

Rivers then challenged his team: They would get their money back — if they earned a return to Los Angeles. That would mean making the NBA Finals where, he correctly anticipated, the Lakers would be waiting.

The Celtics turned their season around and indeed recovered the cash from the ceiling.

The Ducks will now attempt to do the same thing.

Spiritually? Metaphorically? Literally?

Thursday’s game was the most jaw-dropping and dominant of Dan Lanning’s tenure. With a team that has gotten better and stronger throughout this increasingly magical season, Lanning moved within two wins of delivering Oregon its first national championship.

It’s a feat that would play out back on the field at Hard Rock Stadium, site of the title game on Jan. 19.

The Ducks will have to get past Indiana in the Peach Bowl, first. The top-seeded Hoosiers are the only team to trip up the Ducks in 14 tries, and following their Oct. 11 triumph in Eugene, Ducks players left their homefield to chants of, “HOO-SIER DAD-DY?”

Is the Oregon football team better today than it was three months ago? Will it be in a week?

Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire said the Ducks have the best defense his team faced. He called Dante Moore the best quarterback the Red Raiders had encountered.

Thursday was the Ducks’ defensive masterpiece. They forced four turnovers, including two interceptions and a fumble recovery by freshman Brandon Finney. The second of Finney’s picks came at the start of the fourth quarter, as a desperate Texas Tech offense tried to get on the scoreboard. He plucked a pass from the sky in the back corner of the end zone, next to where a stadium worker was polishing the Orange Bowl trophy.

Poetic, much?

A team that has relied on its special teams to win games, has ridden its flying offense to victory and ground out defensive struggles, simply pulverized the Red Raiders. Oregon controlled the clock for nearly two-thirds of the game and ran 81 plays to their opponents’ 62. And picked up 16 first downs to their nine. Most critically, they made defensive stops whenever it appeared the little engine that could was about to rumble to life.

Play like that a week from now, and there is every reason to believe the Ducks will, in fact, return to Hard Rock Stadium, home of legends and ghosts.

Against Miami? Sure, why not? If it’s poetry you’re looking for.

It seemed impossible to be part of Oregon’s triumph on Thursday and not consider that they might soon return, even though that’s the sort of thing teams never care to admit.

“You want to be where your feet (are),” Moore said when I asked him about it, “being in the present moment. … Of course that’s every team’s goal, but you can never look too far ahead. We’ve got to worry about the next day.”

A few minutes later, Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens joked to me, “Don’t try to get us looking ahead now.”

I think there is little risk of that. Lanning’s a master of coaching to the moment that is in front of him.

He is also a cunning motivator. He does his research. He is the man who has fueled his team with clips from “Gladiator” and made rallying cries of “keystone species” and “a thousand cuts.”

I suspected he might be familiar with Rivers’ fabled tactic and maybe even inspired by it.

As Lanning strode back to the Ducks locker room after his postgame news conference, I caught up to him.

“Do you know what Doc Rivers did at Staples Center?” I asked.

At first he looked puzzled and I thought I had struck out.

Then he offered that little lopsided grin, same as the one when he delivers a clever answer to an interviewer or, I assume, when he conceives of a play to outsmart his opponent, like the Ducks’ fake punt in the second quarter against Texas Tech.

“Oh, you mean when he put the money up in the…?”

His voice trailed off as he pointed toward the ceiling.

Yeah, that.

His eyes twinkled.

“Uh-huh,” Lanning said.

He knew. Of course he knew.

“I’m ahead of ya,” he added.

Then he walked off, one more legend taking up permanent residence inside these walls alongside who knows what else.