HISTORIC HAYWARD FIELD
Phil Knight Oregon Track ’57, ’58, ’59 “People often ask me how good of a runner he really was,” said Jim Grelle, the best American collegiate miler from 1957-59, of his Oregon teammate Phil Knight. “And I always tell them, ‘he sure was, he lettered at Oregon three years in a row,’ which, if you know anything about the history of running at Oregon, should be more than sufficient to answer the question.” Grelle, Knight, Bill Dellinger and Jim Bailey composed the core of Oregon’s impressive mile and half-mile runners in the late 1950s, one of the golden eras for the Men of Oregon. Under the tutelage of legendary coach Bill Bowerman, Grelle would win the 1959 NCAA and Pacific Coast Conference championships in the mile, after finishing second in 1957 and ’58. “Phil was always quiet about what he was doing, but he was also such a competitor; he still is,” said Grelle, a three-time All-American in the mile. “He always ran well and got better all three years.” Knight helped Oregon defeat Washington State by winning the mile in their 1958 dual meet. In fact, Knight and his teammates went undefeated in duals, 14-0, during his career at Oregon. In all, Knight recorded 13 top-three finishes in the mile during his Oregon career. The man who would later become the Co-Founder of Nike, was also an important member of the Ducks’ relay teams. He ran the third leg for the squad that captured the 1958 Northern Division distance medley relay championship. As a senior in 1959, he first helped the Ducks capture another Northern Division crown in the two-mile relay, and then ran the lead leg for the distance medley team that won the race at the 1959 Drake Relays in a then meet-record time.
Two Men and a Handshake Following his running career at Oregon, Knight became inspired by the notion that quality athletic shoes might be found in Japan for much less than the expensive German products, which were the only athletic shoes available to American runners at the time. Knight eventually received distribution rights for Japan’s Tiger running shoes. Though it took more than a year for him to receive the first Tiger sample shoes, he immediately sent two pairs to his former track coach, hoping to make a sale and to gain the potentially powerful endorsement of Bowerman. He got much more. Bowerman, a shoe designer himself, wrote back to Knight that they should become partners. Knight would run the business, while Bowerman would provide design ideas. They shook hands on January 25, 1964, and Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS) was born. By 1966, the early version of what would become the iconic Bowerman-designed Cortez running shoe had taken shape. Other shoe models would follow, and BRS’s territory until it was the exclusive national distributor for Tiger’s running shoe business. “I came back and sold shoes for Blue Ribbon Sports in 1965,” said Grelle, who ran 21 sub-4:00 miles during his career. “I was really impressed with Phil’s company and his drive to make it a success. I think how he learned to compete in races was exactly like how he had learned to compete in life.” In 1971, Knight asked Carolyn Davidson, a graphic arts student at Portland State University, to draw up a few potential brand marks. Ultimately, he selected a crescent-shaped mark that today is one of the world’s most recognized brands, the “Swoosh.” Jeff Johnson, the first full-time employee Knight had hired, awoke one morning with an inspiration for the name of the new company—“Nike” goddess of victory in Greek mythology. By February 1972, BRS had prepared an entire line of shoes under the Nike name, including a Nike Cortez, Bruin, Blazer and Boston. At the same time, Bowerman had been working on a new rubber sole pattern inspired by the family waffle iron. At the 1972 U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials in Eugene, runners got their first glimpse of the new “Waffle” sole. And the rest, as they say…. (portions adapted from text provided courtesy of Scott Reames, Nike Historian)
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