Oregon Ducks - Relationship With Nike

Relationship With Nike

Nike co-founder Phil Knight ran in the University of Oregon Track & Field program under the other Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman. Knight graduated from the University of Oregon in 1959 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and went on to earn an M.B.A. at Stanford University. Knight returned to Oregon and with Bowerman, also a University of Oregon alumnus, later founded Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964, which officially became Nike in 1978. In 1970, Bill Bowerman revolutionized the athletic shoe by pouring molten rubber into a waffle iron, creating a prototype rubber sole. University of Oregon distance runner Steve Prefontaine became the first major track athlete to wear Nike shoes and converted many of his peers to the Nike brand.

Nike has maintained a close relationship with UO ever since, manufacturing all university logo clothing and uniforms for the football team, including research prototypes for high-tech "smart clothes", such as jerseys with cooling systems. Numerous University of Oregon graduates have also gone on to become executives, designers, and business partners of Nike such as Tinker Hatfield and Dan Wieden.

Phil Knight has personally donated significant amounts to the University for both academic and athletic aspirations, including significant amounts toward the Knight Library, the Knight Law Center, numerous endowed chairs, support for the track & field program, the Autzen Stadium expansion, and a $100 million donation to create the Oregon Athletics Legacy Fund.

Controversy surrounding Nike's labor practices precipitated protests in 2000 led by a group of students calling themselves the Human Rights Alliance. Protests included a 10 day tent city occupation of the lawns in front of Johnson Hall, the main administration building, demanding the university join the Worker Rights Consortium.

University President Dave Frohnmayer signed a one year contract with the WRC, causing Phil Knight to withdraw a previous $30 million commitment toward the Autzen Stadium expansion project and no further donations toward the University. Nike, since 1998, had actively improved worker conditions abroad and strongly endorsed the Fair Labor Association, an association with similar aspirations of the WRC. In a public statement, Phil Knight criticized the WRC for having unrealistic provisions and called it misguided while praising the FLA for being balanced in its approach. The students disagreed, saying the FLA has conflicting interests, but President Dave Frohnmayer along with several others agreed with Knight in that the WRC provides unbalanced representation.

Citing a legal opinion from the University Counsel, President Frohnmayer in October 2000, released a statement saying that the University could not pay its membership dues for the WRC since the WRC was neither an incorporated entity nor had tax-exempt status and to do so was a violation of state law. The Oregon University System on February 16, 2001 enacted a mandate that all institutions within the OUS choose business partners from a politically neutral standpoint, barring all universities in Oregon from membership in the WRC and the FLA. Following the dissolved relationship between the university and the WRC, Phil Knight reinstated the donation and increased the amount to over $50 million dollars. Since then, activity on the subject died down and Frohnmayer believed that the leaders of the protest lost their foothold since they did not represent the majority of students on campus.