Phil Knight

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Phil Knight (born 1938) is the founder and head of Nike, Inc., the number one athletic shoe company in the world. Already a legend in the retail and marketing worlds, Knight has turned into something of a mainstream hero, the subject of admiring articles in popular magazines. It is a reputation Knight hasearned over the years as both a visionary businessman and a hard-nosed CEO.

The man whom The Sporting News named the "most powerful" person of the year in sports for 1993 was no athlete, coach, or commissioner. Rather, it was the man who for nearly 30 years has shod the great sports stars as well as the Saturday-afternoon "jocks"-Nike founder and CEO Philip "Phil" Knight. The former college track runner refers to Nike's world headquarters as a campus and runs it that way. "His every move is now scrutinized as carefully as the glamorous superstars who wear his sneakers," reported Frank Deford in a Vanity Fair profile.

Knight was born in Portland, Oregon, on February 24, 1938, the son of William H. and Lola (Hatfield) Knight. Oregon's only billionaire "forged his go-it-alone philosophy while growing up in Portland, the son of a domineering but loving father who was publisher of the now defunct Oregon Journal," noted Susan Hauser in People magazine. Though too small to excel in contact sports, young Knight took refuge in track. When his father refused to give him a summer job at his newspaper, believing his son should find work on his own, Knight went to the rival Oregonian, where he worked the night shift tabulating sports scores and every morning ran home the full seven miles.

New Running Shoe

That interest in sports-and especially track-gave Knight the impetus to study the way track shoes were being made and marketed in the late 1950s. For assistance he consulted his coach, the University of Oregon's famed Bill Bowerman, who himself would become a senior member of the Nike team. Together they determined that American shoes were inferior in style and quality, too heavy, and too easily damaged. The Japanese, on the other hand, were experimenting with new, trimmed-down styles fashioned in lightweight, hardy nylon. Knight wrote his Stanford business-school term paper on the subject, then a few years later got involved personally by visiting Japan and arranging to import new-design running shoes himself.

"Knight ran Blue Ribbon Sports [named for a beer label] out of a storefront hole-in-the-wall next to the Pink Bucket Tavern in a working-class section of Portland," noted Sports Illustrated writer Donald Katz. "From the beginning Knight's animating idea was to promote high-quality, low-cost Japanese shoes, at a time when high quality was rarely associated with Japanese products, and to eventually displace [rival brand] Adidas, the triple-striped German shoes worn by all serious track and field athletes at the time."

"In the early days, anybody with a glue pot and a pair of scissors could get into the shoe business," Knight told Geraldine Willigan in a Harvard Business Review interview. "So the way to stay ahead was through product innovation. We were also good at keeping our manufacturing costs down. The big, established players like Puma and Adidas were still manufacturing in high-wage European companies. But we knew that wages were lower in Asia." This fact has garnered criticism for Knight and Nike by those who point out the vast difference between the wages earned by a factory worker in Indonesia compared to the salary drawn by a Nike celebrity endorser. But Knight insisted in the Sports Illustrated article that "we're not gouging anybody. … A country like Indonesia is converting from farm labor to semiskilled-an industrial transition that has occurred throughout history. There's no question in my mind that we're giving these people hope."

Knight's reputation in the track and field world also helped him gain an early edge. "We just tried to get our shoes on the feet of runners," he said in Willigan's article. "And we were able to get a lot of great ones under contract-people like [distance stars] Steve Prefontaine and Alberto Salazar-because we spent a lot of time at track events and had relationships with the runners, but mostly because we were doing interesting things with our shoes."

Unique Image and New Technology

From the start, Knight's shoes sported their own look (including the distinctive "swoosh" logo that still appears today) and their own attitude. An early effort to promote the newly dubbed "Nike"-pronounced NY-kee and named for the Greek goddess of victory-included a now-classic advertisement set at the 1972 Olympic track trials in Eugene, Oregon. The copy boasted that four of the top seven marathoners wore Nikes. As a Time writer pointed out, the ads conveniently "neglected to mention that runners wearing [Adidas] shoes placed first, second and third."

By the mid-1970s Nike was at the cutting edge of workout-shoe technology. For instance, it was Bowerman, the former track coach, who poured some liquid latex into his wife's waffle iron, thereby inventing the famous sole that made the earliest Nikes feel like bedroom slippers. Nike didn't exactly burst from the gate in profit, though. Major sports stars demanded major compensation for wearing Knight's brand. A turning point came in the 1980s, when tennis star Jimmy Connors won Wimbledon in a pair of Nikes and John McEnroe "hurt his ankle, [and] started wearing an obscure three-quarter [Nike] model that had sold all of 10,000 pairs that year. Because of McEnroe's strained ligaments," noted a Vanity Fair writer, "the model sold a million two the very next year. It was about that time when Knight woke up one morning worth $178 million."

There was one area in which Nike made a serious misstep. Knight acknowledged in a Sports Illustrated article that his company "lost its way" when it came to aerobics shoes. The longstanding boys-club atmosphere of the Nike boardroom saw little promise in a lightweight shoe for women to wear to their exercise classes. In fact, the notion of aerobics was laughed away as just the conceit of "a bunch of fat ladies dancing to music," as Hauser quoted in the People article. That lack of insight opened the door for an upstart company called Reebok, which then virtually cornered the market in this burgeoning subsection of the athletic shoe industry. That was the beginning of a longstanding rivalry between Nike and Reebok for market dominance.

Though sales slipped and profits fell during the mid-1980s, Nike regained its place at the top of the market in 1984, when Knight returned from a fact-finding trip to Asia. Knight is a firm believer in the Japanese way of doing business and conducting life: "He often greets his secretary with a courtly bow or 'moshi, moshi,' the Japanese equivalent of hello, and pads around behind sliding screen doors in a pair of cotton slippers," reported Hauser.

Celebrity Athlete Endorsements

Known as a taskmaster CEO, Knight is also particular when it comes to matters of promotion. "Hi, I'm Phil Knight and I don't believe in advertising," was the way Nike's ad agency president remembered meeting his new client. Signing up perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time, the former Chicago Bulls' superstar Michael Jordan, was only one of the breakthrough strategies that made Nike-wearers the envy of schoolyard pickup games everywhere. Nike slogans-"Bo Knows," "It's Gotta Be the Shoes," and especially "Just Do It"-have entered the pop-culture lexicon. The Nike image has been linked closely with notable "bad boys"-names like McEnroe, Andre Agassi, and Charles Barkley-as well as icons like the Beatles (through Nike's controversial use of the song "Revolution") and Bugs Bunny.

But the world of sports endorsements is a brutal one, as the public learned at the 1992 summer Olympic games in Barcelona. America's basketball "dream team" swept the field to win the gold medal, but faced screaming headlines and heated debate when several members threatened not to appear in a medal ceremony unless they were wearing their Nike apparel-to the consternation of Reebok, the team's "official" sponsor. (Dream Team member Barkley ably summed up the controversy, said Katz in Sports Illustrated, when he told a reporter that he had "two million reasons not to wear Reebok.")

For all the controversy Knight has helped engender in his company, he points out that the tradeoff is an increased awareness by the media, whose stories about the shoes and those who endorse them are the kind of publicity that money can't buy. As he told Willigan, the athletic shoe industry, "and Nike in particular, gets a lot more press than many others because it's more fun to talk about us than about a company that makes widgets. On the one hand, we don't mind the attention; we like getting our name in the press. On the other hand, the company usually gets treated in a superficial, lighthearted way, which is not what we're all about. Nike is not about going to a ball game. It's a business."

A later addition to the business was sports management. Simply put, it ensured that Nike endorsers maintained consistency outside the company-most importantly, by not endorsing any other product that would interfere with the Nike image. Sports management was born after Knight caught Nike endorser Andre Agassi in a commercial for Canon cameras. While cameras themselves don't conflict with shoes, the message in the commercial certainly did. "When Agassi looked into the camera and said, 'Image is everything,' Knight flipped," says Katz. "It was 180 degrees from our imagery," Knight told the Sport Illustrated writer. "We work hard to convey that performance, not image, is everything."

Nike realized that image did count for something when it released a shoe displaying a logo that resembled the Arabic word for "Allah," or God. Many members of the Muslim faith were upset, and in June 1997 Nike recalled 38,000 pairs of the shoes and issued an apology. The company noted that the logo was an oversight and issued a statement saying they did not mean to offend anyone with it.

Asian Labor Issues

The company came under increasing scrutiny for its wages and working conditions in Indonesia, China, and Vietnam. United Nations Ambassador, Andrew Young, released a report finding no issue with Nike's factories, noting that facilities were "clean, organized, adequately ventilated and well lit," according to a Reuters Business Report article. However, human rights groups charged that Indonesian workers were incessantly striking over low wages; Nike workers received $2.46 per day in a nation that counted $4 per day as the minimum subsistence wage.

Independent filmmaker Michael Moore, whose 1989 documentary Roger and Me depicted a heartless corporate mindset at General Motors, turned his cameras on Nike, among numerous other firms. Moore addressed the issue of how Nike treats its workers and requested jobs for people in his depressed hometown of Flint, Michigan. Knight countered that American workers do not want jobs in shoe factories, but Moore was able to find a crowd of jobless workers in Flint who would be happy to make Nikes. For his part, Knight was the only CEO to agree to appear in the Moore film.

The uproar over the Asian workers dragged on for Nike, and they eventually raised wages a small amount. Some American women's groups, protested that female employees-the bulk of Nike's Asian work force-were still working 100 to 200 hours overtime at Nike just to pay their bills. They issued statements accusing Nike of corporal punishment and sexual harassment in the shops as well. By mid-1998, Knight announced in a speech to the National Press Club that Nike was "dedicated to giving American consumers assurances that the products they buy are not manufactured under abusive circumstances," according to a Gannett News Service article. He added that he had been branded as a "corporate crook," and defended his business practices, citing "misinformation and misunderstanding" as reasons for the media assault on Nike. Knight noted that a number of policies were going to be implemented in their production facilities, including raising the working age to 16 at clothing factories and 18 at shoe factories; using safer, non-toxic glues when possible; adopting stricter, U.S.-dictated air quality standards; instituting on-site education programs, and more.

In addition to the Asian labor issues, many people remained outraged over Nike's escalating costs, especially since a large market for the products are poor, inner-city youth. One shoe endorsed by basketball player, Anfernee Hardaway, was tagged at $180, and the Air Jordans touted by superstar Michael Jordan had always been priced at over $100. Perhaps this combination of issues served to cause a slump. Sales and profits fell in 1998, and Nike laid off 1,900 employees. However, the company remained the world's largest shoemaker. It won a lawsuit in early 1999 that had accused the firm of lying to consumers about "sweatshop" conditions in Asian factories. Human rights groups remained unconvinced.

When not at the helm, Knight enjoys the fruits of his success. He and his wife Penelope "Penny" Parks have two grown sons and one foster daughter. They live in non-ostentatious comfort in Oregon, with a gaggle of pets and Knight's "only personal concession to flash: [a] black Lamborghini (vanity plates: NIKE MN) and red Ferrari," as Hauser noted in People. The workplace is also the scene of fun and comfort: Nike World Campus features three restaurants, plus fitness center, beauty salon, laundry service, jogging facilities, a day-care center, and other amenities.

Knight can't help but see success in Nike's future, as the company expands its product line to include a wide range of apparel and accessories. As a Forbes writer noted, the man who built an empire on a pair of shoes still cherishes the words of his track coach: "Play by the rules, but be ferocious."

Further Reading

Strasser, Julie, SWOOSH: The Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There, Harper Business, 1993.

Forbes, August 2, 1993.

Gannett News Service, May 12, 1998.

Harvard Business Review, July-August 1992.

Independent, October 28, 1997, p. 15.

People, May 4, 1992.

Philadelphia Inquirer, October 10, 1998.

Reuter's Business Report, June 24, 1997.

South China Morning Post, February 8, 1999.

Sports Illustrated, August 19, 1993.

Time, June 30, 1980; February 15, 1982.

U.S. News & World Report, September 22, 1997, p. 48.

Vanity Fair, August 1993.

"Nike, Inc.," Hoover's Online, March 3, 1999. Available from http://www.hoovers.com.

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Phil Knight
Born	(1938-02-24) February 24, 1938 (age 74) Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Residence	Hillsboro, Oregon
Alma mater	University of Oregon Stanford University
Occupation	Co-founder and chairman of Nike, Inc.
Net worth	US$14.4 billion (2012)[1]
Spouse	Penelope "Penny" Parks
Children	Matthew Knight Travis Knight Christina Knight
Parents	William W. Knight Lota Hatfield Knight
Website
Nike Corporation

Philip Hampson "Phil" Knight (born February 24, 1938) is an American business magnate. A native of Oregon, he is the co-founder and chairman of Nike, Inc., and previously served as the chief executive officer of Nike. By 2011, Knight's stake in Nike gave him an estimated net worth of US$14.4 billion, making him the 47th richest person in the world and the 19th richest American.^[1][2]

A graduate of the University of Oregon and Stanford Graduate School of Business, he has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the schools; Knight gave the largest donation in history at the time to Stanford's business school in 2006. A native Oregonian, he ran track under coach Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon, with whom he would co-found Nike.

Contents 1 Early years 1.1 Budding entrepreneur 1.2 Early career and family 2 Nike's origin 2.1 Labor issues 3 Philanthropy 4 Later years 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

Early years

Phil Knight is the son of "a lawyer turned newspaper publisher", William W. Knight, and his wife Lota (Hatfield) Knight.^[3][4] Growing up in the Portland neighborhood of Eastmoreland, he attended Cleveland High School in Portland. According to one source, "When his father refused to give him a summer job at his newspaper [the Oregon Journal], believing that his son should find work on his own, Buck went to the rival Oregonian, where he worked the night shift tabulating sports scores and every morning ran home the full seven miles."^[5]

Knight continued his education at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he was a member of Phi Gamma Delta ("FIJI") fraternity, was a sports reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald,^[6] and earned a business administration degree in 1959.^[3] As a middle-distance runner at the school, his personal best was 4:10 mile,^[7] winning varsity letters for track in 1957, 1958, and 1959.

Budding entrepreneur

Immediately after graduating from Oregon, Knight enlisted in the Army and served one year on active duty and seven years in the Army Reserve.^[3] After the year of active duty, he enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of Business.^[3] In Frank Shallenberger's Small Business class, Knight developed a love affair with something besides sports — he discovered he was an entrepreneur. Knight recalls in a Stanford Magazine article:^[3] "That class was an 'aha!' moment ... Shallenberger defined the type of person who was an entrepreneur--and I realized he was talking to me. I remember after saying to myself: 'This is really what I would like to do.' " In this class, Knight needed to create a business plan. His paper, "Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Sports Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?," essentially was the premise to his foray into selling running shoes. He graduated with a master's degree in business administration from the school in 1962.^[3]

Knight set out on a trip around the world after graduation, during which he made a stop in Kobe, Japan, in November 1962. It was there he discovered the Tiger-brand running shoes, manufactured in Kobe by the Onitsuka Co. So impressed with the quality and low cost, Knight made a cold call on Mr. Onitsuka, who agreed to meet with him. By the end of the meeting, Knight had secured Tiger distribution rights for the western United States.^{[citation needed]}

The first Tiger samples would take more than a year to be shipped to Knight, during which time he found a job as an accountant in Portland. When Knight finally received the shoe samples, he mailed two pairs to Bill Bowerman in Eugene hoping to gain a sale and an influential endorsement. To Knight's surprise, Bowerman not only ordered the Tiger shoes but also offered to become a partner with Knight and would provide some design ideas for better running shoes. The two men shook hands on a partnership on January 25, 1964, the birth date of Blue Ribbon Sports, forerunner to Nike.^[8]

Early career and family

Before Blue Ribbon Sports, later Nike, took off, Knight was first a Certified Public Accountant with Price Waterhouse, and then Coopers & Lybrand; and an assistant professor of business administration at Portland State University.^[9] While at Portland State, he met his future wife, Penelope "Penny" Parks; they were married on September 13, 1968.^[10]

Nike's origin

Knight's first sales were made out of a now legendary green Plymouth Valiant automobile at track meets across the Pacific Northwest. By 1969, these early sales allowed Knight to leave his accountant job and work full time for Blue Ribbon Sports.

Jeff Johnson, a friend of Knight, suggested calling the firm Nike, named after the Greek winged goddess of victory. Nike's logo, now considered one of the most powerful logos in the world more for its ubiquity than its aesthetic merits, was commissioned for a mere $35 from Carolyn Davidson in 1971.^[11] According to Nike's Web site, Knight stated: "I don't love it, but it will grow on me." In September 1983, Davidson was given an undisclosed amount of Nike stock for her contribution to the company's brand. On the Oprah TV program in April 2011, Knight claimed he gave her "A few hundred shares" when the company went public.

Labor issues

Knight was named a "corporate crook" in Michael Moore's 1996 book Downsize This!. The book cited the harsh conditions in Indonesian sweatshops, where pregnant women and girls as young as age 14 sewed shoes for factories that the company contracted to make its products. Moore went to Knight in the hopes of convincing him to fix this problem. The interview can be seen in Moore's film The Big One . Of the nearly 20 CEOs whom Moore wished to interview for his movie, only Knight agreed to speak with Moore.

When questioned by Moore as to why no shoes were made in the United States, Knight responded that he was convinced Americans weren't interested in producing shoes. Moore responded with a challenge. If Moore could find 500 residents from his hometown of Flint, Michigan, who were willing to work in a Nike factory, would Nike then create a factory there. Knight accepted the challenge by saying he would seriously consider it. However, when Moore provided video evidence showing residents of Flint enthusiastically promising to work for a Nike factory, Knight backed down saying he would never seriously consider opening a factory there. Knight informed Moore that Nike does not own any of the factories that make its products. Knight told Moore if he were willing to invest in and build a factory in the U.S. that could match the price of footwear made overseas, Nike would consider buying shoes from Phil Knight.

In 1998, Knight pledged to impose more stringent standards for the factories that Nike engages to manufacture its goods, including minimum age standards, factory monitoring, and greater external access to Nike's practices.^{[citation needed]}

Philanthropy

In 2000, Knight was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame for his Special Contribution to Sports in Oregon.^[12] He is believed to have contributed approximately $230 million to the University of Oregon, the majority of which was for athletics.^[13] On August 18, 2007, Knight announced that he and his wife, Penny, would be donating an additional $100 million to the University of Oregon Athletics Legacy Fund.^[14] This donation is reportedly the largest in the University's history.

His significant contributions have granted him influence and access atypical of an athletic booster. In addition to having the best seats in the stadium for all University of Oregon athletic events, he has his own locker in the football team's locker room. An athletic building is named for him, the library for his mother, the law school for his father, and the basketball teams' home, Matthew Knight Arena, is named for his late son, who died in a SCUBA diving accident.

However, Knight's contributions to the Athletic Department at the University of Oregon have also led to controversy.^[15]

Public outcry surrounding Nike's labor practices precipitated protests in 2000, led by a group of students calling themselves the Human Rights Alliance. Protests included a ten-day tent-city occupation on the lawns in front of Johnson Hall, the main administration building, demanding that the university join the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) which was founded by United Students Against Sweatshops.^[16]

University President Dave Frohnmayer signed a one-year contract with the WRC. Knight's reaction was to withdraw a previous US$30 million commitment toward the Autzen Stadium expansion project and to offer no further donations to the university.^[17][18] Nike had endorsed the industry-supported Fair Labor Association, instead.^[19] In a public statement, Knight criticized the WRC for having unrealistic provisions and called it misguided, while praising the FLA for being "balanced" in its approach.^[20] The students disagreed, saying the FLA has conflicting interests, but President Frohnmayer sided with Knight's assertion that the WRC was providing unbalanced representation.^[21][22]

In October 2000, citing a legal opinion from the university's counsel, President Frohnmayer released a statement saying that the university could not pay its membership dues to the WRC since the WRC was neither an incorporated entity nor had tax-exempt status, and to do so would be a violation of state law. The Oregon University System on February 16, 2001, enacted a mandate that all institutions within the system choose business partners from a politically neutral standpoint, barring all universities in Oregon from membership in the WRC and FLA.^[23] Following the dissolved relationship between the university and the WRC, Phil Knight reinstated the donation and increased the amount to over $50 million dollars.^[24]

Also controversial was Knight's successful lobbying to have his friend and a former insurance salesman, Pat Kilkenny, named as Athletic Director at the university.^[25] Kilkenny, another wealthy athletic booster, had neither a college degree nor any prior experience in athletics administration. Kilkenny attended but did not graduate from the university, leaving the school several credit hours short of completion. He had been the chairman and chief executive officer of the San Diego-based Arrowhead General Insurance Agency and grew his business into a nationwide organization with written premiums of nearly US$1 billion when he sold the company in 2006.^[26] ESPN's Outside the Lines spotlighted Knight and his donation-backed influence on the university's athletics in an April 6, 2008, episode.

In 2006, Phil Knight donated $105 million to the Stanford Graduate School of Business.^[27] He also provided monetary support to his high school alma mater, Cleveland High School, for its new track, football field, and gymnasium.

In October 2008, Phil and Penny Knight pledged $100 million to the OHSU Cancer Institute, the largest gift in the history of Oregon Health & Science University, renamed Oregon Health Sciences University in 1981. In recognition, the university renamed the organization the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute.^[28]

Later years

When Knight resigned as the company's CEO November 18, 2004, and retained the position of chairman of the board,^[29][30] he was replaced by William Perez, former CEO of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. Perez was in turn replaced by Mark Parker in 2006.^[31]

In 2002, Knight purchased Will Vinton (Animation) Studios, where son Travis worked as an animator, and changed the name to LAIKA. Travis was named to the Laika board of directors later that year and became CEO of LAIKA in March 2009, replacing Nike former-employee Dale Wahl.^[32] Laika released its first feature film Coraline (in stop motion) in February 2009.

In 2009-2010, Knight was the largest single contributor to the campaign to defeat Oregon Ballot Measures 66 and 67, which, once passed, increased income tax on some corporations and on high-income individuals.^[33]

On February 24, 2012, Knight was announced as a 2012 inductee of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor. The Hall recognized him as the driving force behind Nike's huge financial support for the sport and its players. Knight will be formally inducted on September 7.^[34]

On May 18, 2012, Knight contributed $65,000 to a higher education PAC formed by Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle.^[35][36] According to Boyle, the PAC will help facilitate an increase in autonomy at the schools in the Oregon University System.^[37]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Forbes profile page on Phil Knight Forbes.com. Accessed 2010.
2. ^ Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/profile/phil-knight/. 
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Krentzman, Jackie (1997). "The Force Behind the Nike Empire". Stanford Magazine. http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/1997/janfeb/articles/knight.html. Retrieved 2008-05-28. 
4. ^ "Phil Knight". Accessed May 13, 2012.
5. ^ Susan Hauser. 1992. "Must Be the Shoes," People, May 4, pp.139-140. Accessed: May 13, 2012.
6. ^ "25 Things about the Oregon Daily Emerald", March 29, 2011. Accessed May 13, 2012.
7. ^ "Notable Oregonians: Phil Knight — Innovator, Business Leader". Oregon Blue Book. http://bluebook.state.or.us/notable/notknight.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-01. 
8. ^ www.nikebiz.com
9. ^ Anne M. Peterson, "Nike's Phil Knight resigns as CEO," Seattle Times, November 19, 2004. Accessed May 13, 2012.
10. ^ "Phil Knight: How He Empowers Others", The Woman's Conference. Accessed: May 13, 2012.
11. ^ "Nike gives board seniors the boot". BBC. 2004-08-02. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3527512.stm. Retrieved 2009-06-28. 
12. ^ "Philip H. Knight - Special Contribution". Oregon Sports Hall of Fame. http://www.oregonsportshall.org/philip_knight.html. Retrieved June 28, 2011. 
13. ^ Bachman, Rachel; Hunsberger, Brent (May 4, 2008). "Phil Knight's influence transforms University of Oregon athletics". The Oregonian. http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/sports/1209711308201850.xml&coll=7&thispage=2. Retrieved 2008-06-01. 
14. ^ Bellamy, Ron (August 20, 2007). "Knights to give major gift to UO". Eugene Register Guard. http://www.registerguard.com/rgn/index.php/sports_updates/more/knights_to_give_major_gift_to_uo/. Retrieved 2008-06-01. ^{[dead link]}
15. ^ Fish, Mike (January 13, 2006). "Just do it!". ESPN.com. http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=2285500. Retrieved 2008-06-01. 
16. ^ Ripke, Simone (2000-04-05). "We're not going to leave". Oregon Daily Emerald. http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2000/04/05/News/Were-Not.Going.To.Leave-1971980.shtml. Retrieved March 24, 2009. 
17. ^ Lang, Jeremy (2001-04-04). "Old issues, new strategies". Oregon Daily Emerald. http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2001/04/04/News/Old-Issues.New.Strategies-1973596.shtml. Retrieved March 24, 2009. 
18. ^ Romano, Ben (2000-04-24). "Knight pulls all money". Oregon Daily Emerald. http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2000/04/24/News/Knight.Pulls.All.Money-1963987.shtml. Retrieved March 24, 2009. 
19. ^ Romano, Ben (2000-04-25). "Nike backs worker rights through FLA, but not WRC". Oregon Daily Emerald. http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2000/04/25/News/Nike-Backs.Worker.Rights.Through.Fla.But.Not.Wrc-1963988.shtml. Retrieved March 24, 2009. 
20. ^ "Statement from Nike founder and CEO Philip H. Knight regarding the University of Oregon". Oregon Daily Emerald. 2000-04-24. http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2000/04/24/News/Statement.From.Nike.Founder.And.Ceo.Philip.H.Knight.Regarding.The.University.Of-1963996.shtml. Retrieved March 24, 2009. 
21. ^ Romano, Ben (2000-09-25). "Great debate: WRC vs. FLA". Oregon Daily Emerald. http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2000/09/25/News/Great.Debate.Wrc.Vs.Fla-1971583.shtml. Retrieved March 24, 2009. 
22. ^ Friedman, Thomas (2000-06-20). "Foreign Affairs; Knight Is Right". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/20/opinion/foreign-affairs-knight-is-right.html. Retrieved March 24, 2009. 
23. ^ Adams, Andrew (2001-03-05). "OUS policy won't stop labor debate". Oregon Daily Emerald. http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2001/03/05/News/Ous-Policy.Wont.Stop.Labor.Debate-1973368.shtml. Retrieved March 24, 2009. 
24. ^ Peterson, Anne (2004-11-19). "Nike's Phil Knight resigns as CEO". The Seattle Times. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002095212_nike19.html. Retrieved March 24, 2009. 
25. ^ "OTL: Phil Knight and Oregon" (Flash video). Outside the Lines. ESPN. 2 April 2008. http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=3326346&categoryid=null. Retrieved 2009-11-12. 
26. ^ "Oregon Names Kilkenny Athletic Director". GoDucks.com. 14 February 2007. http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=500&KEY=&ATCLID=796552&SPID=252&SPSID=3797. Retrieved 2008-06-01. 
27. ^ Tom, Christian L. (September 19, 2006). "Nike Founder Donates $105 million to GSB". The Stanford Daily. http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2006/9/19/nikeFounderDonates105MillionToGsb. Retrieved 2008-06-01. ^{[dead link]}
28. ^ "Knights to give $100 million to OHSU Cancer Institute". Oregon Health & Science University. October 29, 2008. http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/about/news_events/news/cancergift102908.cfm. Retrieved 2009-11-12. ^{[dead link]}
29. ^ Peterson, Anne M. (November 19, 2004). "Nike's Phil Knight resigns as CEO". The Seattle Times. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002095212_nike19.html. Retrieved 2008-06-01. 
30. ^ Dash, Eric (November 19, 2004). "Founder of Nike to Hand Off Job to a New Chief". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/business/19nike.html. Retrieved 2008-06-01. 
31. ^ Barbaro, Michael; Dash, Eric (January 24, 2006). "Another Outsider Falls Casualty to Nike's Insider Culture". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/business/24nike.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. Retrieved 2008-06-02. 
32. ^ Salter, Chuck (December 19, 2007). "The Knights' Tale". Fast Company. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-the-knights-tale.html. Retrieved 2009-10-27. 
33. ^ The Oregonian, "The closing tally on the Measures 66 and 67 campaigns: $12.5 million" March 03, 2010
34. ^ "Five Direct-Elects for the Class of 2012 Announced By the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame" (Press release). Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. February 24, 2012. http://www.hoophall.com/news/2012/2/24/five-direct-elects-for-the-class-of-2012-announced-by-the-na.html. Retrieved February 24, 2012. 
35. ^ Brown, Kate. "Oregonians For Higher Education Excellence". Oregon Secretary of State. https://secure.sos.state.or.us/orestar/cneSearch.do?cneSearchButtonName=search&cneSearchFilerCommitteeId=15708. Retrieved 23 May 2012. 
36. ^ Jaquiss, Nigel. "Tim Boyle, Pat Kilkenny Ante Up For Higher Ed PAC". Willamette Week. http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-28672-tim_boyle_pat_kilkenny_ante_up_for_higher_ed_pac.html. Retrieved 23 May 2012. 
37. ^ Jaquiss, Nigel. "New Political Action Committee Will Focus on Higher Ed". Willamette Week. http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-28595-new_political_action_committee_will_focus_on_highe.html. Retrieved 23 May 2012. 

Further reading

• Deford, Frank. 1993. "Running Man," Vanity Fair, August 1993, 56(8), pp. 52-72
• Knight, Phil. 2009. "When Things Don't Go Right: What Nike Learned In China," Playboy, February 2009, 56(2), pp. 26, 111
• Strasser, J.B., and Laurie Becklund. 1993. Swoosh: The Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There. HarperBusiness. ISBN 0-88730-622-5

External links

• Origin of the Swoosh
• "Knight to Leave Nike Top Job" - Wikinews
• Forbes profile, page on Phil Knight
• Nike founder is Ducks' spiritual godfather - "The Seattle Times", 31-Oct-2006, by Bud Withers
• "Movers & Shakers: Entrepreneurs who rocked our world." - Entrepreneur, May 2007
• USA Today story on Knight and facial coding

v t e Nike, Inc. Corporate directors John G. Connors  · Jill Ker Conway  · Tim Cook  · Ralph D. DeNunzio  · Alan B. Graf  · Douglas G. Houser  · Phil Knight  · John C. Lechleiter  · Mark Parker  · Johnathan A. Rodgers  · Orin C. Smith  · John Thompson  · Phyllis M. Wise  · Keith White Assets and products Air Jordan  · Air Melo Line  · Cole Haan  · Converse  · Exeter Brands Group  · Hurley  · Nike Air Max  · Nike Considered  · Nike CTR360 Maestri  · Nike Flywire  · Nike Free  · Nike Golf  · Nike Pro  · Nike Mercurial Vapor  · Nike Shox  · Nike SB  · Swoosh  · Air Force 1  · Team Starter  · Nike Tiempo  · Nike Total 90  · Umbro  · Nike Multi-Turf Miscellaneous Nike Sports Research Lab  · Nike ONE  · Spark Suit Annual revenue: $19.2 billion USD (2.9% FY 2009)  · Employees: 26,500  · Stock symbol: NYSE: NKE · Website: nike.com

v t e National Football Foundation Gold Medal Winners 1958: Dwight D. Eisenhower 1959: Douglas MacArthur 1960: Herbert Hoover & Amos Alonzo Stagg 1961: John F. Kennedy 1962: Byron "Whizzer" White 1963: Roger Q. Blough 1964: Donold B. Lourie 1965: Juan T. Trippe 1966: Earl H. "Red" Blaik 1967: Frederick L. Hovde 1968: Chester J. LaRoche 1969: Richard Nixon 1970: Thomas J. Hamilton 1971: Ronald Reagan 1972: Gerald Ford 1973: John Wayne 1974: Gerald B. Zornow 1975: David Packard 1976: Edgar B. Speer 1977: Louis H. Wilson 1978: Vincent dePaul Draddy 1979: William P. Lawrence 1980: Walter J. Zable 1981: Justin W. Dart 1982: Silver Anniversary Awards (NCAA) - All Honored Jim Brown, Willie Davis, Jack Kemp, Ron Kramer, Jim Swink 1983: Jack Kemp 1984: John F. McGillicuddy 1985: William I. Spencer 1986: William H. Morton 1987: Charles R. Meyer 1988: Clinton E. Frank 1989: Paul Brown 1990: Thomas H. Moorer 1991: George H. W. Bush 1992: Donald R. Keough 1993: Norman Schwarzkopf 1994: Thomas S. Murphy 1995: Harold Alfond 1996: Gene Corrigan 1997: Jackie Robinson 1998: John H. McConnell 1999: Keith Jackson 2000: Fred M. Kirby II 2001: Billy Joe "Red" McCombs 2002: George Steinbrenner 2003: Tommy Franks 2004: William V. Campbell 2005: Jon F. Hanson 2006: Joe Paterno & Bobby Bowden 2007: Pete Dawkins & Roger Staubach 2008: John Glenn 2009: Phil Knight & Bill Bowerman 2010: Bill Cosby

v t e Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2012 Players Mel Daniels Katrina McClain Reggie Miller Ralph Sampson Chet Walker Jamaal Wilkes Coaches Lidia Alexeeva Don Nelson Contributors Don Barksdale Phil Knight Referees Hank Nichols Teams All American Red Heads

Persondata
Name	Knight, Phil
Alternative names
Short description	American businessman
Date of birth	1938-02-24
Place of birth	Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Date of death
Place of death

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