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He borrowed $50 from his father. Sold shoes out of the trunk of his car. Got dropped by two banks. Got sued by his own supplier. Got hit with a $25 million government bill he couldn't pay. Today his company is worth $100 billion. And you've definitely got a pair of his shoes in your closet. Philip Knight was born in 1938 in Portland, Oregon. His father ran a newspaper. When Phil asked him for a summer job his father said no. Go find your own work. So Phil ran seven miles every morning to the rival newspaper. Got himself hired. That was Phil Knight at 18. Already refusing to accept no as a final answer. He ran track at the University of Oregon under a legendary coach named Bill Bowerman. Bowerman was obsessed with one thing. Making shoes lighter. He believed that every ounce you removed from a runner's shoe was like removing a pound of weight from their body over the course of a race. He would cut apart his runners' shoes and rebuild them by hand. Looking for fractions of ounces. Phil watched and filed it away. He went to Stanford Business School. In a class about small businesses he wrote a paper that would change his life. The paper asked one question. Could Japanese shoe manufacturers do to German shoe manufacturers what Japanese camera makers had done to German camera makers? In other words — could cheaper, high quality Japanese production destroy the German stranglehold on the athletic shoe market? Adidas owned the world in 1962. Phil Knight wrote a paper in a classroom saying they didn't have to. Then he decided to prove it. He borrowed $50 from his father. Flew to Japan. Walked into the Onitsuka Tiger shoe factory. Told them he represented a major American distribution company. He had no company. He had $50 and an idea. The Japanese executives asked what his company was called. Phil Knight looked around the room desperately. And said the first thing that came to his mind. Blue Ribbon Sports. They shook hands on a deal. Blue Ribbon Sports didn't exist an hour ago. Now it had exclusive rights to sell Japanese Tiger shoes across the entire United States. He came home and started selling shoes out of the trunk of his green Plymouth Valiant at track meets across the Pacific Northwest. Just Phil. His car. And a box of shoes. Sales were $8,000 in year one. Then $16,000. Then $34,000. Then $84,000. Doubling every single year. But banks wouldn't lend him money. Every time sales doubled Phil needed more inventory. More inventory meant more cash. And the banks kept saying no. Two banks dropped him as a customer entirely. He was perpetually on the edge of collapse. Payroll would come due with nothing in the account. Suppliers threatening to cut him off. He described those years as operating in a constant state of near death. One wrong move away from bankruptcy. Every. Single. Day. For eighteen years. Then Onitsuka Tiger tried to replace him. They had watched Blue Ribbon grow from nothing to a serious operation and decided they wanted a bigger American distributor. They were going to cut Phil out of the business he had built from $50 and a trunk full of shoes. Phil Knight could have accepted it. He had no money to fight back. No manufacturer. No brand. No leverage. He had nothing. So he did something that should have been impossible. He started his own shoe company. From scratch. He needed a logo. He paid a graphic design student named Carolyn Davidson $35 to design it. She came back with a simple curved shape. Phil looked at it and said he didn't love it. But he didn't have time to find anything better. The swoosh was born. For $35. Today that logo is worth billions of dollars. He needed a name. His first employee Jeff Johnson woke up from a dream one night with one word in his head. Nike. The Greek goddess of victory. Phil didn't love that either. But again — no time. Nike it was. In 1972 Nike launched at the US Olympic Trials. Phil announced that four of the top seven finishers had worn Nikes. The first three had actually worn Adidas. Phil Knight didn't care. He was building a story. And nobody builds a story by telling people you came third. Then the US government came for him. A letter arrived demanding Nike pay $25 million in import duties. Twenty five million dollars. Nike didn't have $25 million. Nike barely had enough to make payroll. The government claimed Nike owed taxes on every shoe manufactured outside America. The fight nearly killed the company. Three years of legal battles. Three years of not knowing if everything he had built would be seized by his own government. They settled for $9 million. Phil called it an absolute war. He survived it. Then came Michael Jordan. In 1984 a Nike executive pushed Phil to sign a rookie NBA player to an endorsement deal. Phil wasn't interested in basketball. Nike was a running shoe company. He reluctantly agreed to meet the rookie. His name was Michael Jordan. Nike signed him for $500,000 a year plus royalties. Unheard of money for a rookie who had never played an NBA game. The NBA banned the original Air Jordans immediately. Said they violated uniform color rules. Nike paid Jordan's $5,000 per game fine every single time he wore them. And turned the ban into the greatest marketing campaign in sports history. The shoes that were too dangerous for the NBA. Every kid on every playground in America had to have them. Air Jordan generated $126 million in its first year. Today the Jordan brand alone generates over $5 billion annually. From one reluctant meeting with a rookie basketball player. Phil Knight took Nike public in 1980. On that day he was worth $178 million. His first employee was worth $6 million. Today Nike is worth over $100 billion. The most recognized sports brand on the face of the earth. Built by a man who borrowed $50 from his father. Who made up a company name on the spot in a Japanese boardroom. Who paid $35 for the most valuable logo in sports history. Who operated on the edge of bankruptcy for eighteen straight years. Who got sued by his supplier, dropped by his banks and hunted by his own government. And refused to quit through every single moment of it. The swoosh on your shoes right now started in the trunk of a green Plymouth Valiant at a track meet in Oregon. Sold by one man with $50 and an obsession. Just do it wasn't just a slogan. It was the only strategy that ever worked.

JJ, you just made the list, buddy. 🦆👍😍 https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/college-football-insiders-superstar-2026/

Let's go out, get together, and do it again. (Runner-up would be OK 🙃) https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/curt-cignetti-focused-next-for-indiana/ Come on, Baby, make it Curt so good! 😁

For seeds 1-8, it would, in effect, be a 16-team PO field. The 1st round is a playoff play-in game for seeds No. 9 through 24. The bye for teams 1-8 would not be longer than 13 days before the 2nd round is played. If seeded No. 1 or No. 5 in a 24-team field, as was the case in 2024 and 2025, with a 2nd round home game, Oregon would have the same travel it did when reaching the semifinals last season. Looking at the Committee's final ranking of the top 16 over the last two seasons, the SEC would benefit, and the B1G would take it in the financial shorts. In today's CFB, it's all about the Benjis. The more conference teams that qualify for the PO, the more money in PO revenue, and 24 teams means more money from the media, including ESPN. Eight B1G teams in the above hypothetical seeding of a 2026-27 field would Just Mean More than twice the 2025-26 PO revenue for the conference. Petitti's 24-team field reflects, in part, his concern over SEC teams being overrated by the PO Committee. If there had been a 24-field last season, 4-loss Iowa would have been in the field, a team that had no bad losses and defeated 2-loss Vandy in a bowl game played in Florida with the Heisman runner-up Pavia playing QB for the Dores. Iowa played a much harder schedule last season than Vanderbilt, Texas A&M, which lost to the one SEC team with a winning record that it played, Missouri, with no wins over teams with a winning record, and a Tennessee team that lost to Illinois in Nashville. A 4-loss Iowa team in the field would not have destroyed the very foundation of CFB. In 2025, 4-loss Iowa gave Indiana a much better game than 3-loss Alabama. The depth of the field is the trade-off for not having a 16-team field with automatic qualifiers. Kirby Smart and Josh Heupel are now in favor of Petitti's latest format. With a 9th conference game in 2026, I think more SEC coaches will be more likely to support a 24-team field. I'd love to watch eight 1st round games played on campus; no 1st round rematches allowed. I probably would not watch the same teams with decimated, opt-out rosters playing in the Gee-Whiz Bowl, but count me in for watching the 1st round play-in games with all or the majority of starters on the field playing in a home-field CFB atmosphere. And, while I hate to consider the thought, there could come a day when 16th-ranked Oregon was knocked out by a far lower-ranked New World G6 Pac-Whatever team. 🤬 Mercy!

Amen. But in the proposed 24-team PO, there would be a 1st round one-week bye for teams seeded 1-8 and a 2nd round home game a week later. 13 days off max.

PODCAST: Oregon OL Coach A'lique Terry Joins Ducks DishThe Oregon Ducks have become one of the top producers of offensive linemen in recent years and coach A’lique Terry has been one of the main reasons why. Terry, just 30 years old, first joined the Oregon staff as a graduate assistant under Mario Cristobal in 2019. He followed that up with stints at Hawaii, where he led his first offensive line room, and a job with the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL. Now, it’s been three years since Terry returned to Eugene to lead the Oregon offensive line under head coach Dan Lanning. As a result, Oregon has finished as a top-three finalist for the Joe Moore Award, which recognizes the top offensive line unit in college football, in each of the last three seasons. While Terry has excelled on the field as a coach, he’s also been one of Oregon’s top recruits on the staff, helping the Ducks sign center Iapani Laloulu, a finalist for the Rimmington Trophy in 2025, as well as top talents like Emmanuel Pregnon, 5-star Immanuel Iheanacho and 4-star Tommy Tofi in the 2026 recruiting class. In the latest episode of the Ducks Dish Podcast, ScoopDuck’s Max Torres sits down with Terry for an insightful conversation. Terry reflects on the Ducks’ 2025 season including his favorite game, some of the young offensive linemen in his room and his coaching journey back to Eugene. Oregon’s starting five is up in the air with spring ball starting next week, and that’s something Terry takes a lot of pride in as he and the coaches in the Law Firm are tasked with moving pieces around and finding the best group, which will feature an exciting blend of returners like Laloulu and some rising young talent. Watch this episode below

It depends on how long the layoff is. Most NFL teams that are division champs will sit their players the last game of the season if they can manage it, and it doesn't seem to harm them much to have the bye week during wild card weekend, so 2 total weeks between games is okay. The problem is when everyone has 3-4 weeks off, and the winner of the first rounds knocks the rust off while the higher seeded team is still rusty is when it gets bad. Separately, if we pay attention to trends, about 75% of playoff teams are contenders due to NIL and the draw to make the playoffs. I don't think going to 24 will change the ratio that much after a few years to adjust. But the dilution of talent will continue to affect the "elite", and every additional round makes it roughly 50% less likely we'll win a Natty. 25% chance with 4 team playoff, 7.5% chance with the 12 team playoff and 3.75% chance with a 24 team playoff. 24 is nearly 25, as in "25 ranked teams" that we consider the threshold for being relevant. So all relevant teams except 1 are in the tournament. Seems to line up. All that being said I think 16 is probably best as a Duck fan that appreciates more level competition.

Relax! It ain't over till the last fat guy signs! 🤑 https://duckswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/ducks/recruiting/2026/03/05/oregon-football-industry-rankings-2027-class/88986300007/?utm_source=smg-duckswire-strada&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=SMGbaseline&utm_ter

And Nate Costa saves the tying extra point with a great save of the snap.

Charles, likewise, it was nice chatting with you. Yes, he is very impressive. Hope some of you guys enjoy it.

Hey George, Nice to chat with you, and yes...it is a slow off-season, so analysis videos like these are interesting about our Oregon players preparing for the NFL Draft. Our thanks.

Hi everyone, I'm George—new to the board. Have many friends that are Oregon Ducks fans and also run a Miami Dolphins YouTube channel. I recently did a full scouting breakdown on Oregon safety Dillon Thieneman and wanted to share it here in case anyone is interested. I'd also love to hear what you guys think about his game and his NFL projection. Thanks!

Ogburn was special. VA sort of reminded me of a compact version of Reggie. The season with the "academic fraud/extra benefits" penalties completely derailed what seemed very promising with the random way multiple key Duck players were were suspended at various times of the season. Oregon didn't have the roster to overcome the constant change in those days.

Anything from the Kevin Lusk era 😆 My first OBD memory as a very young lad was watching Reggie Ogburn, he seemed like a magician and I was hooked.

That may have been the play...I know it was UCLA, at Autzen. Sometimes, the moment stands alone. Sort of like Gerry Faust's 15th ranked Notre Dame settling for a tie, 13-13 in 1982, rather than losing in Autzen, back in the pre-OT days. The Irish were ranked, and took a last second FG to avoid an embarrassing defeat. Oregon was 0-3 at the time, having lost 106-31 up to that point. The 40,000+ fans at the game was, at that time, an Autzen record.

A couple favorites at UCLA. Blocked XP Walkoff goal-line stand 1995

I have a player that should in everybody’s glory day discussion…in 2002 Oregon Hall of Famer blows up the UCLA center, and blocks an extra point attempt. Ducks go on to win 31 - 30. Dude was a beast….any guesses? Wasn’t sure if this is the game referenced earlier. I don’t think he ran off the field waving his finger….

Thought of that one too. Guys sliding 20' in a puddle after the tackle is not a good look.

I'd probably throw Oregon beating Ohio State in 2024 on that list and potentially 2021. For 2024 it was a massive moment for the Lanning era. For 2021 it was a step forward where Oregon finally got a win over Ohio State who were 8-0. How they're 9-2 ... It's certainly q change in the times.

2009 season had Arizona, Oregon, OSU, and Stanford still in the Rose Bowl race with two games yet to be played. The come from behind win against a Nick Foles led Arizona (students jumping out of stands ready to celebrate), Masoli hits Ed Dickson with 8 seconds left, and Ducks win in overtime. That game sets the table for the Civil War…winner goes to Rose Bowl. Both of those wins in 2009 were iconic.

College Football News 2026 Pre-Spring Top 25 is B1G - OBD ranked 2nd, Ohio State No. 1, Indiana No. 3, along with six more B1G teams. Oregon plays at No. 1 Ohio State, at 12 USC, 16 Michigan, 17 UW, and No. 25 (!!!) UCLA. https://collegefootballnews.com/college-football/college-football-spring-rankings-2026-top-25

The Oregon Ducks football program has built a legacy that’s synonymous with thrilling finishes, high-speed offense, and unforgettable moments that define the modern college football experience. Since its early days at the University of Oregon, Oregon football has captured the hearts of fans nationwide with games that are not only exciting but also historically significant. From buzzer-beating drives to bowl ... Oregon’s Most Iconic Games in Ducks Football History

16 max. It's not as if it isn't ruined with the portal/NIL/money and semi-pro status that currently exists. Used to be a total fan, even back when there was only one game on tv on Saturday........now, left handed bowling seems more relavent.

Are other SEC coaches ready to Get Smart? BTW, that 2-loss Vandy team was defeated by 4-loss Iowa. https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/kirby-smart-josh-heupel-24-team-cfp-format-sec-coaches/

True, but not the expenses of both fan bases. Just levels the playing field?