Phil Knight on Bill Bowerman

Here is an article posted on the Nike website this morning. Written
by Phil about Bill B.

At 17 years and six months of age I went off to the University of
Oregon, one hundred miles and a world away from the only home I knew.

With 6,000 students, the school was the largest in the state. It was
located in the middle of the Willamette Valley, a setting of tall trees,
clean air, and old buildings.

I arrived a few days before school started to work out with the
cross-country team. I was a walk-on for a team whose members included
three future Olympians and whose famous coach was developing national
champions from unlikely sources.

I hadn't run a lot over the summer. In high school I never put in that
much effort, but still I had managed to do fairly well and had been a
favorite of my high school coach. My plan was simple: I would work hard
after I got to school, and I would again be one of the coach's
favorites. He would put his arm around me and guide me to
track-and-field greatness.

The Oregon coach, was, of course, Bill Bowerman, who was in the process
of developing more sub-four-minute milers than anyone had yet produced
in the history of track and field. The world didn't know that then, but
some of us suspected it. That is why we were there.

On that first day, he sent me out on a "long slow run" through the hills
of the Laurelwood Golf Course with Bill Dellinger. I was thrilled just
to meet Dellinger. He had come out of Springfield, Oregon, and despite
being too short and too slow he had shocked the track-and-field world to
win the NCAA mile championship as a sophomore, 15 months before my
arrival. Now I was running alongside him.

Well, the thrill was over quickly. Dellinger ran the dozen hills. I ran
three of them. While he was never anything less than encouraging to me
in running, his teammate and fraternity brother Jim Bailey had beaten
him in the NCAA mile the previous year, and he was not about to lose to
Bailey again. So he certainly wasn't going to ease up on a workout to
please a walk-on.

At the top of the third hill, I was spent and panted something like "
I'm not quite ready for this." At least I didn't blame a pulled muscle.
I limped back to the dressing room, startled by its emptiness. What 30
minutes before had been alive and expectant was now quiet. The street
clothes of other runners who were still working out hung limply from
hooks on the wall. The coach was not in sight, but for the first time I
could feel his presence when he wasn't there. I could hear his grim
voice saying, "If you don't like this feeling, don't come unprepared.
This will not be easy."

I saw that moment as the end of a painful three-mile. It didn't occurr
to me that it was also the start of a long journey. On the first day of
my college education I learned you could have a conversation with an
empty room.

Bowerman was unique. He lived by a code: He would not be a bad father or
husband; he would not have a beer with his athletes or even in front of
them. He quoted scripture - usually incorrectly, but he made his point.
Frequently he would tilt his head back and scratch his neck just under
the chin; that was a signal to look out. The ultimate running shoe, in
his opinion, was a nail through the foot, but those kids of the 1950s
were just too soft to put up with that.

He was attitude dressed as a man - broad shoulders, erect posture and of
course that stare, a part of him still the Army major who had captured a
German division. He was an educated man capable of impressive use of the
English language. I heard him give a lot of good talks to high schools
and community gatherings. But he chose to educate me and others by
making effective use of silence.

Before our first cross-country competition against intrastate rival
Oregon State and several other schools, we fidgeted in that same
dressing room, which would be our home for four years, waiting for final
words from the coach. "We" included two national champions and five
freshmen. I was very nervous and very curious about the coach's pep
talk.

He took forever to come into the room. All the while, I was glanced
around, my leg shaking.

Finally he showed. After a long pause he said, "I want you freshmen to
understand that there is something different about competing against
Oregon State." Then he walked out of the room. Bill Bowerman, master of
the unspoken pep talk.

Bailey and Dellinger stared at the freshmen, making sure we understood.
Then they walked out, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

We slaughtered them. I was seventh for the team, and 10th overall,
beating Frank Moore of Oregon State, who had beaten me in the state high
school meet the previous spring.

As a freshman I had a lot of trouble adapting; the food, long homework
assignments and a roommate who never agreed about when the windows
should be open or closed didn't help. But one thing constantly made it
more difficult: him.

I had wanted to please, but he wouldn't let me. He was contrary about
everything, and that first year felt a lot like hazing: He scheduled six
a.m. workouts, and made us run daily doubles, unheard of at the time. He
wrote out personalized workouts for everybody - harder ones for great
runners, building up to hard for the wannabes. He mimeographed the days
of the weeks in green ink on yellow paper, then he penciled in what you
were to do: "6x400 at :64; 4x800 at :66" and so on, writing in a way
that mimicked how he talked - gruffly, illegibly. For no reason at all
he would assign extra workouts, then cancel one that had been scheduled.
He criticized if I was five minutes late for practice, even though all
the workouts were personalized anyway.

Although he would occasionally yell, at heart he was not a shouter. He
could make you mad at him without raising his voice at all.

"Who is the coach of this team?" he would ask when I gave him a doubting
look.

"What is this, Beast Barracks?" I wanted to answer, but I knew that
would get me kicked off the team forever. He kicked a national-class
sprinter off the team for "interfering with my right to enjoy coaching."
For a time there was a better track team on the campus made solely of
guys who had been booted from the varsity.

All the while, Bowerman gave strange-sounding advice. "Do right and fear
no man," he'd say. What did that have to do with running a fast 880?

Plus he was always tinkering with something. He could be found on the
field on Saturday mornings, stirring a huge cauldron over an open fire.
In his weathered pants, boots, flannel shirt and green cowboy hat, he
was an unusual picture of a mad scientist. He was constantly attempting
to formulate a material to improve the long-jump runway surface. Runners
assumed these strange mixtures were equal parts tar, rubber, Irish
whiskey and hocus-pocus incantations. One time he lost control of the
fire and almost burned down the east grandstand.

He concocted a combination of tea, honey, and lemonade, the better to
replenish nutrients, he said, and on cold days he made us run in long
underwear. He was continually trying to take two ounces off a pair of
racing shoes.

But mostly Bill Bowerman was tinkering with your mind.

When you put your faith in him, however, he would put his faith in you.
He was about to produce a whole lot of Olympians. Before long, a sports
drink like his - albeit a better-tasting one - would become known as
Gatorade, and within a decade 3M's synthetic track surfaces would become
the industry standard. And the long underwear? The Oregon freshman team
was about to win a cross-country meet in Vancouver, where the
temperature was 12 degrees; the underwear was, of course, the forerunner
of muscle tights.

We had no way of knowing those things then. For the most part we would
do it his way - or do something else. It took until halfway through my
sophomore year, but as the meets and practices rolled by, it all
gradually began to be sense.

As my commitment grew, something else changed. The bond between us began
to grow as well.

Almost two years to the day after Bill Dellinger had left me for dead on
the Laurelwood Golf Course, I beat the great Jim Bailey in a
cross-country race. Fifteen months before, Bailey had run the first
sub-four-minute mile on U.S. soil. To be sure, Bailey wasn't at his
best, and I was the fittest I had ever been, but breaking the finish
tape is one of the real thrills in sports, and I didn't do it that often
in my college years. On this day it was more than that. I belonged.

Twenty minutes after the race the coach found me, my cooldown almost
over. He put that great warm paw of his on my neck, looked down at me
and gave a smile. "Good race," he said. It wasn't as good as standing on
the medal platform in Tokyo while the national anthem played, but for
those of us who would never get that far, it would have to do.

In the spring of my senior year Bowerman met with me one-on-one to talk
about a big Saturday 880 against USC. For those few moments, his look,
the one that could melt platinum, was focused on the imaginary back of a
USC runner, the one whose personal best was three seconds better than my
own. Then he turned to me, "You can beat him," he said.

Running is a solo sport. Primal. Start in the same place as the other
guy and see who can get to the finish line fastest. No ratings judge in
sight. Training means slogging through countless miles, roaming the
world with your thoughts. So too was college a solo sport; in this place
I was deciding who I might become. If I were to be a businessman, I
would be an entrepreneur; if an artist, a writer. Or maybe a lawyer in
private practice - a sole practitioner, of course.

Bowerman had been drawn to the same unique sport. In those college
years, I grew to understand why I ran for him; harder to figure out was
why he was drawn to me. He spent more time with me than my performance
justified. I still don't know why. I suppose it was in part because I
did other things: good grades every couple of terms, a weekly column in
the Daily Emerald, fraternity president, and, maybe best of all, class
representative on the student disciplinary committee, which decided if
kids were to be kicked out of school. There I fought on a regular basis
with Golda Wickham, dean of women, who to this day I believe was Ken
Kesey's role model for Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Bowerman had found me worthy in a way that had nothing to do with how
fast I ran. My gratitude ran deep, in no small part because he allowed
me entry to a place where I could view greatness up close.

Our odd but growing relationship peaked that Saturday in May when we
faced USC. After eight years of running in high school and college, as
the meets got bigger and competition tougher, I didn't want to be alone
quite so much. There in that room, while we talked strategy, the bonding
of my college years reached a new high. This ornery, indecipherable man
who had put me through so much - who got me to do things I didn't think
I could do, who got me to beat a national champion, who got empty rooms
to speak - would be there with me. I would leave it all on that track.

I lost. I found out one more time that some people can run faster than
you can. Wayne Lemmons from USC beat me by a step, costing the team four
points, half the total it lost by, to a USC squad that hadn't lost a
dual meet in more than 10 years. I got the paw and the "Good race," but
I was crushed. When I later came to think about that race, knowing that
I had given my all, plus 10 percent, including three and a half years of
preparation, I concluded that, win or lose, finding the extra 10 percent
within yourself is what matters.

By the time my college years wound to their end, I had lost far more
races than I had won. But a part of me insisted that it wasn't so much
that I had not achieved success. I had just used up my eligibility. If
winning on the track were just around the corner, it would have to be
done on some other team, and that saddened me.

Looking back on all those workouts, I realize that once you got past the
oddities, Bowerman was a wonder in many ways. He had no assistant coach,
no secretary. He tailored individual workout sheets written in longhand
for each of his 35 athletes every week of the school year. In my four
years, that amounted to 4,200 individualized workout sheets. About 120
of them were mine.

At the end of the four years, I had progressed to the level at which I
could ask the question, Why the tough treatment of the new guys? All
those guys kicked off the team?

Of course I received an understated answer: "Because the most important
thing for any teacher is to get the student's attention."

I understood it, but an aura of mystery also existed about him that I
could not crack, a part that always remained hidden. I concluded that
after he had gained a student's attention, he had to find means to make
sure it did not wander. A little like Samson and his hair - if he lost
the mystery, he couldn't teach.

On my last day on campus, it was time to say good-bye. I would, I
thought, not see him much any more.

I prepared for that last meeting. I had gotten an A in my one term of
speech; this would be the real final for that course. I typed what I
wanted to say, one full page. I memorized it, including the gestures.
This was my heartfelt thanks for all that he had meant on so many
levels.

I walked down the hallway to his office for the last time - the corridor
where already so many of the greats had walked, their pictures on the
walls - and went in. It was a modest office on reflection, but a certain
aura issued from it. In four years ice had turned to warmth, punishment
to encouragement and hope. Yet it was still an intimidating place,
especially with him right there.

I wondered, Why would he care, this coach of the greats, the man who
would later become head coach of the U.S. Olympic team?

So I stood there, shifting my weight from one leg to the other, and I
choked. Finally I managed, "Well ... it's been an honor ... Thanks..."
and stuck out my hand.

He shook it firmly, and I turned to go.

"Just a minute," he said. I turned back.

"You've meant a lot to this university, not just in running. It is
indebted to you."

A speech. He gave me a speech longer than the first pep talk I heard him
give the team. I had to get out of there. I turned again. "Just one more
thing," he said. I turned back once more.

"Never underestimate yourself."

When I got outside, I was still shaking. As I had with so much of his
stuff I would have a long time to think about that final moment in his
office.

After my college years he came to be accepted as the greatest track
coach of all time. It should have been no surprise he found greatness in
overlooked young men from the smallest, most overlooked towns of Oregon:
Coos Bay, Cottage Grove, St. Helens, Oregon City, North Eugene,
Scappoose, Sherwood, Seaside, Siuslaw.

A part of me connects with those young men who came out of nowhere.
Bowerman looked inside us and mystifyingly placed his belief in us, and
then one day we were capable of more than we knew. And the ones he found
worthy began to repeat this process on their own.

For me the journey resumed in an unforeseen and circuitous way.

After an active-duty tour in the Army and sitting in an entrepreneurship
class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1962, I wondered,
Hmmm, could Bowerman's search for a better running shoe be a business?

Four and a half years after that "final" moment in his office, I showed
Bowerman track-shoe samples made in Japan. What did he think? The
response was better than I had expected. We each put in $500 and shook
hands on a partnership.

The next several years were a struggle. Our "executives" were ex-runners
and lawyers and accountants who couldn't work for establishment firms.
Our marketing and sales efforts consisted or skinny white kids selling
shoes out of their cars in Oregon and California.

One of my old marketing professors came up and reviewed operations for a
couple of days. He declared, "Management is a shambles. Every day is a
crisis, and every Friday a Jesus Crisis."

One week the only way we could meet our payroll was to borrow $5,000
from a shoe-box manufacturer.

We were thrown out of two banks in Oregon, and at that time Oregon had
only two banks. One of them advised, "You are so far overdrawn in so
many accounts, we have notified the FBI."

Nissho Iwai, the sixth-largest Japanese trading company, picked us up
off the side of the road. It was a better arrangement. Tom Sumeragi, who
became a friend, was assigned to our account. If we couldn't pay, he
left the invoices buried in his drawer. When I asked why he did that, he
said, "Because I personally believe you will someday do $10 million in
sales."

And of course the big one: Eight years after we started, after we had
overcome all those other obstacles, we lost our sole source of supply.

But you see, so many of us back then had come off Bowerman's teams. The
obstacles the world was throwing at us, well, they were just the
business version of hazing. What mattered, what always mattered, was our
competitive response.

Lose your source of supply? Find another one. This time do it your way,
under your own brand name. But what name? Jeff Johnson suggested naming
the brand after the Greek goddess of victory. Would that work? But it's
also a surface-to-air missile. Could that connote speed? It wasn't
great, but like the shoe-side logo we were starting to call the Swoosh,
maybe it would grow on us. Fight hard.

Today more hard-core young runners come to visit Hayward Field than ever
before. They come for a talk with the ghosts, the ones from the Olympic
trials of 1972, 1976 and 1980 and all those national and invitational
meets. They take in the west grandstand, which seems to have come right
out of Chariots of Fire. They walk around the urethane track where Lee
Evans, John Smith, Marion Jones, Hicham El Guerrouj and, of course,
Steve Prefontaine raced. Then they wander to the north corner, where the
life-size statute of Bowerman oversees everything. Always they run their
hands over the statue, hoping some of the magic will rub off.

The silences are permanent now.

Yet over all these years I have communicated with and heard much about
many of those old runners. Many went back to their small towns. They
became doctors, lawyers, architects, farmers, educators, business
leaders and, in at least one case, writers. They've survived divorces
and dashed hopes. We cannot shake the voice, the voice that at various
times came out of voids - the empty rooms, the unfinished sentences, the
unreadable workout schedules. Bowerman runs with us still.

Jim Bailey said at a public gathering in 2001, "I have let him down many
times. Never he me." Bailey, channeling Bowerman, wasn't talking about
his track career but about the race inside. It applied to everything you
cared about. Competitive responses honed. The aspirations we didn't dig
deep enough for, didn't fight hard enough for.

In the end, this is what he taught us: It's never just about how fast
you move your legs.

LetsRun.com