Does the Salazar doping scandal go to the very, very top? Phil Knight steps down at Nike.

This is Phil, at age 77, moving his billions around and setting a course of succession in order.Not about Salazar

dude... I doubt this is even on Knight's radar. Gimme a break.

Great question. Could be related.

Not a chance. Phil is close to both Galen and Salazar but NOPJCT is so far beneath Phil that this would never cause him to retire.Salazar would never cause PHK to retired from a billion dollar company that he intvented!

PHK has lived through waaaay bigger scandals at Nike: Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, Joe Paterno (all had buildings named after them at Nike). On top of people coming after him for factory working conditions, FIFA issues, Oscar Pistorius, Michael Vick, Marion Jones, etc.

This had 0 to do with PHK leaving Nike.

ksjhfakdshf wrote:

Great question. Could be related.

Sure in a Dumb and Dumber "So there's a chance!" sort of way. And technically there is - just not very much of one.

For Phil to have announced that he was stepping down and to have everything in place - he had to hire a number of lawyers who had to work for a significant amount of time to create the trusts and documents to transition everything. I would assume just on its face that the document creation took 90 days at a minimum.

It would be nice to speculate that FIFA or AlSal's Pals caused the sudden departure, but given the complexity of this transition and what appears to be a good amount of preparation, this decision did just happen overnight. Or in the span of the past 45 days.

conspiracy guy wrote:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/vincentfrank/2015/07/01/nikes-phil-knight-to-step-down-as-chairman/

So a few days ago Nike says they looked at Salazar allegations and found nothing.

Today Phil Knight says he's stpping down.

Coincidence? Hmmm.

You can't tell me phil wouldn't have at least been vaguely aware of AW activities . It might be hard for him to know if Salazar was rubbing the androgel into Rupp late at night but maybe after the threats at USAs and what not, the board at Nike said, "This personal infatuation with track and field of yours isn't worth risking a multibillion dollar company."

Any chance these things are related?

None at all. The dude is 75, he's put a decade or more in to a secession plan.

He still owns a monster amount of A class voting shares, and will be involved with the company, selecting 3 members of the board.

details details details wrote:

conspiracy guy wrote:http://www.forbes.com/sites/vincentfrank/2015/07/01/nikes-phil-knight-to-step-down-as-chairman/

So a few days ago Nike says they looked at Salazar allegations and found nothing.

Today Phil Knight says he's stpping down.

Coincidence? Hmmm.

You can't tell me phil wouldn't have at least been vaguely aware of AW activities . It might be hard for him to know if Salazar was rubbing the androgel into Rupp late at night but maybe after the threats at USAs and what not, the board at Nike said, "This personal infatuation with track and field of yours isn't worth risking a multibillion dollar company."

Any chance these things are related?

None at all. The dude is 75, he's put a decade or more in to a secession plan.

He still owns a monster amount of A class voting shares, and will be involved with the company, selecting 3 members of the board.

This ^^^^^

He knew about Lance and he knows about NOP.

This transfer is way bigger then NOP.

How the F$ck does this - one of the most stupid posts I have ever seen - have a link from the homepage??

BroJos - you are shameless beyond words.

Not related to NOP scandal but NOP was Phil's pet project. Without him there or in a diminuished capacity, I wouldn't be surprised if his successor would just drop the whole thing, meaning dropped Salazar.

Phil is so scared by Kara's tears that he can't sleep at night. That's why he donated $ 500 million to cancer research and is now retiring.

Highly doubtful. In the scheme of things, this hardly affects Nike at all. Keep in mind how small of an audience american running actually gets. Most people don't even know what EPO is or who Galen Rupp or Alberto Salazar are. As big of a deal as this is among the running community, its one team of 9 athletes and a coach accused of doing something. This is the equivalent of a coach on a Nike sponsored college football/basketball team getting accused of giving steroids to players. Yea, its a bit of a controversy but in the end wouldn't change the way people feel about Nike it only changes the way people look at that coach/team. Ultimately, I think Knight is stepping down because hes old and hes loaded beyond belief.

I've recently become reaquainted with Nike's shoes. I have to say I'm digging the flynit lunar 3. That Zoom elite looks like a sweet shoe too. I might have to spring for that soon.