Bill Bowerman, every mention
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every year anyone David Rosenthal 53Ben Gilbert 9Brendan Eich 1
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Bill Bowerman comes up
Nike (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 5:36 David Rosenthal And actually a little bit before Shoe Dog starts, in July, 1948, when one Bill Bowerman becomes the head track coach at the University of Oregon.
- ▶ 5:47 David Rosenthal Now, Bill was a legendary figure, in addition to being Nike's co-founder, along with Phil Knight.
- ▶ 6:08 David Rosenthal So, Bill's dad was the governor of Oregon, and Bill fought in World War II as a major, and he actually negotiated at the end of the war the stand down of a German battalion.
- ▶ 6:48 David Rosenthal So, when Bill comes home after the war, he first coaches high school, and then he becomes the head track coach at the University of Oregon.
- ▶ 7:06 David Rosenthal So I believe Bill coaches the first American sub-four-minute milers.
- ▶ 7:29 David Rosenthal So, a few years into Bowerman's tenure as head coach, he recruits a pretty talented middle distance runner, freshman from Portland nearby, one Phil Knight.
- ▶ 7:58 David Rosenthal He majors in journalism at Oregon, and he runs for Bowerman.
- ▶ 8:07 Ben Gilbert Phil Knight would describe himself in his prime as an okay runner because he was running with the best collegiate runners in the world, coached by Bill Bowerman, who barely gave Phil Knight the time of day.
- ▶ 9:56 David Rosenthal So, Knight runs at Oregon, and it's important to say, we should note about Bowerman.
- ▶ 10:26 David Rosenthal So, Bowerman actually taught himself how to be a cobbler, and would take athletic shoes, usually Adidas athletic shoes, and modify them, or even build his own, and then use his athletes as guinea pigs to any advantage that they could have,…
- ▶ 10:45 Ben Gilbert And the technology that Bowerman was experimenting with was crazy stuff.
- ▶ 12:54 David Rosenthal Being a test pilot, as they would say for Bill's shoes.
- ▶ 22:08 David Rosenthal By the way, he ran track for the legendary Bill Bowerman, who of course they know.
- ▶ 27:04 David Rosenthal Which is that while he's driving around, he'll go down to Eugene and see his old coach, Bowerman, at the University of Oregon, and he thinks, oh, if I could get Bill to put his runners in Tigers, then that would be great marketing for me.
- ▶ 27:32 David Rosenthal At this point in time, even the legendary Bill Bowerman and the University of Oregon, they bought all the shoes.
- ▶ 29:07 David Rosenthal So Phil goes down to see Bowerman, and to Phil's surprise, I mean, Bowerman is not a warm and fuzzy guy, he's never really shown Phil much encouragement when he ran for him, or since.
- ▶ 29:19 David Rosenthal Bowerman says, this is a pretty good idea.
- ▶ 29:47 David Rosenthal Uh, I think originally Bowerman says fifty-fifty and then he sleeps on it and he comes back with his lawyer and he says, actually, let's do 51 49.
- ▶ 30:01 David Rosenthal Now, on the one hand, this is super exploitatory of Bowerman, of his old athlete that still obviously looks up to him like a father.
- ▶ 30:31 David Rosenthal But he does do the deal, and he gets 51% of Bill Bowerman's Blue Ribbon Sports, which is a completely different animal.
- ▶ 30:48 Ben Gilbert It just feels a little weird that Bowerman would just kind of immediately be like, yes, I'll go into business with you, person who ran for me that I never had a particularly close relationship with.
- ▶ 31:27 Ben Gilbert Based on letters in the University of Oregon and Nike archives, Bill Bowerman corresponded directly with many footwear manufacturers in the 19 fifties, so like 15 plus years before this, including Adi Dassler, directly to Adi Dassler,…
- ▶ 32:03 Ben Gilbert So, Bowerman is sitting there and he is primed.
- ▶ 32:10 David Rosenthal Just like Onitsuko was primed to receive young Phil Knight, so was Bowerman.
- ▶ 33:19 Ben Gilbert So, Bowerman.
- ▶ 33:20 David Rosenthal So, okay, we've got 51 night 49 Bowerman in Blue Ribbon Sports.
- ▶ 35:22 David Rosenthal It costs him and Bowerman about three dollars and 50 cents to get each pair of shoes.
- ▶ 46:32 David Rosenthal So then, in 1967, Bowerman, remember, you know, Bowerman's
- ▶ 47:36 David Rosenthal And Bowerman is obsessed with lightweight in his shoes.
- ▶ 47:50 David Rosenthal So Bowerman and Phil get together.
- ▶ 47:53 David Rosenthal We're going to have our own model, you know, that we've designed, that Bowerman's designed.
- ▶ 48:25 David Rosenthal So, Bowerman and Phil want to call the shoe, they actually want to borrow from the Adidas playbook,
- ▶ 49:04 David Rosenthal Bowerman is casting about for other ideas for names of the shoe, and he says to Knight, what was the name of that Spanish guy that kicked the you-know-what out of the Aztecs?
- ▶ 50:01 David Rosenthal So, also in 1967, Bowerman has another just monumental contribution.
- ▶ 50:21 David Rosenthal Bowerman just does this because it's what he wants to do.
- ▶ 51:02 Ben Gilbert Bowerman was forever griping that people make the mistake of thinking only elite Olympians are athletes.
- ▶ 51:32 David Rosenthal So Bowerman writes this book.
- ▶ 53:03 Ben Gilbert And the fact that Blue Ribbon really did have starting to become pretty real distribution at this point to the West Coast, they actually had built a brand and a trustworthiness with customers and coaches and that sort of thing for…
- ▶ 1:00:48 David Rosenthal He was also a Bowerman runner, had a terrible accident in college and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, becomes one of Nike's and Blue Ribbon's first employees,
- ▶ 1:11:46 David Rosenthal He's like, oh, let me talk to Bowerman.
- ▶ 1:27:18 David Rosenthal He's like, can you do all the running shoes that we slash Tiger were doing before, at least the ones that we and Bowerman designed?
- ▶ 1:29:09 David Rosenthal So, Phil gets home and he tells Bowerman about this.
- ▶ 1:29:13 David Rosenthal And this is where yet another sporadic but incredible Bowerman stroke of genius comes to play for Blue Ribbon slash Nike.
- ▶ 1:29:24 David Rosenthal Bowerman's jazzed.
- ▶ 1:29:42 David Rosenthal So that weekend, supposedly it was the weekend right after Knight told Bowerman about what was happening.
- ▶ 1:29:49 David Rosenthal He goes home, and over breakfast on Sunday, Bill is sitting there, his wife Barbara is making waffles for breakfast.
- ▶ 1:30:02 David Rosenthal Bill is struck with inspiration, and he's like, hey honey, can I borrow that waffle iron?
- ▶ 1:30:29 David Rosenthal And Bowerman at the time was like, well, this is great, this is the future, the Olympics are gonna do this and whatnot, but the shoes that I have, that I have my runners in, they're not gripping the track that well.
- ▶ 1:31:38 David Rosenthal Years and years later, after Bill had died, his, I think it was his kids, are going through the estate.
- ▶ 1:32:09 David Rosenthal So, where of course this is leading is the waffle trainer, which is another one of Bowerman's genius inventions and becomes the first big hit shoe for the new Nike brand.
- ▶ 1:34:49 David Rosenthal People were willing, definitely willing, to buy Blue Ribbon shoes and to buy Bill Bowerman shoes, regardless of Tiger and Onitsuka.
- ▶ 1:35:29 David Rosenthal Well, this is how important Bowerman was.
- ▶ 1:35:33 David Rosenthal Not only was he Bill Bowerman, you know, legendary track coach, he also started jogging.
- ▶ 1:35:39 David Rosenthal So the convergence of things, all the butterfly wing flapping that had to happen for Nike to become Nike, right at this time, right as Nike is being born and Blue Ribbon is going out on their own, Bowerman gets a generational runner at…
- ▶ 1:36:20 David Rosenthal He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated while he was a runner at Oregon for Bowerman.
- ▶ 1:36:40 David Rosenthal And he did this at Oregon, and then later as a professional, but still for Bowerman and his Olympic teams, in Nikes, right as Nike was starting.
- ▶ 1:50:11 David Rosenthal Most of them ran for Bowerman.
- ▶ 2:08:13 David Rosenthal Now, interestingly, before they went public, Bowerman sold most of his stake back to Phil Knight.
- ▶ 2:38:59 David Rosenthal Tinker was another Bowerman guy.
- ▶ 2:39:00 David Rosenthal He ran track for Bowerman in Oregon and studied architecture, and then he comes into Nike, and together with Mark Parker, who would become the CEO of Nike, they design the Air Max, they design the Air Trainer, they're part of Nike's…
- ▶ 2:41:56 David Rosenthal It's kind of like harkening back to the beginning of, like, Phil Knight could have had a hundred percent of Blue Ribbon Sports, or he could have had 51% of Bill Bowerman's Blue Ribbon Sports.
- ▶ 3:36:43 Ben Gilbert He and his management team and Bill Bowerman owned 56% at IPO, him owning 46% because he just kept betting the farm all on debt and basically had no buffer at all.
The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:05:56 Brendan Eich Wind surfing user generated in some ways, Bill Bowerman, Nike.