By Ryan Bologna
May 6, 2022
Only Play­ers

Every­one knows Nike — the sneak­er com­pa­ny that is worth bil­lions of dol­lars. In May of 2022, Nike turned 50. How did a track and field coach, a stu­dent-ath­lete and a waf­fle iron turn into one of the most icon­ic brands in the world? We tried to fig­ure that out.

Phil Knight attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon where he met Bill Bow­er­man, the school’s track and field coach. Bow­er­man was always think­ing of crazy exper­i­ments with shoes to improve the per­for­mance of his team. The two even­tu­al­ly start­ed up a com­pa­ny called Blue Rib­bon Sports in Jan. 1964. After work­ing with a Japan­ese sup­pli­er for many years, which lat­er became Asics, the rela­tion­ship soured and Blue Rib­bon Sports cut ties.

Knight and Bow­er­man decid­ed to keep pur­su­ing their ven­ture, but they need­ed a new name. The first employ­ee of the com­pa­ny was Jeff John­son, and he was charged with that impor­tant task. Knight want­ed to name the com­pa­ny “Dimen­sion Six,” but every­one teased him because he was the only one who liked the name. John­son came up with the name Nike in a dream. His rea­son­ing? Nike is the Greek god­dess of vic­to­ry. After some debate, Knight reluc­tant­ly agreed to go ahead with the name because they were up against the dead­line and, after all, it would fit on the shoe.

Knight was a pro­fes­sor at Port­land State Uni­ver­si­ty, where he found a stu­dent to design a logo. Design stu­dent Car­olyn Davis was paid $2 an hour ($35 in total) to pro­vide sketch­es, and the one Knight decid­ed to go with was what we know today as the Nike swoosh. Could you imag­ine being a col­lege stu­dent, cre­at­ing that logo and see­ing the brand take off? Luck­i­ly she was giv­en mul­ti­ple shares in the com­pa­ny, so she wasn’t left out to dry.

Mean­while, Bow­er­man was still try­ing to come up with inno­v­a­tive ideas for high-per­for­mance shoes. His first major break­through came while eat­ing break­fast. After sta

ring at the pat­tern of his waf­fle, he won­dered if it would make a sole for a run­ning shoe that gives more trac­tion. His first try result­ed in actu­al­ly glu­ing the waf­fle iron shut with rub­ber and, after some tri­al and error, the Waf­fle Train­er was born in 1971.

The shoe was a hit, the first of many in the 70s for Nike. Ten­nis play­er Ilie Nas­tase became the first of many ath­letes to sign an endorse­ment with the com­pa­ny in 1972. Nike lat­er found great suc­cess with their Tail­wind shoe that intro­duced their sig­na­ture air tech­nol­o­gy in 1979.

Nike was thriv­ing by this point, which led to the com­pa­ny going pub­lic in 1980. From that point for­ward, the com­pa­ny made an increas­ing­ly big cul­tur­al impact.  There was no big­ger deal, of course, than sign­ing Michael Jor­dan in 1984.

Both Jor­dan and Nike took a risk with this part­ner­ship. Jor­dan was a rook­ie in 1984, so Nike was plac­ing a bet on him becom­ing a super­star. (spoil­er alert: he did) Nike was nowhere near as estab­lished as Con­verse and Adi­das. The land­mark deal launched Air Jor­dan and the unique terms made Micheal Jor­dan the rich­est ath­lete of all time. Air Jor­dans were wild­ly suc­cess­ful and have shaped the cul­ture of shoe col­lect­ing since they were intro­duced. They have lost none of their icon­ic sta­tus in the near­ly 40 years since launch.

Nike did not stop there. The “Just Do It” cam­paign was intro­duced in the 1980s along with the “Bo Knows” adver­tise­ments fea­tur­ing NFL and MLB star Bo Jack­son. The com­pa­ny would con­tin­ue to sign mega ath­letes like Tiger, and LeBron not to men­tion inter­na­tion­al mega stars Ronal­do and Nadal over the next few decades.

Nike’s imprint is all over the globe and espe­cial­ly omnipresent in the US where the com­pa­ny is the offi­cial sup­pli­er of the NFL and the NBA. Nike is also part­nered with 68 col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties account­ing for over 50% of all 130 FBS foot­ball programs.

It isn’t an exag­ger­a­tion to say that it would be impos­si­ble to imag­ine mod­ern-day sports or pop cul­ture with­out the under­stat­ed but indeli­ble swoosh. Not bad for a com­pa­ny that start­ed with a track and field coach, a young col­lege grad­u­ate and a waf­fle iron.