Phil's Folly wags the Ducks

Phil Knight is at it again, this time with a $41.7 million over-the-top, luxury clubhouse for University of Oregon athletes.

UO officials continue to let the feathered tail (Knight, Nike’s billionaire founder) wag the ducks (the university's image and perceived mission). In the past I’ve suggested that “big sports” campuses spin off their athletic programs into amateur leagues that bear no relationship to the campuses and their academics except for traditional names (Ducks, Beavers, Vikings, Slugs, Earthworms or whatever. . . .)

Knight’s most recent duck-wagging may prove I have it backwards. How about the campuses keeping the athletes (and their clubhouses, stadiums, perks, overpaid coaches, television contracts, sponsor endorsements, and publicity machines) and transporting students and faculty to off-campus independent universities?

Sounds as though that’s where things are headed in Eugene, thanks to the sport-obsessed Knight and thousands of season-ticketed alumni seeking nostalgic pride in all the wrong places.

Mystery and ignorance reign in Knight's Duckdom

The Oregon’s public system of higher education is fomenting a mystery.

Billionaire Phil Knight is writing the plot and has no desire for the mystery to be solved — which is a mystery within a mystery.

Worse, the president of the University of Oregon, Richard Lariviere, considers Knight's machinations a mystery too.

Does Lariviere, who is supposed to know what's happening, care?

Not a bit.

It gets worse, as a front page story in today’s Oregonian describes. The entire state board of higher education is equally clueless.

In this know-nothing atmosphere, according to the story, Lariviere Friday browbeat the board into approving, on a day’s notice, a Knight donation (for an undisclosed, mysterious amount) to build a 80,000 square-foot operations center for ... what?

The Duck football team, of course.

How refreshing that Phil, the Beaverton sneaker mogul, has his priorities straight. His OWN priorities.

Oh, and the board agreed that Knight decides who gets the design and construction contracts for the facility, which will be built on public land.

Lariviere’s cudgel with the state board was this: If you don’t accept this gift, Knight may confer his bounty elsewhere.

Say it isn’t so.

Meanwhile, a story immediately above this one on the front page informs the mystified reader that students going to the seven Oregon University system schools next fall will be paying, on average, 6.2 percent more for tuition. That brings the cost of public higher education (including room, board, books and tuition) to about $20,000 a year per student.

And while the increase isn’t the highest in the nation, deep down in the story we learn that the Oregon University system has been judged as failing because it “skimps” on aid to low-income students.

Unless, apparently, they happen to play football.

And to think that all this is happening in the middle of a collapsed economy where intellectual breakthroughs are needed just a tad more than touchdowns and conference titles.

Inquiring minds might ask why the university is building grandiose football facilities while students, with fewer and fewer resources, are being forced to pick up more and more of the education tab and being saddled with greater and greater debt?

The answer and the values behind it remain mysteries, unless you happen to be one Phil Knight.

The Bomber's Beaverton Brand

Memo to Phil Knight:

What goes around comes around, or are Tiger Woods and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, aka "the Lockerbie Bomber," both on Nike's swoosh-brandishing endorsement payroll?

And you thought you had a problem with Michael Vick.

Or is Abdel working undercover for Adidas?

Naming wrongs

I’ve wondered about the mental stability — yes, that’s the phrase that comes to mind — of the super-rich who feel compelled to splash their names on edifices they have paid for. Right here in Oregon the names of Robert Pamplin, Jr., Jordan Schnitzer, Phil Knight, Harry Merlo come to mind)

Of course these men (they always seem to be men) owe their fortunes to others (people called employees and customers and, in some cases, relatives. Teachers probably deserve some credit too).

But never mind. Inevitably their own names go on the museums, soccer fields, gymnasiums, academic lecture halls and the like.

In the mental health community, they call this “narcissism.”

Why must they do this?

If you drive I-5, as you approach Eugene, a taxpayer-paid-for exit sign tells you that if you take the next exit you can visit the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

I imagine Mr. Schnitzer, who is very much alive, driving the interstate and basking in the glory of it all. He can exit at his very own exit.

As for the rest of us, we might well wonder, “Who the hell is Jordan Schnitzer and why is his name being thrust in my face on this public by-way?”

Why indeed? I have no answer except for my reference to certain mental abnormalities.

Mr. Schnitzer happens to be a neighbor, of sorts. When I climb to higher elevations, I walk by his very large house with its sweeping view of the metropolis. I’m sure he is an honorable man, but why couldn’t he have insisted, nay, demanded, that the University of Oregon museum be named after a muse, a vision, a great cause, a virtue or a humble worker in his family’s steel plant?

Likewise, Messers Pamplin, Knight and Merlo. All of these men are, like Mr. Schnitzer, alive and answerable. It remains to be seen whether they are aware. Perhaps they will tell us. We eagerly await their response.