This is Inside the Cover.

And I am your book loving host, Ted Ayres.

Thank you for watching and enjoying PBS Kansas, your South Central home for seriously good TV.

Tonight's book is Shoe Dog by Phil Knight.

This book was published in 2016 and I finished my copy on October 25, 2022.

It was recommended to me by Tim, my long time friend from Columbia, Missouri.

I would remind you that a book recommendation is a great act of sharing and friendship.

I had always thought of Phil Knight as a rich man with a philanthropic passion for University of Oregon Sports.

While that opinion is not necessarily incorrect, this book certainly shines a different and more appealing light on Mr. Knight.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

Phil Knight is indeed a very rich man.

He is the co-founder and chairman emeritus of Nike, Inc..

In April 2023, Knight was ranked by Forbes magazine as the 24th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $47.7 billion.

That's a lot of shoes.

It is reported that Knight has donated over $2 billion to the University of Oregon, Stanford University and the Oregon Health and Science University.

Knight is a graduate of the University of Oregon, where he participated in track and field under legendary coach Bill Bowerman and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Knight earned his undergraduate degree in three years, and surprisingly to me, he also received his Army Reserve Commission and was a distinguished military graduate.

He had a year long hitch in the United States Army, but always stateside, before Blue Ribbon Sports, later Nike, flourished.

Knight was a CPA, first with Coopers and Lybrand and then Price Waterhouse.

He then became an accounting professor at Portland State University, where his future wife, Penelope Parker, was one of his students.

As much as anything, Shoe Dog is a biography of the life of Nike.

It is also the story of how an athletic shoe went from a popular accessory to a cultural artifact that people wore to the office, the grocery store, and throughout their everyday lives.

Knight explains that in one of his final classes at Stanford, a seminar on entrepreneurship, he wrote a research paper about shoes, which then evolved from a run of the mill assignment to an all out obsession.

We follow Knight through the early and trying days of getting Blue Ribbon Sports off the ground.

It was founded on January 25, 1964, with a handshake with Coach Berryman.

The financial risk.

The hiring of key employees, courting financial support from dubious bankers, competing with established companies like Adidas and Puma.

Getting endorsement deals from the likes of Frank Shorter and Tiger Woods.

Dealing with international manufacturers and selling shoes out of the back of a green Plymouth Valiant automobile at track meets across the Pacific Northwest.

Lawsuits.

All leading to the ultimate dominating financial success of Nike and Shoe Dog.

We learn about the birth of the word swoosh and how Nike got its name.

All iconic brands have short names of two syllables or less, and a strong sound in the name of letter like K or X.

And of course, Nike was the goddess of victory.

What's more important than victory?

And how a young artist from Portland State, Carolyn Davidson, created the swoosh, one of the world's most iconic symbols for which she was paid with a check for $35.

I enjoyed learning more about Phil Knight as told by Phil Knight on the other hand, as a matter of full disclosure, Shoe Dog was ghostwritten by John Joseph Moehringer.

As a bonus recommendation, I want to share with you the book Jump by Larry Miller and Laila Lacy.

Miller overcame killing a man as a youth to become chairman of the Jordan brand for Nike and president of the Portland Trail Blazers.

That's our show, talking about books, about shoes.

See you next time.

And goodnight.