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William Jay Bowerman (February 19, 1911 – December 24, 1999) was an American track and field coach and co-founder of Nike. Over his career, he trained 31 Olympic Games athletes, 51 , 12 American record-holders, 22 NCAA champions and 16 sub-4 minute milers.
Bowerman disliked being called a coach, and during his 24 years at the University of Oregon, the Ducks track and field team had a winning season every year but one, attained 4 NCAA titles, and finished in the top 10 in the nation sixteen times. As co-founder of Nike, he invented some of their top brands, including the Nike Cortez and Waffle Racer, and assisted in the company moving from being a distributor of other shoe brands to one creating their own shoes in house.
Bowerman attended Medford, Oregon, and Seattle schools before returning to Medford for high school. He played in the high school band and for the state-champion football team in his junior and senior years. Bowerman first met Barbara Young, the woman he married, while a high school student in Medford.
In 1929, Bowerman attended the University of Oregon to play football and study journalism. At the suggestion of longtime track coach Bill Hayward, he also joined the track team. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. After graduating, he taught biology and coached football at Franklin High School in Portland in 1934. In 1935, Bowerman moved back to Medford High School to teach and coach football, during which time the Black Tornado won the 1940 state championship.
Bowerman married Barbara Young on June 22, 1936. Their marriage produced three children.
Bowerman's duty entailed organizing the troops' supplies and maintaining the mules used to carry the supplies in the mountains. On December 23, 1944, the division arrived in Naples, and soon moved north to the mountains of northern Italy.Moore, p. 71 During his overseas service, Bowerman was promoted to commander of the 86th Regiment's First Battalion at the rank of Major.Moore, p. 77 Bowerman negotiated a stand-down of German forces near the Brenner Pass in the days before the surrender of the German army in all of Italy.Moore, p. 78-79 For his service, Bowerman received the Silver Star and four Bronze Stars. He was honorably discharged in October 1945.Moore, p. 81
Bowerman disliked being called a coach; he saw himself as more of a teacher. He expected his squad to excel in the classroom, and urged his charges to apply the lessons they learned on the track to everyday life.
In 1972, Bowerman stepped back from day-to-day coaching activities to conduct fundraising for renovating the Hayward Field grandstands that would be necessary for the consideration of hosting the U.S. Olympic Trials again in 1976. He also ran unsuccessfully for a House"Poll check adds 1 vote" election (December 15, 1970). The Oregonian, p. 18. seat in the Oregon Legislature in 1970 as a Republican, losing by only 815 votes out of 61,000 cast.
Bowerman officially retired as head coach on March 23, 1973, and his assistant coach Bill Dellinger was immediately promoted.
During the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics in West Germany, where Bowerman was frequently blamed for a dismal performance by the U.S. track team, Israeli race walker Shaul Ladany escaped the PLO terrorists, and then awakened Bowerman and alerted the West German police. Bowerman called the U.S. consulate for a detachment of Marines to protect the U.S. Olympic compound, in which lived two high-profile Jewish athletes: swimmer Mark Spitz and javelin thrower Bill Schmidt.
Athletics West is an American running team formed by Bill Bowerman, Phil Knight and Geoff Hollister in 1977. At the time, America had no definitive running program for young athletes to continue competing outside of college. The formation and success of Athletics West, together with the success and popularity of American runners like Craig Virgin (charter member), Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers helped inspire the 1970s running boom.
In 1964, Bowerman entered into a handshake agreement with Phil Knight, who had been a miler under him in the 1950s, to start an athletic footwear distribution company called Blue Ribbon Sports, later known as Nike, Inc. Knight managed the business end of the partnership, while Bowerman experimented with improvements in athletic footwear design. Bowerman stayed in Eugene, keeping his coaching job at the University of Oregon, while Knight operated the main office from Portland. Bowerman and Knight initially began importing the Onitsuka Tiger running shoes from Japan to sell in the United States. Initially, the partnership was 50-50, but shortly afterwards Bowerman wanted it changed to 51–49, with Knight having the higher ownership. He did this to avoid potential gridlock and have one of them be in charge of final decisions.
Bowerman's design ideas led to the creation of a running shoe in 1966 that was ultimately named "Nike Cortez" in 1968, which quickly became a top-seller and remains one of Nike's most iconic footwear designs. Bowerman designed several Nike shoes, but is best known for ruining his wife's Belgian waffle iron in 1970 or 1971, experimenting with the idea of using waffle-ironed rubber to create a new sole for footwear that would grip but be lightweight. Bowerman's design inspiration led to the introduction of the so-called "Moon Shoe" in 1972, so named because the waffle tread was said to resemble the footprints left by astronauts on the Moon. Further refinement resulted in the "Waffle Trainer" in 1974, which helped fuel the explosive growth of Blue Ribbon Sports/Nike. While Bowerman was experimenting with shoe design, he worked in a small, unventilated space, using glue and solvents with toxic components that caused him severe nerve damage. The nerve damage to his lower legs left him with significant mobility problems; as Kenny Moore notes in his book, Bowerman and the Men of Oregon, that Bowerman had rendered himself unable to run in the shoes that he had given the world.Moore, p. 383ff
Bowerman was obsessed with shaving weight off his athletes' Athletic shoe. He believed that custom-made shoes would weigh less on the feet of his runners and cut down on , as well as reduce the overall drag on their energy for every ounce he could remove from the shoe. By his estimation, removing one ounce (28 g) from a shoe, based on a six-foot gait for a runner, would translate in a reduction of 55 pounds (25 kg) of lift over a one-mile (1.6 km) span.
Knight once said of Bowerman's importance to the company, "If coach (Bowerman) isn't happy, Nike isn't happy."Phil Knight (2016). "Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike"
Bowerman reduced his role with the company in the late 1970s.
In 2009, the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association created The Bowerman, an award that is given to the most outstanding collegiate male and female track & field athlete in a given calendar year. Inaugural winners of the award were Oregon's Galen Rupp and Colorado's Jenny Barringer. The Bowerman trophy was designed by Tinker Hatfield, a Nike employee and former Oregon student-athlete coached by Bowerman.
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