Canzano: Oregon Ducks in a Penn State of mind
Nike influence? A Pac-12 documentary? And... some UNLV chatter.
Rich Brooks called me this week. The former University of Oregon football coach and his wife spend the winter months in the golf haven known as La Quinta, Calif.
Oregon will play Penn State on Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium in the Big Ten Conference championship game. Brooks was the UO coach the last time the Ducks and Nittany Lions met — the 1995 Rose Bowl — a 38-20 Penn State victory.
“They had a lot of weapons,” Brooks, 83, said.
It’s what he told me about Phil Knight and Nike, though, that I left our conversation thinking about. Brooks said Bill Bowerman, the UO track coach and co-founder of Nike, showed up at a Ducks’ practice in the late 1970s with an experimental football shoe that he wanted Oregon players to test.