The impact of Nike CEO Phil Knight’s withdrawal of all future financial support to the University will be felt first and foremost by the Athletic Department.
At a press conference Tuesday afternoon in Johnson Hall, Athletic Director Bill Moos said that while the department has enough money to proceed with phase one of the Autzen Stadium expansion, he expects at least some delay in phase two.
“We are proceeding with the design portion of the project [and] we are about halfway through that,” Moos said. “We are scheduled to start phase one of the project in late May [or] early June — we are going to keep on track with that aspect.
“The phase two portion of the project is not scheduled to start until late November and we may have to delay that part of it. We will decide as we move forward.”
The first phase of the project will focus on the stadium’s exterior, which Moos characterized as being in dire need of improvement. Phase two is scheduled to add luxury sky-boxes and thousands of new seats to the stadium.
“We had, and still have at this point, a handful of significant donations, most of them preferring to remain anonymous,” he said. “The grand total of those commitments, we felt, was sufficient enough to move forward with the project.”
Knight’s withdrawal of support will have a definite impact on the project time line.
“We need to replace Phil’s portion of it,” Moos said. “That’s going to take some doing, but I feel that we have the resources, and certainly the funding base, and the interest in this project to hopefully do that. We may have to change some aspects of it. We may have to delay the timing.”
Revenue generated through the addition of 12,000 seats to Autzen Stadium was tentatively identified as a source to fund faculty salary increases via the recently approved University Senate Budget Committee White Paper, a plan to improve faculty salaries. The added ticket sales would eliminate the need for a multi-million dollar subsidy paid to the athletic department from the University general fund.
“It was a long-range source,” said Wayne Westling, chair of the committee that drafted the White Paper. “If that source of revenue is foreclosed to us, we’ll have to find others.”
He said although the news will have no short-term impact on faculty pay increases, he added that it could potentially have a long-term impact.
University President Dave Frohnmayer echoed statements he made in a press release late Monday night and in an open letter written to University faculty on Tuesday morning.
Frohnmayer emphasized that the University’s decision to join the Worker Rights Consortium was not made without careful consideration “through many months of study, debate, discussion and votes.”
“The University has its own decision-making process,” Frohnmayer said.
He noted that the Licensing Code of Conduct Committee, the ASUO, the student body and the University Senate all recommended that the University join the WRC, a labor monitoring group.
The University Senate is scheduled to review the WRC — which Frohnmayer characterized as “a work in progress” — in one year.
Frohnmayer spoke with Knight on Tuesday. He described their conversation as cordial, genuine and heartfelt on both sides. Both parties agreed that this was a tragedy, he said.
Frohnmayer said the important thing was to mend relationships with Knight.
“There’s a lot of blood that’s thicker than water here,” he said. “I wouldn’t ask (Knight) to reconsider his thought-out position. Obviously, I hope over time we can persuade him, but I’m sure he will stand by the statement that he issued last night.”

In that statement Knight said he was shocked when he learned Friday morning that the University had joined the WRC.
Frohnmayer said he did not consult with Knight in advance of making the decision to join the WRC.
“We have reason to believe that people — particularly in the licensing division of Nike — knew that the University was going in this direction,” he said.
Because of that belief, the University may have been misled into believing that Knight was aware of the University’s plans to join the WRC, he said.
Earlier in the process of developing a corporate code of conduct, the University requested all of its licensees disclose the locations of their factories.
Nike was among the first to comply with the University’s request, Frohnmayer said.
A small group of students observed the short press conference just outside the crowded conference room. Sarah Jacobson, a member of the Human Rights Alliance, the campus group that has spearheaded activism in favor of the WRC, said the decision to join the WRC was made according to the University’s democratic process.
That decision should not be questioned, nor should the University be bullied by corporate influence, Jacobson said.
She said that Knight’s “shock” at learning of the University’s membership in the WRC was a “pretense.”
“This was a tactical and calculated effort by Nike to try and crush the WRC,” Jacobson said. “I think the ties have become very obvious between universities and corporate interests.
“Alleged philanthropy is now being used as a club to pull the University one way or another.”