January 26, 2024 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, since its start in 1972, Nike has employed nearly half a million people. Only four have outlasted our next storyteller, Steve Bence. He is the author of 1972: Pre, UO Track, Nike Shoes and My Life with Them All.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories up next, a
sports story, an innovation story, and so much more. Since
its start in nineteen seventy two, Nike has employed nearly
a half a million people. Only four have outlasted our
next storyteller. Steve Benz BNCE is Nike's program director in
(00:31):
Global Sourcing and Manufacturing. He was an All American runner
under legendary track coach at Oregon Bill Bauerman, who became
the co founder of Nike. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
HI, My name is Steve Bentz. I was born in Tennessee.
I started kindergarten in Japan, and I graduated from high
school in Spain. I went to the University of Oregon
to run track and later started with Nike. The way
I discovered run was during my junior year in high school.
I went out for football in seventh grade because all
(01:05):
my friends were going out for football, but at home
we never watched sports, so even though I was on
the football team, I really didn't know the rules or
the strategy, so I sat on the bench the whole
time and the winner. I went out for basketball and
sat the bench again, and when one of the games
was out of hand, the coach put me in and
four times I brought the basketball up court. Four times
(01:26):
I was called for traveling. I looked over at my
coach and he was just shaking his head. As luck
would have it, the coach was also the track coach,
so we both knew from experience that I wasn't an athlete,
and he treated me that way. I still came out
every day and worked out with the track guys, but
when we had a track meet, on the bulletin board
(01:46):
was a posting of all the entries, and every time
I looked, my name was never on it. So I
missed all the track meets until the last one. It
was the district championships. I went and my name was
on the four hundred meters, a quarter mile, one lap
around the track, and I didn't know if somebody was
hurt or injured or what, but I was going to
take advantage of this opportunity. So the last track meet
(02:08):
that year, the district championships, I took second in the
four hundred meters and the coach came springing across the
field and gave me the biggest bear hug and looked
me in the eyes. Advance, you're a runner. In the
spring of nineteen seventy nine, I was a sophomore and
I had learned that my best race was a half mile.
(02:29):
So I won our district championships, which qualified me to
go to Los Angeles to run in the CIF Southern
Section quarterfinals, which were some of the best athletes not
only in our section but in the United States. So
I went to the quarterfinals not expecting much. Nobody was
expecting much out of me, and I qualified to move
on to the next round. So next week was a semifinals.
(02:51):
I advanced again. I ran fast enough to get myself
into the finals, and I went and I took third place,
and I was on cloud nine right And then I
found out my dad was going to transfer to Torhone
Air Force Base near Madrid, Spain. I went to school
on base. It was called Madrid American High School, and
so I got to go to Germany where we ran
(03:12):
against all the schools in the European area, and the
big schools were in England and Germany. And the first heat,
that was actually the semi finals, I won and one nine,
which was a school record, and the first time I
ever broke two minutes and one of the coaches from
a German school came over and talked to my coach
(03:32):
because he didn't know who I was. He said, where
did this guy come from? Right? And we talked a
little bit, and he has to see my shoes. And
there were these clunky, boardy leather spikes that my mom
bought for me when I was a freshman, and there
were size eleven at the time, I wore about size eight.
And the coach was saying, you broke two minutes in
these shoes, And so he disappeared for a while and
(03:54):
came back with a pair of shoes that pit me,
probably one of the other runners, and I tried them
on and just put those shoes on made me feel faster.
So in the finals the next day, I ran three
seconds faster. So I was won fifty six, which broke
the European record. And I learned the importance of a
good pair of shoes in running. And so I had
(04:15):
my final senior year living in the barracks. But the
most important thing my senior year was trying to find
a college in the United States where I could go,
and I'd written to Ohio State, Kansas State, USC, and
Oregon State. I was accepted academically at all schools, but
there was very little interest in me running there. And
(04:36):
perhaps the most blunt letter I got was from the
USC coach who said, your time might be pretty good
in Europe, but it's a dime a dozen here in
southern California. But I found out one of our dorm
counselors through the javelin at Oregon and he said, have
you considered Oregon? I pulled out the letters and everything.
I showed him everything I had done to that point,
and he go, why did you pick Kansas State? And
(04:57):
I said, that's where Jim Ryan went to school. Jim
Ryan was my hero. He was a world record holder
in the mile, and he goes he didn't go to
Kansas State. He went to Kansas You got the wrong school, right.
Then he asked me, why did you write to Oregon State.
I said, because they're a good running school. He says, no, No,
Oregon's a good running school, not Oregon State. So I
had picked the wrong school and he saw the letter
(05:18):
I got from USC. But he contacted coach Dollinger back
in the Eugene and told him I was interested in
going there. And the answer I got was that that
would be fine because Bill Barman allowed walk ons. Anybody
that wanted to walk on and train with the team
was fine. You know, you never knew who's going to
be good enough to run, and they said, if you
do really well, maybe you'll get into a race or two,
(05:41):
but there would be no scholarship. That was fine with
me because Bill Barman he coached Oregon from nineteen forty
eight to nineteen seventy two. Bill wrote the book on jogging.
He brought jogging first to Eugene and had spread across Oregon,
across the United States, and then across the world. He's
in the Hall of Fame four times for a track
(06:02):
coach and one time as an inventor. He invented the
modern day athletic shoot. So I flew a space available
on military flight to Dover, Delaware, and then I worked
my way across the United States and got to Eugene.
I had two suitcases in my hand, found a motel
six close to the university, and Delanger had told me
(06:23):
when you get to Eugene, come see me in my office,
and so there were people there already, so I didn't
know if I should go in or not and build
signaled me in and in his office was Jim Ryan
looking in a phone book for something. My high school
hero who I wrote my term paper for was there.
Sitting in a chair with was Steve Prefontein. You know,
the greatest American distance run of the United States. When
(06:47):
he died in nineteen seventy five. He held every American
record from the two thousand meters to the ten thousand meters.
There's been a book written about him, the documentary and
two different movies. And in the doorway was Phil Knight,
Phil Knight, who with Bill Barerman, co founded Nike in
nineteen sixty four. I had my camera with me, so
(07:08):
I took a picture in the office, which I have
in my book. And so I was just like in
awe of the people I've met, and I shook hands
with them and said should I even wash my hands
after this? But the guy in the doorway, that Phil Knight,
I'll tell you a minute. He was probably the most
important person in that room because he's the one that
(07:30):
co founded Nike and would later change my life. I
walked out of that office thinking wow, what I had
just seen, But at the same time was am I
an over of my head, Can I rise up to
this level? I was a walk on who was rejected
by all the other universities that had written to. About
two weeks later, Barerman had the freshman in the stands.
(07:53):
It was a freshman meeting and I looked around when
I got there and there was about fifty people in
the stands, all wanting to run track. And I asked
someone if who's on scholarship, and he said, there's only
three people on scholarship, and it turned out to be
Mark five. There was Russ Francis who threw the javelin,
and the third person was Tinker Hatfield, who some people
(08:16):
might recognize that name. He's the world famous designer that
designs Nike shoes for us now. But Bill Barman came
out and he said, statistically, based in all the years
that he coached, only three of us of the fifty
would actually make it to our senior year. Everybody else
would drop out of school, quit and he would be
proven right. It was two of those guys. It turned
(08:38):
out to be me as well. It was the only
three that made it our senior years. He also told us,
you can only do two things well, and he says
one of them has to be a student. You have
to be a good student, because if you flunk out,
everything else doesn't matter. But he said the second thing,
based on what he observed, was you could either be
a good athlete or you could be he said, a
(08:59):
good lover. You can't do both. And he said, you're
just going to have to pick. And I remember looking
around on it. A few heads were looking down, like
ex that true, you know, And he said something profound.
He said, if you can find meaning and what it
takes to stay on this track team, you'll probably find
meaning in another absurd pastime life, you know. And that
(09:21):
was in the movie Without Limits.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
If you've seen that and you're listening to Steve Ben's
tell one heck of a story, imagine being a young kid,
a college freshman, in the same room with Phil Knight
and Pre and Jim Ryan and Bauerman.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
When we come back more.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Of this remarkable story me Pre and the birth of Nike,
because on this day in nineteen fifty one and nineteen
sixty four, Nike was founded and Steve Prefontaine was born.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Here on our American story.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And we continue here on our American stories, and we've
been listening to Steve Bentz and the book he's written
nineteen seventy two pre Uo Track, Nike Shoes, and My
Life with them all because on this day in nineteen
fifty one and nineteen sixty four, Nike was founded and
Steve Prefontaine was born. Let's continue with Bence and his story.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Nike was born on May first of nineteen seventy two.
I didn't know it when I was at the University
of Oregon running. I was on the track team, and
I was kind of oblivious to everything going on around me.
But I gradually started to learn that the Tiger shoes
that I was wearing was actually Blue Riven Sports shoes,
and Blue Riven Sports was a handshake deal between Bill Bowerman,
(11:02):
the coach and Phil Knight, the athlete in nineteen sixty four.
Bowerman was a coach, but he was also experimented. He
always loved problem solving, and so he's always trying to
come up with stuff to make athletes better. And it
could be anything like he worked on track surfaces and
of course shoes and even apparel, and so people would
(11:26):
be wearing handmade shoes that he did. But he didn't
have a really a good business sense. Phil had that
business sense. He was an athlete, he was a runner.
He was coached by Barerman, and so the two got
together to create a new company. At the first it
was Blue Ribbon Sports, and Phil had written a paper
in college at Stanford University. Just like cameras were very good,
(11:50):
cameras were coming out of Germany and they were expensive,
but they were able to get good cameras out of
Japan at a much cheaper price. And at the time,
all the shoes were the good shoes. The competitive shoes
were made in Germany. It was Adidas and Puma, and
Phil speculated that you could make just as good shoes
in Japan at a much cheaper price, and so they
(12:12):
paired up and they went to Japan to find somebody
to make the shoes. A lot of them were designed
by Bill Barman, and so they were able to mass
produce good shoes for kids in high school at an
affordable price, and that was the Tiger's Shoe. But Phil
picked May one, nineteen seventy two. It's a birthday of Nike.
(12:33):
The Nike brand was starting to evolve, but that was
the day. The letter he received from Japan on Nitzka
Tiger that they would no longer allow him to sell
Tiger shoes in the United States. And so when most
of the company at the time heard that news, they thought,
this is the worst day of our life. We're all
out of jobs. But Phil said, no, this is the
(12:53):
best day of our life. You know, we can create
our own brand and control our own destiny. So that's
when the Nike brand was born again. I was a
little bit oblivoless to the business part of it. I
was just running. But Barronman twice had me wear test shoes,
and the first time, you know, I wore a pair
of his test shoes. You know, he came in the
(13:14):
locker room and said, hey, Bence, you wear size nine,
don't you, and go yeah, he goes, try these out.
So I was going out for a six small run
and about two miles into it, my achilles was really
sore and my calf. I said, just my luck. When
I'm supposed to be testing these shoes, I get hurt, right,
So I went back to the trainer and explained what
was going on. He said, let me see those shoes,
(13:35):
and he looked at him, and Bronman flipped the bottoms
Instead of the padding under the heel, he put it
under the fore foot. So every time I took a step,
I was putting his train on my achilles. And the
trainer was saying, you can't be a guinea pig for him.
Your career and track is just a little too important.
So why don't you take these shoes back to Bill
and tell them you can't test anymore. And I didn't
(13:56):
want to do that first, but I waited for a
week and I felt confident, and I went into the
office and I said, here's the shoes and he said
what do you think And I said, well, I got
hurt wearing him. And he goes, well, what happened? And
I said, well, send my achilles in catharea and goes, ah,
that's great. That's what I thought would happen. And that
was it. And I was thinking, like, what, he's either
mad scientist, you know, or he's testing me out, or
(14:18):
maybe he's just hazing a freshman. I didn't know what
it was, but anyway, I didn't want to deal with
any of that anymore, so I didn't do that. But
that was my lesson in he was motivated to try
to find the best things to make athletes better, and
he wasn't afraid to fail. You know a lot of
company cultures, you know, failure is not good. You know
(14:38):
there's backstabbing and politics that goes into it. But Tom
Clark at Nike at one point had had a poster
in his office that said, the company that makes the
most mistakes wins. You know, problems are good. The story
about the waff iron and Bill Barrman making souls in
his kitchen is partially true, but there's a lot of
(15:00):
truth to the fact that he was constantly looking for
ways to improve performance for athletes and wait take weight out.
So he did that the first I understood. The first
time he used the waff liron. He put some rubber
or whatever in there and he closed it and when
it's stuck, you know, just kept the upper head and
throw that thing out. So he had a couple of
(15:20):
steps before he actually figured out how to do it.
But the waff lion was intriguing to him and he
was trying to get that. But if you think about
what a waffle looks like, there are indentations, and if
you look at the outsole, it's the mirror of that.
It goes the other direction, but it was the concept
that he had, and then he worked locally with rubber
makers and he was able to experiment with that until
(15:41):
he got it right. But then they just got sheets
of rubber with the waffle outsole that they made and
they'd just die cut it to go into the bottom
of the shoes. There's four of us that we went
to talk to Tom Barman, Bill's son, who lives in Eugene,
in the house where Barman used to live. And we
told Tom first question. We said, when he got up
in the morning, what was it like for him to innovate?
(16:03):
And Tom said, Bill wouldn't even know what the word
innovation means. He was a problem solver, he said. If
he didn't have a problem to solve, you know, he
wouldn't know what to do with himself in an innovation.
The word innovation's overused these days, and even our innovation group,
product Innovation at Nike, they took the word innovation out
of their title because it doesn't mean anything anymore. Track
(16:27):
season started and there were nine people listed in the
newspaper that could run to eight hundred meters or the
half mile back then, and out of the nine half
milers with their personal best times in there. Out of
the nine, I was number nine, so I was at
the ninth person on the team going into the track season,
and where I'd been promised maybe I could run a
(16:48):
few races if I was good enough. I ended up
winning my first seven races there, and the seniors and
juniors and sophomores weren't all that excited about it, and
I went to the Pack eight CHAMPI it was the
Pack eight, not the Pac twelve back then. I ended
up taking second place at the Pack eight Championships, and
they made a note of where the USC guy was
(17:09):
the first USC guy. I looked behind me and he
was in fourth place. In nineteen seventy four, I was
a junior, and pre Fontaine by then was a good
friend and teammate of mine, but he was competing on
his own now. The previous year he was still a
University or Oregon student, having a scholarship, and he was
on the USA national team, which paid for all of
(17:30):
his transportation, room and board and so forth as he
competed around Europe for the United States. And he said
they also gave him four dollars a day for spending money.
But what he found out when he was running over there.
After one of their races that he won, one of
the competitors suggested that they pick up their prize money
and go out and have a few beers, and was like,
(17:52):
what prize money? Right? All the money that came in
for US athletes went to the AAU, the federation that
athletes he had to compete against in Europe. We're getting
prize money from the meets, and their governing bodies were
supporting them financially, and so he was pissed and he said,
why should I care about the AAU. They don't care
(18:13):
about me. So in nineteen seventy four, he decided he
was going to go to Europe, not compete in any
AAU meets and get his prize money. But he talked
some of us to join them, including me, And I
was kind of excited, you know, like I didn't know
if I can continue my track season after my junior season,
but I wanted to go to Europe and compete and
(18:34):
see how I do. So I accepted that.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And you're listening to Steve Benz tell the story of
in Essence, the founding of Nike, and it's a heck
of a story about running in sports and commerce and
in the end this thing that well, let's face it, Bauerman,
as we already learned, didn't like the word innovation, and
most innovators don't because they're just trying to.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Solve a problem.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
And indeed it was a problem right in front of
him that had to do with his coaching and with winning,
and then that's what he really wanted to do, have
an advantage over everyone, and the net benefit was he
created this remarkable sneaker company. More of the story from
Steve Benz, because on this day in nineteen fifty one
and nineteen sixty four, Nike was founded and Steve Prefontaine
(19:21):
was born. Here on our American stories, and we continue
with our American stories and the story of Nike and
(19:42):
how it came to be, and so much more about
the running world in the nineteen seventies in its infancy
that would spawn what we now know as the modern
world of track and field and so much more. In
nineteen seventy four, running phenom Steve pre Prefontaine decided to
take a stand against the Amateur Athletic Union the AAU,
(20:03):
which demanded that athletes who wished to remain amateur for
the Olympics not be paid for appearances in track meets,
even though they drew large crowds that generated millions of dollars.
At this time, the AAU was taking away the amateur
status of athletes who were endorsed in any way. Because
Prey was accepting free gear from Nike, he was subjected
(20:24):
to the aau's rulings and he found himself living on
food stamps. He spoke very publicly against the AAU and
asked his friend and Oregon track teammate Steve Bentz to
join him in Europe to race in defiance against the AAU.
Here again is Steve Bentz.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
We started in Finland. Prefontaine had to help us get
into a meet. In the first three track meets, I
won and I got my prize money, which was twenty
seven dollars at each meet, so I had three times
twenty seven dollars for my first three races, so it
wasn't much, but it was illegal, for it's against the
(21:04):
rules of NCAA and THEAU. Now that the European competitors
picked up their prize money, but we weren't supposed to
do that. So I was being rebellious because of pre
he was talking us and to do that, and we
were supporting him, probably because he thought there's safety in numbers.
And in nineteen seventy eight, this is after Prefontaine died,
Congress passed a law that changed the whole thing and
(21:24):
abolished the AAU and allowed athletes to start being able
to win money, which changed the whole sport and in
a way vindicated us in my opinion. The next story
I'll tell is on May twenty ninth, nineteen seventy five,
(21:44):
And anybody that knows Prefontaine history knows that he died
on May thirtieth, nineteen seventy five. So this is the Thursday.
There was a track meet that evening and Prex had
invited the finished national team to come to Oregon to compete.
But the last race of this tour was going to
(22:04):
be at Hayward Field and it was going to be
that evening May twenty ninth, but pre came into our
apartment with Mark and I. We left the door unlocked
and he just felt at home, so you always come
in and out, and he insisted that we go over
to his house and play spades, played cards because he
was so hyper, you know, because he had to have
a good meet that evening to be able to recover
(22:25):
some of the money, and he had promised that he
was going to try to break the American record in
the five thousand meters to get as many people in
the stands as possible. I pre ran his race, and
then afterwards we went back to our dorms shower, and
pre had graduated, so he went to be with the
Fins at a party, went to bed that night. I
had a final exam the next day, so I knew
(22:46):
I had to get up and study. And at six
o'clock in the morning, the phone rang and it was
a friend who had graduated the previous year and said,
I just heard on the radio that Prefonte died. And
I was like, no, he couldn't. You know. We were
just with him all day yesterday. He was just here
last night, you know that kind of thing. So I
called the radio station and they said it was true
(23:08):
that he was in a single car accident and that
he was dead. And I just remember taking my books
and going over to the student union because I had
to study, and I remember, oh, there was music in
(23:30):
the background playing, and I remember it was wishing you
were here. Yeah, had hit me see me again, and
I thought about what inspired me most about him, and
(23:54):
it was reflecting back to the Europe and defying the
AA And even in that track meet the night before,
he was defining the AAU by putting that on. He
wasn't allowed to put on a meat but they backed
off the last minute. But just his rebellious spirit, you know,
and his fight for justice. I wanted to be that.
(24:18):
I wanted to live that, and so that became a
part of who I was or who I am. And
Phil Knight later said, if Nike could have the personality
of any human being, the personality he'd want is that
of Steve Prefontaine. There's a place called Prieze Rock in Eugene,
(24:40):
which is where Prefontaine died, where his car flipped and
it killed him. And people will go to Prieze Rock
to honor them, and they leave stuff. They leave shoes,
they leave clothing and all those kinds of things. He
was twenty four years old when he died. It was
nineteen seventy five, and people still go to the rock
and kids are still in inspired by him. And when
(25:03):
I've been up there sometimes I've talked to people. For example,
one time I talked to a husband and wife who
were coaching in the Midwest somewhere, and I said, what
is it about Pre that your athletes love which inspires
them the most? And she said, it's because he's so
blue collar. He worked so hard, he was so competitive.
(25:24):
The kids just believe that they do the same thing.
You know, if they work hard and do what they
have to do, that they can excel as well. And
you know, it's not his accomplishments that people admire him for,
although he had every American record from two thousand meters
up to ten thousand meters, it's not the accomplishments that
the people talk about. It's how he lived his life
and how he competed. And many times runners runners will
(25:49):
just sit in the back until the last half lap
and then kick in and win the race. Pre wanted
to go out and be in front. Every race that
he ran he called a performance, and he was doing
it for the people in the stands. And he would say,
if you run on the back and just kick at
the last two hundred meters, that's chicken. He just did
not believe that was the right way to run a race,
(26:10):
the only way to really run races in the front,
flat out as hard as you can go and run
as fast as you can every time. But also one
of the things that coach Dellinger Bill Dellinger, who was
the assistant coach for the Runners at the University of Oregon,
he said, the one thing he noticed about Pri is
he never missed a workout, he never missed a race.
He was there all the time and pre confided, you know,
(26:32):
there were times that he wasn't feeling good, but he
wouldn't tell anybody. He would go out there and run anyway.
So it's just that honorable, competitive, hard working ethic, I
think is what young people today look up to. When
I started with Nike, to me, it was just a
bunch of runners getting together and moving into the next
(26:54):
part of our life. And I was trying to figure
out what was I going to do. I was teaching
and coaching, and maybe I could have done that for
my whole life, but I was looking for that job
that inspired me, that kind of was meaningful to me,
purposeful to me, and I didn't know Nike was going
to be it. But when the company started, when BRS
(27:16):
started importing Tiger's shoes from Japan, Phil placed his first
order to Japan for three hundred pair of shoes, so
that was nineteen sixty four Tiger's shoes and then, you know,
maybe I don't know where we got up to about
a million pair. I'm really only talking about footwear because
that's what I have my experience, and we usually talking perage.
And when I told my to back up, when I
(27:37):
told my mother I was working for Nike, and she
asked me what's Nike? And I told her about Bill
Barrman and Phil Knight and we're making shoes for runners
and stuff. She says, you went to college. I'm gonna
tell my friends that your shoe salesman or whatever you know.
And she says, why don't you work for a company
that makes something that a lot of people will buy? Right,
That's the way she was thinking back then. That's the
(27:58):
way we were all thinking. You know, it was a
small market, but because of jogging in particular runners and
average everyday people started getting running shoes to run in
because now we were starting to jogging. It just wasn't
for elite runners, and people were wearing them to knock
around and walk around in because they were comfortable in
light weight so we didn't start wanting to change the world.
(28:18):
We were just trying to improve performance for Runners. But
the thing was taking off. So when people find out
that it was a group of runners that started this
company and that's the culture that we have, it makes sense.
You know. No one can imagine a bunch of football
players getting together and doing this, or basketball players or whatever,
but a bunch of runners we pulled it off, and
(28:38):
so the culture that we have as a company comes
from that. I'm now settled down in Beavergin, Oregon. I've
lived in my house for over thirty years. I adopted
a girl in Taiwan when we were there. We adopted
a girl in Korea. When we were there, we had
a Sunday the United States. We moved back to Korea.
My youngest was born in Korea, and they've all grown
(28:59):
up here in this house. Now. I have four grandchildren,
you know, ages zero, two, four, and six. They're over
here all the time, you know, talking. So there's a
big group, my four kids and those four grandchildren. And
looking back on a career that has been incredibly rewarding
and being a part you know, I never claimed to
be a full night or you know, anything major. I mean,
(29:20):
I was just a guy getting the job done, a
math nerd that was excited about being a part of
running still about a part of the running culture. And
when you have an opportunity to do something bigger than
yourself and genuinely enjoy working with people, it's a pretty
rewarding experience. And that's where I am right now in
(29:40):
my life.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
And a terrific job on the storytelling in production by
Greg Hangler and a special thanks to Steve Bentz, author
of nineteen seventy two pre Uo track Nike Shoes.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
And My Life with Them All.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Go to a bookstore and buy this book or wherever
you get your books online. Phil Knight, the founder, all
the way through the story of Nike, because on this
day in nineteen fifty one and nineteen sixty four, Nike
was founded and Steve Prefontaine was born.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories up next, a
sports story, an innovation story, and so much more. Since
its start in nineteen seventy two, Nike has employed nearly
a half a million people. Only four have outlasted our
next storyteller. Steve Benz BNCE is Nike's program director in
(00:31):
Global Sourcing and Manufacturing. He was an All American runner
under legendary track coach at Oregon Bill Bauerman, who became
the co founder of Nike. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
HI, My name is Steve Bentz. I was born in Tennessee.
I started kindergarten in Japan, and I graduated from high
school in Spain. I went to the University of Oregon
to run track and later started with Nike. The way
I discovered run was during my junior year in high school.
I went out for football in seventh grade because all
(01:05):
my friends were going out for football, but at home
we never watched sports, so even though I was on
the football team, I really didn't know the rules or
the strategy, so I sat on the bench the whole
time and the winner. I went out for basketball and
sat the bench again, and when one of the games
was out of hand, the coach put me in and
four times I brought the basketball up court. Four times
(01:26):
I was called for traveling. I looked over at my
coach and he was just shaking his head. As luck
would have it, the coach was also the track coach,
so we both knew from experience that I wasn't an athlete,
and he treated me that way. I still came out
every day and worked out with the track guys, but
when we had a track meet, on the bulletin board
(01:46):
was a posting of all the entries, and every time
I looked, my name was never on it. So I
missed all the track meets until the last one. It
was the district championships. I went and my name was
on the four hundred meters, a quarter mile, one lap
around the track, and I didn't know if somebody was
hurt or injured or what, but I was going to
take advantage of this opportunity. So the last track meet
(02:08):
that year, the district championships, I took second in the
four hundred meters and the coach came springing across the
field and gave me the biggest bear hug and looked
me in the eyes. Advance, you're a runner. In the
spring of nineteen seventy nine, I was a sophomore and
I had learned that my best race was a half mile.
(02:29):
So I won our district championships, which qualified me to
go to Los Angeles to run in the CIF Southern
Section quarterfinals, which were some of the best athletes not
only in our section but in the United States. So
I went to the quarterfinals not expecting much. Nobody was
expecting much out of me, and I qualified to move
on to the next round. So next week was a semifinals.
(02:51):
I advanced again. I ran fast enough to get myself
into the finals, and I went and I took third place,
and I was on cloud nine right And then I
found out my dad was going to transfer to Torhone
Air Force Base near Madrid, Spain. I went to school
on base. It was called Madrid American High School, and
so I got to go to Germany where we ran
(03:12):
against all the schools in the European area, and the
big schools were in England and Germany. And the first heat,
that was actually the semi finals, I won and one nine,
which was a school record, and the first time I
ever broke two minutes and one of the coaches from
a German school came over and talked to my coach
(03:32):
because he didn't know who I was. He said, where
did this guy come from? Right? And we talked a
little bit, and he has to see my shoes. And
there were these clunky, boardy leather spikes that my mom
bought for me when I was a freshman, and there
were size eleven at the time, I wore about size eight.
And the coach was saying, you broke two minutes in
these shoes, And so he disappeared for a while and
(03:54):
came back with a pair of shoes that pit me,
probably one of the other runners, and I tried them
on and just put those shoes on made me feel faster.
So in the finals the next day, I ran three
seconds faster. So I was won fifty six, which broke
the European record. And I learned the importance of a
good pair of shoes in running. And so I had
(04:15):
my final senior year living in the barracks. But the
most important thing my senior year was trying to find
a college in the United States where I could go,
and I'd written to Ohio State, Kansas State, USC, and
Oregon State. I was accepted academically at all schools, but
there was very little interest in me running there. And
(04:36):
perhaps the most blunt letter I got was from the
USC coach who said, your time might be pretty good
in Europe, but it's a dime a dozen here in
southern California. But I found out one of our dorm
counselors through the javelin at Oregon and he said, have
you considered Oregon? I pulled out the letters and everything.
I showed him everything I had done to that point,
and he go, why did you pick Kansas State? And
(04:57):
I said, that's where Jim Ryan went to school. Jim
Ryan was my hero. He was a world record holder
in the mile, and he goes he didn't go to
Kansas State. He went to Kansas You got the wrong school, right.
Then he asked me, why did you write to Oregon State.
I said, because they're a good running school. He says, no, No,
Oregon's a good running school, not Oregon State. So I
had picked the wrong school and he saw the letter
(05:18):
I got from USC. But he contacted coach Dollinger back
in the Eugene and told him I was interested in
going there. And the answer I got was that that
would be fine because Bill Barman allowed walk ons. Anybody
that wanted to walk on and train with the team
was fine. You know, you never knew who's going to
be good enough to run, and they said, if you
do really well, maybe you'll get into a race or two,
(05:41):
but there would be no scholarship. That was fine with
me because Bill Barman he coached Oregon from nineteen forty
eight to nineteen seventy two. Bill wrote the book on jogging.
He brought jogging first to Eugene and had spread across Oregon,
across the United States, and then across the world. He's
in the Hall of Fame four times for a track
(06:02):
coach and one time as an inventor. He invented the
modern day athletic shoot. So I flew a space available
on military flight to Dover, Delaware, and then I worked
my way across the United States and got to Eugene.
I had two suitcases in my hand, found a motel
six close to the university, and Delanger had told me
(06:23):
when you get to Eugene, come see me in my office,
and so there were people there already, so I didn't
know if I should go in or not and build
signaled me in and in his office was Jim Ryan
looking in a phone book for something. My high school
hero who I wrote my term paper for was there.
Sitting in a chair with was Steve Prefontein. You know,
the greatest American distance run of the United States. When
(06:47):
he died in nineteen seventy five. He held every American
record from the two thousand meters to the ten thousand meters.
There's been a book written about him, the documentary and
two different movies. And in the doorway was Phil Knight,
Phil Knight, who with Bill Barerman, co founded Nike in
nineteen sixty four. I had my camera with me, so
(07:08):
I took a picture in the office, which I have
in my book. And so I was just like in
awe of the people I've met, and I shook hands
with them and said should I even wash my hands
after this? But the guy in the doorway, that Phil Knight,
I'll tell you a minute. He was probably the most
important person in that room because he's the one that
(07:30):
co founded Nike and would later change my life. I
walked out of that office thinking wow, what I had
just seen, But at the same time was am I
an over of my head, Can I rise up to
this level? I was a walk on who was rejected
by all the other universities that had written to. About
two weeks later, Barerman had the freshman in the stands.
(07:53):
It was a freshman meeting and I looked around when
I got there and there was about fifty people in
the stands, all wanting to run track. And I asked
someone if who's on scholarship, and he said, there's only
three people on scholarship, and it turned out to be
Mark five. There was Russ Francis who threw the javelin,
and the third person was Tinker Hatfield, who some people
(08:16):
might recognize that name. He's the world famous designer that
designs Nike shoes for us now. But Bill Barman came
out and he said, statistically, based in all the years
that he coached, only three of us of the fifty
would actually make it to our senior year. Everybody else
would drop out of school, quit and he would be
proven right. It was two of those guys. It turned
(08:38):
out to be me as well. It was the only
three that made it our senior years. He also told us,
you can only do two things well, and he says
one of them has to be a student. You have
to be a good student, because if you flunk out,
everything else doesn't matter. But he said the second thing,
based on what he observed, was you could either be
a good athlete or you could be he said, a
(08:59):
good lover. You can't do both. And he said, you're
just going to have to pick. And I remember looking
around on it. A few heads were looking down, like
ex that true, you know, And he said something profound.
He said, if you can find meaning and what it
takes to stay on this track team, you'll probably find
meaning in another absurd pastime life, you know. And that
(09:21):
was in the movie Without Limits.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
If you've seen that and you're listening to Steve Ben's
tell one heck of a story, imagine being a young kid,
a college freshman, in the same room with Phil Knight
and Pre and Jim Ryan and Bauerman.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
When we come back more.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Of this remarkable story me Pre and the birth of Nike,
because on this day in nineteen fifty one and nineteen
sixty four, Nike was founded and Steve Prefontaine was born.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Here on our American story.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And we continue here on our American stories, and we've
been listening to Steve Bentz and the book he's written
nineteen seventy two pre Uo Track, Nike Shoes, and My
Life with them all because on this day in nineteen
fifty one and nineteen sixty four, Nike was founded and
Steve Prefontaine was born. Let's continue with Bence and his story.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Nike was born on May first of nineteen seventy two.
I didn't know it when I was at the University
of Oregon running. I was on the track team, and
I was kind of oblivious to everything going on around me.
But I gradually started to learn that the Tiger shoes
that I was wearing was actually Blue Riven Sports shoes,
and Blue Riven Sports was a handshake deal between Bill Bowerman,
(11:02):
the coach and Phil Knight, the athlete in nineteen sixty four.
Bowerman was a coach, but he was also experimented. He
always loved problem solving, and so he's always trying to
come up with stuff to make athletes better. And it
could be anything like he worked on track surfaces and
of course shoes and even apparel, and so people would
(11:26):
be wearing handmade shoes that he did. But he didn't
have a really a good business sense. Phil had that
business sense. He was an athlete, he was a runner.
He was coached by Barerman, and so the two got
together to create a new company. At the first it
was Blue Ribbon Sports, and Phil had written a paper
in college at Stanford University. Just like cameras were very good,
(11:50):
cameras were coming out of Germany and they were expensive,
but they were able to get good cameras out of
Japan at a much cheaper price. And at the time,
all the shoes were the good shoes. The competitive shoes
were made in Germany. It was Adidas and Puma, and
Phil speculated that you could make just as good shoes
in Japan at a much cheaper price, and so they
(12:12):
paired up and they went to Japan to find somebody
to make the shoes. A lot of them were designed
by Bill Barman, and so they were able to mass
produce good shoes for kids in high school at an
affordable price, and that was the Tiger's Shoe. But Phil
picked May one, nineteen seventy two. It's a birthday of Nike.
(12:33):
The Nike brand was starting to evolve, but that was
the day. The letter he received from Japan on Nitzka
Tiger that they would no longer allow him to sell
Tiger shoes in the United States. And so when most
of the company at the time heard that news, they thought,
this is the worst day of our life. We're all
out of jobs. But Phil said, no, this is the
(12:53):
best day of our life. You know, we can create
our own brand and control our own destiny. So that's
when the Nike brand was born again. I was a
little bit oblivoless to the business part of it. I
was just running. But Barronman twice had me wear test shoes,
and the first time, you know, I wore a pair
of his test shoes. You know, he came in the
(13:14):
locker room and said, hey, Bence, you wear size nine,
don't you, and go yeah, he goes, try these out.
So I was going out for a six small run
and about two miles into it, my achilles was really
sore and my calf. I said, just my luck. When
I'm supposed to be testing these shoes, I get hurt, right,
So I went back to the trainer and explained what
was going on. He said, let me see those shoes,
(13:35):
and he looked at him, and Bronman flipped the bottoms
Instead of the padding under the heel, he put it
under the fore foot. So every time I took a step,
I was putting his train on my achilles. And the
trainer was saying, you can't be a guinea pig for him.
Your career and track is just a little too important.
So why don't you take these shoes back to Bill
and tell them you can't test anymore. And I didn't
(13:56):
want to do that first, but I waited for a
week and I felt confident, and I went into the
office and I said, here's the shoes and he said
what do you think And I said, well, I got
hurt wearing him. And he goes, well, what happened? And
I said, well, send my achilles in catharea and goes, ah,
that's great. That's what I thought would happen. And that
was it. And I was thinking, like, what, he's either
mad scientist, you know, or he's testing me out, or
(14:18):
maybe he's just hazing a freshman. I didn't know what
it was, but anyway, I didn't want to deal with
any of that anymore, so I didn't do that. But
that was my lesson in he was motivated to try
to find the best things to make athletes better, and
he wasn't afraid to fail. You know a lot of
company cultures, you know, failure is not good. You know
(14:38):
there's backstabbing and politics that goes into it. But Tom
Clark at Nike at one point had had a poster
in his office that said, the company that makes the
most mistakes wins. You know, problems are good. The story
about the waff iron and Bill Barrman making souls in
his kitchen is partially true, but there's a lot of
(15:00):
truth to the fact that he was constantly looking for
ways to improve performance for athletes and wait take weight out.
So he did that the first I understood. The first
time he used the waff liron. He put some rubber
or whatever in there and he closed it and when
it's stuck, you know, just kept the upper head and
throw that thing out. So he had a couple of
(15:20):
steps before he actually figured out how to do it.
But the waff lion was intriguing to him and he
was trying to get that. But if you think about
what a waffle looks like, there are indentations, and if
you look at the outsole, it's the mirror of that.
It goes the other direction, but it was the concept
that he had, and then he worked locally with rubber
makers and he was able to experiment with that until
(15:41):
he got it right. But then they just got sheets
of rubber with the waffle outsole that they made and
they'd just die cut it to go into the bottom
of the shoes. There's four of us that we went
to talk to Tom Barman, Bill's son, who lives in Eugene,
in the house where Barman used to live. And we
told Tom first question. We said, when he got up
in the morning, what was it like for him to innovate?
(16:03):
And Tom said, Bill wouldn't even know what the word
innovation means. He was a problem solver, he said. If
he didn't have a problem to solve, you know, he
wouldn't know what to do with himself in an innovation.
The word innovation's overused these days, and even our innovation group,
product Innovation at Nike, they took the word innovation out
of their title because it doesn't mean anything anymore. Track
(16:27):
season started and there were nine people listed in the
newspaper that could run to eight hundred meters or the
half mile back then, and out of the nine half
milers with their personal best times in there. Out of
the nine, I was number nine, so I was at
the ninth person on the team going into the track season,
and where I'd been promised maybe I could run a
(16:48):
few races if I was good enough. I ended up
winning my first seven races there, and the seniors and
juniors and sophomores weren't all that excited about it, and
I went to the Pack eight CHAMPI it was the
Pack eight, not the Pac twelve back then. I ended
up taking second place at the Pack eight Championships, and
they made a note of where the USC guy was
(17:09):
the first USC guy. I looked behind me and he
was in fourth place. In nineteen seventy four, I was
a junior, and pre Fontaine by then was a good
friend and teammate of mine, but he was competing on
his own now. The previous year he was still a
University or Oregon student, having a scholarship, and he was
on the USA national team, which paid for all of
(17:30):
his transportation, room and board and so forth as he
competed around Europe for the United States. And he said
they also gave him four dollars a day for spending money.
But what he found out when he was running over there.
After one of their races that he won, one of
the competitors suggested that they pick up their prize money
and go out and have a few beers, and was like,
(17:52):
what prize money? Right? All the money that came in
for US athletes went to the AAU, the federation that
athletes he had to compete against in Europe. We're getting
prize money from the meets, and their governing bodies were
supporting them financially, and so he was pissed and he said,
why should I care about the AAU. They don't care
(18:13):
about me. So in nineteen seventy four, he decided he
was going to go to Europe, not compete in any
AAU meets and get his prize money. But he talked
some of us to join them, including me, And I
was kind of excited, you know, like I didn't know
if I can continue my track season after my junior season,
but I wanted to go to Europe and compete and
(18:34):
see how I do. So I accepted that.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And you're listening to Steve Benz tell the story of
in Essence, the founding of Nike, and it's a heck
of a story about running in sports and commerce and
in the end this thing that well, let's face it, Bauerman,
as we already learned, didn't like the word innovation, and
most innovators don't because they're just trying to.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Solve a problem.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
And indeed it was a problem right in front of
him that had to do with his coaching and with winning,
and then that's what he really wanted to do, have
an advantage over everyone, and the net benefit was he
created this remarkable sneaker company. More of the story from
Steve Benz, because on this day in nineteen fifty one
and nineteen sixty four, Nike was founded and Steve Prefontaine
(19:21):
was born. Here on our American stories, and we continue
with our American stories and the story of Nike and
(19:42):
how it came to be, and so much more about
the running world in the nineteen seventies in its infancy
that would spawn what we now know as the modern
world of track and field and so much more. In
nineteen seventy four, running phenom Steve pre Prefontaine decided to
take a stand against the Amateur Athletic Union the AAU,
(20:03):
which demanded that athletes who wished to remain amateur for
the Olympics not be paid for appearances in track meets,
even though they drew large crowds that generated millions of dollars.
At this time, the AAU was taking away the amateur
status of athletes who were endorsed in any way. Because
Prey was accepting free gear from Nike, he was subjected
(20:24):
to the aau's rulings and he found himself living on
food stamps. He spoke very publicly against the AAU and
asked his friend and Oregon track teammate Steve Bentz to
join him in Europe to race in defiance against the AAU.
Here again is Steve Bentz.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
We started in Finland. Prefontaine had to help us get
into a meet. In the first three track meets, I
won and I got my prize money, which was twenty
seven dollars at each meet, so I had three times
twenty seven dollars for my first three races, so it
wasn't much, but it was illegal, for it's against the
(21:04):
rules of NCAA and THEAU. Now that the European competitors
picked up their prize money, but we weren't supposed to
do that. So I was being rebellious because of pre
he was talking us and to do that, and we
were supporting him, probably because he thought there's safety in numbers.
And in nineteen seventy eight, this is after Prefontaine died,
Congress passed a law that changed the whole thing and
(21:24):
abolished the AAU and allowed athletes to start being able
to win money, which changed the whole sport and in
a way vindicated us in my opinion. The next story
I'll tell is on May twenty ninth, nineteen seventy five,
(21:44):
And anybody that knows Prefontaine history knows that he died
on May thirtieth, nineteen seventy five. So this is the Thursday.
There was a track meet that evening and Prex had
invited the finished national team to come to Oregon to compete.
But the last race of this tour was going to
(22:04):
be at Hayward Field and it was going to be
that evening May twenty ninth, but pre came into our
apartment with Mark and I. We left the door unlocked
and he just felt at home, so you always come
in and out, and he insisted that we go over
to his house and play spades, played cards because he
was so hyper, you know, because he had to have
a good meet that evening to be able to recover
(22:25):
some of the money, and he had promised that he
was going to try to break the American record in
the five thousand meters to get as many people in
the stands as possible. I pre ran his race, and
then afterwards we went back to our dorms shower, and
pre had graduated, so he went to be with the
Fins at a party, went to bed that night. I
had a final exam the next day, so I knew
(22:46):
I had to get up and study. And at six
o'clock in the morning, the phone rang and it was
a friend who had graduated the previous year and said,
I just heard on the radio that Prefonte died. And
I was like, no, he couldn't. You know. We were
just with him all day yesterday. He was just here
last night, you know that kind of thing. So I
called the radio station and they said it was true
(23:08):
that he was in a single car accident and that
he was dead. And I just remember taking my books
and going over to the student union because I had
to study, and I remember, oh, there was music in
(23:30):
the background playing, and I remember it was wishing you
were here. Yeah, had hit me see me again, and
I thought about what inspired me most about him, and
(23:54):
it was reflecting back to the Europe and defying the
AA And even in that track meet the night before,
he was defining the AAU by putting that on. He
wasn't allowed to put on a meat but they backed
off the last minute. But just his rebellious spirit, you know,
and his fight for justice. I wanted to be that.
(24:18):
I wanted to live that, and so that became a
part of who I was or who I am. And
Phil Knight later said, if Nike could have the personality
of any human being, the personality he'd want is that
of Steve Prefontaine. There's a place called Prieze Rock in Eugene,
(24:40):
which is where Prefontaine died, where his car flipped and
it killed him. And people will go to Prieze Rock
to honor them, and they leave stuff. They leave shoes,
they leave clothing and all those kinds of things. He
was twenty four years old when he died. It was
nineteen seventy five, and people still go to the rock
and kids are still in inspired by him. And when
(25:03):
I've been up there sometimes I've talked to people. For example,
one time I talked to a husband and wife who
were coaching in the Midwest somewhere, and I said, what
is it about Pre that your athletes love which inspires
them the most? And she said, it's because he's so
blue collar. He worked so hard, he was so competitive.
(25:24):
The kids just believe that they do the same thing.
You know, if they work hard and do what they
have to do, that they can excel as well. And
you know, it's not his accomplishments that people admire him for,
although he had every American record from two thousand meters
up to ten thousand meters, it's not the accomplishments that
the people talk about. It's how he lived his life
and how he competed. And many times runners runners will
(25:49):
just sit in the back until the last half lap
and then kick in and win the race. Pre wanted
to go out and be in front. Every race that
he ran he called a performance, and he was doing
it for the people in the stands. And he would say,
if you run on the back and just kick at
the last two hundred meters, that's chicken. He just did
not believe that was the right way to run a race,
(26:10):
the only way to really run races in the front,
flat out as hard as you can go and run
as fast as you can every time. But also one
of the things that coach Dellinger Bill Dellinger, who was
the assistant coach for the Runners at the University of Oregon,
he said, the one thing he noticed about Pri is
he never missed a workout, he never missed a race.
He was there all the time and pre confided, you know,
(26:32):
there were times that he wasn't feeling good, but he
wouldn't tell anybody. He would go out there and run anyway.
So it's just that honorable, competitive, hard working ethic, I
think is what young people today look up to. When
I started with Nike, to me, it was just a
bunch of runners getting together and moving into the next
(26:54):
part of our life. And I was trying to figure
out what was I going to do. I was teaching
and coaching, and maybe I could have done that for
my whole life, but I was looking for that job
that inspired me, that kind of was meaningful to me,
purposeful to me, and I didn't know Nike was going
to be it. But when the company started, when BRS
(27:16):
started importing Tiger's shoes from Japan, Phil placed his first
order to Japan for three hundred pair of shoes, so
that was nineteen sixty four Tiger's shoes and then, you know,
maybe I don't know where we got up to about
a million pair. I'm really only talking about footwear because
that's what I have my experience, and we usually talking perage.
And when I told my to back up, when I
(27:37):
told my mother I was working for Nike, and she
asked me what's Nike? And I told her about Bill
Barrman and Phil Knight and we're making shoes for runners
and stuff. She says, you went to college. I'm gonna
tell my friends that your shoe salesman or whatever you know.
And she says, why don't you work for a company
that makes something that a lot of people will buy? Right,
That's the way she was thinking back then. That's the
(27:58):
way we were all thinking. You know, it was a
small market, but because of jogging in particular runners and
average everyday people started getting running shoes to run in
because now we were starting to jogging. It just wasn't
for elite runners, and people were wearing them to knock
around and walk around in because they were comfortable in
light weight so we didn't start wanting to change the world.
(28:18):
We were just trying to improve performance for Runners. But
the thing was taking off. So when people find out
that it was a group of runners that started this
company and that's the culture that we have, it makes sense.
You know. No one can imagine a bunch of football
players getting together and doing this, or basketball players or whatever,
but a bunch of runners we pulled it off, and
(28:38):
so the culture that we have as a company comes
from that. I'm now settled down in Beavergin, Oregon. I've
lived in my house for over thirty years. I adopted
a girl in Taiwan when we were there. We adopted
a girl in Korea. When we were there, we had
a Sunday the United States. We moved back to Korea.
My youngest was born in Korea, and they've all grown
(28:59):
up here in this house. Now. I have four grandchildren,
you know, ages zero, two, four, and six. They're over
here all the time, you know, talking. So there's a
big group, my four kids and those four grandchildren. And
looking back on a career that has been incredibly rewarding
and being a part you know, I never claimed to
be a full night or you know, anything major. I mean,
(29:20):
I was just a guy getting the job done, a
math nerd that was excited about being a part of
running still about a part of the running culture. And
when you have an opportunity to do something bigger than
yourself and genuinely enjoy working with people, it's a pretty
rewarding experience. And that's where I am right now in
(29:40):
my life.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
And a terrific job on the storytelling in production by
Greg Hangler and a special thanks to Steve Bentz, author
of nineteen seventy two pre Uo track Nike Shoes.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
And My Life with Them All.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Go to a bookstore and buy this book or wherever
you get your books online. Phil Knight, the founder, all
the way through the story of Nike, because on this
day in nineteen fifty one and nineteen sixty four, Nike
was founded and Steve Prefontaine was born.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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