Jim Wilson/The New York Times
It was hard to remember as Michael Schill spoke on Thursday night that the school he runs as president, Nike U. (more formally known as the University of Oregon), has an athletic program that is all flash and sizzle: a glitzy basketball palace, slick mix-and-match football uniforms, and a glass study hall for athletes that is nicknamed the Jock Box.
If there is a school in the Pac-12 Conference — and really the nation — that best personifies the runaway commercial enterprise that college sports have become over the last quarter century, it would be an otherwise unremarkable university that, thanks to the munificence of Nike founder Phil Knight, has emerged from a remote, rainy college town to become a national brand.