Kenny Moore's biography of Bill Bowerman — the University of Oregon track coach who co-founded Nike with his former runner Phil Knight — written by an Olympic marathoner who ran for Bowerman at Oregon. Moore traces Bowerman's path from the Oregon farm where he grew up through his coaching innovations (interval training, jogging as a mass movement, the waffle sole that became Nike's first signature outsole) and his role in the Blue Ribbon Sports handshake that turned a Stanford business-school paper into a company.
The shelf note positions this as the book that tells Nike's origin story from Bowerman's side: 'A biography of Bill Bowerman by an Olympic marathoner who ran for him at Oregon; covers the waffle sole and the Blue Ribbon Sports handshake from Bowerman's side of the partnership.' For a founder, Bowerman is the partner story — a counterpoint to Knight's first-person narrative in Shoe Dog. The partnership between Knight (the businessman) and Bowerman (the coach and innovator) was the original instance of a pattern that recurs through Nike's history: the athlete and the businessman, the product person and the operator, each needing the other. Bowerman's waffle sole — created by pouring rubber into his wife's waffle iron — is one of the best examples of Musk's maxim 'The best part is no part': Bowerman did not invent a new material; he repurposed a kitchen appliance and created a sole pattern that would define a generation of running shoes.