The Mighty Oregon Podcast

If we played a word association game when it comes to Oregon Football, there are plenty that comes to mind. But these two may be the words that get spoken the most: Marcus Mariota. Mariota’s foundation for his success in football came from his hard-working parents in Hawaii, who taught him and his brother to be competitive, but compassionate at the same time. After a unique recruiting process, Mariota found Oregon, where his skills were a perfect match for the Ducks’ innovative offense. The program excelled and became the talk of the college football world, with Mariota commanding the controls. Oregon played for a national championship. Mariota won the Heisman Trophy and was taken second overall by the Tennessee Titans in the 2015 NFL Draft. And although he found success at the NFL level, injuries and a coaching carousel with the Titans brought the game of football, his love of the game, and his future, into focus.  

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Is becoming only the third man in the history of the world to win back-to-back Olympic decathlon gold medals as easy as treating everything like a video game and leveling up? Or is at simple as just imitating what you see on television? For Duck track legend Ashton Eaton, it may just be. Eaton’s journey to greatness is an unlikely one. The only child of a single mom, Eaton, who grew up in LaPine, Oregon, had limited scholarship offers out of high school. That is until he was convinced to try a track event called the decathlon by his high school coaches. It was a conversation that would change his life. Oregon scholarship in hand, Eaton began his rise to the top of the decathlon world. Five-time NCAA champion. Eight-time All-American. 2012 Olympic Gold medalist. And then the 2016 Olympic Gold medalist. All of it came from a mentality he learned in his childhood playing video games. He just leveled up.

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As his career progressed, Tinker Hatfield became known as a great shoe designer. His talent was unmistakable. More importantly, he figured out how to crack the code with some of the world’s best athletes. Michael Jordan. Andre Agassi. Roger Federer. Alex Rodriguez. All friends and clients. Hatfield made connections with the famous and well-known, but he also came to the overwhelming realization that the world is filled with his work. No matter where he went in the world, he saw one of his designs. It didn’t take long for Nike founder Phil Knight to call on Tinker for important projects, and he became the go-to designer for the company’s top athletes for both innovation and style. With his reputation solidly in place for Nike, Knight appealed to Tinker to take part in a passion project for the company. Renovate the Oregon Duck brand. Tinker gladly obliged.

This is the third and final part of a three-part series into Tinker Hatfield’s role in reshaping popular culture and how being an Oregon Duck vaulted him into a world he could have never imagined.

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Tinker Hatfield is not the designer he is with Nike today without legendary coach Bill Bowerman. He gave him a scholarship, helped him become an architect, and guided him to get into drawing and designing shoes. After a serious ankle injury sidelined Hatfield’s on-the-track career, he quickly became one of Bowerman’s most trusted testers of his new inventions. Architect's degree in hand, Hatfield designed showrooms for Nike until he won a shoe design contest. From there came the Air Max and other shoe designs.

In part two of our three-part series, we’ll examine how he became an innovator in shoe design and how a ping pong match introduced him to a basketball star that would forever change his life.

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There’s not a day that goes by that you don’t see a Tinker Hatfield creation. No matter where you are in the world, whether it’s a shoe, a shirt, or a building, Tinker is probably there with you. As overwhelming as that idea is, it’s even more improbable that the journey to become a household name in popular culture began in rural Lynn County, Oregon. Hatfield, like his father, was a three-sport athlete in high school, and the early beginnings of his mindset for change were established by his dad, who as a coach and athletic director at his high school, was known as an outside-the-box thinker. It’s safe to say that trait was passed down to him. Fear was not a word in the Hatfield vocabulary, and that attitude served him well as he began to do bigger and better things.

In this episode, we’ll explore the beginnings of Hatfield’s life and how he developed the confidence to embark on a life of change.   

Three-Part Series

This is the first of a three-part series into Tinker Hatfield’s role in reshaping popular culture and how being an Oregon Duck vaulted him into a world he could never have imagined.

The designer of the Air Jordans, the Air Max, and many other popular designs, Hatfield was a student and athlete at Oregon during the sweet spot of creating the Nike brand. An architectural student, Hatfield became involved in shoemaking with legendary Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman and Nike founder Phil Knight, and the rest is history.

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Oregon football strength and conditioning coordinator Aaron Feld has a mustache known around college football. What started as a way to motivate his players at the University of Georgia in their national championship run in 2017, quickly became a calling card for Feld. After an injury early in his playing career at Mississippi State, Feld found about the art of strength and conditioning, and his hard work and career perseverance now have him at the helm of one of the nation’s top programs. It’s his job to make sure his players are ready for the throes of competition. But also, he feels he can use his position to make a change in the world. 

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Former Duck women’s basketball star Ruthy Hebard has quite a story. One that begins in Chicago, but plays out mostly in Fairbanks, Alaska, where Hebard was raised with two adopted black siblings and her white parents. And although she noticed her family was different, it didn’t matter to her, as she learned to love the outdoors and the Alaskan lifestyle. Hebard also began to excel on the basketball court and eventually became a member of the most-decorated recruiting class in Oregon women’s basketball history. Hebard and that class of Ducks turned around the program, and after graduating in 2020, she is now playing professionally overseas and ironically, for the Chicago Sky in the WNBA. How things have come full circle.

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Do you ever wonder to yourself if your dreams and goals are too outlandish to chase? For Duck track great Raevyn Rogers, the more outrageous, the better. The results she posted on the track at Oregon aren’t just crazy, they’re extraordinary. She’s a six-time NCAA Division I champion and ten-time All-American and played a key part in the Ducks’ Triple Crown in 2017. Her accomplishments have her in rarefied air in the Oregon Track annals, and on the new Hayward Field tower, there are five Duck greats. Bill Bowerman. Steve Prefontaine. Ashton Eaton. Otis Davis. And Raevyn Rogers. 

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70 years. That’s how long Oregon Associate Athletic Director Herb Yamanaka has been involved with Oregon athletics, and the changes he has seen are not lost on the Hawaii native. Raised by his grandmother, he came to Eugene and became the first person in his family to earn a college degree. After earning a biology degree and figuring out the science world was not for him, he latched on to Oregon athletics, where he tackled all tasks, big or small. But more importantly to Yamanaka and to the world, he figured out one of life’s greatest secrets.

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Duck baseball player Kenyon Yovan doesn’t lack confidence. A hometown boy from Gladstone, Oregon, he used that confidence in himself to become one of the best collegiate players in the nation. Yovan’s career began at Oregon on the mound as a pitcher, and was named a Freshman All-America and was on his way, or so he thought, to a baseball career striking people out. Until the unthinkable happened, when his baseball career was turned upside down in 2019 after multiple surgeries to alleviate blood clots. Now the Ducks’ all-time leader in home runs in a season, where did he find his confidence after everything in baseball was almost taken away from him?