CORKY: Nike keeps Ducks in style

You’ll be happy to know the University of Oregon football team will be able to choose from 80 different jersey combinations this fall.

This is one of the benefits of having a devoted billionaire like Phil Knight on your side, a graduate and former athlete who loves the old school.

Knight ran track for the Ducks and later co-founded Nike athletic apparel. He’s one of the richest men in the world.

And he dresses that football team in blinding dazzle.

The most exciting thing about Oregon football isn’t how the Ducks play but what they wear. School colors of green and yellow don’t begin to describe the explosion of oomph and pizzazz with which the Quack-Quacks are robed.

You’re right — what a sports team wears shouldn’t be worth this much space in a newspaper. Except for Oregon football.

Some years ago the Ducks decided to put a little life into their school colors by officially proclaiming them as “emerald green and lemon yellow.” Up the road in Corvallis, Craig Fetig, who coached at rival Oregon State, declared the Beavers would be wearing “wedding gown white and negligee orange.” Luckily, that idea didn’t resonate.

But Oregon, whose school and athletic teams are underwritten by a company that sells uniforms and equipment globally, continued to explore new worlds of dye and marketing.

This off-color decision has, of course, been widely criticized. But what the heck? It’s fun to watch where the genius of Nike takes the webfoots.

When they trot onto the field at Autzen Stadium in what could be called squished caterpillar and neon bile, the large and faithful — and unbelievably noisy — home crowd goes bonkers. So, too, do the television people and viewers throughout the West.

And by the way, the Ducks have one of the best programs in the Pacific-10 Conference, as well as, coincidentally, one of the best schools. They could wear burlap-drab and organic-compost umber and still be competitive.

But you have to wonder if that Oregon equipment room isn’t packed to the rafters and walls with all the radiance of midnight-green “thunder” and blinding yellow “lightning.”

True to Oregon mindset and inventiveness, he latest issue of uniforms for the coming season will feature improved ergonomics. Oh, joy.

There will be laminate numbers that don’t soak up moisture (meaning “sweat”). And there’s an 85-percent differential — whatever in the heck that means — compared to traditional uniforms.

But it’s the option of 80 different jerseys that will make some witnesses cheer and most of us shake our heads in disbelief.

Sure, you’re thinking of all this extravagance in the face of terrible economic times coast to coast and border to border. And how all that money could be spent in better ways.

Well, Mr. Knight has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to his alma mater, as well as to the Stanford University School of Business, of which he is also a graduate.

If he gets a kick out of costuming the Oregon football team in outrageous colors and at the same time, field-testing new equipment design, more power to him. It’s his dough; let him do what he wants.

And besides, it’s great fun to watch.

The two most captivating questions each year in college football, at least in this part of the country, are these:

Can anybody beat Southern Cal, and what will the Oregon Ducks wear?

And the answers are maybe and The Good Lord only knows.

Go Ducks.

Former Tucson Citizen columnist Corky Simpson writes a weekly commentary for the Green Valley News.