Joey, what was your access to Oregon or Nike sneakers when you were playing for the Ducks? It’s a different era now, but I imagine you had the juice back then. I like to call Laurelhurst kind of the Irish mafia part of Portland, Irish-American mafia. I mean, ever since I’ve known him, or until he passed away. TH: Peter Moore lived in Laurelhurst forever. JH: It’s interesting to hear you say that it’s pretty spot on like it’s a town within a city. And I don’t know, there’s kind of this home county-ness to not Portland as much as Northeast Portland. There are others-Terrell Brandon, NBA player, grew up in the neighborhood. Ndamukong Suh lives just down the street from both Joey and me. But Northeast Portland is like a town within the city. TH: You could sort of look at Portland and go, well, it is what it is.

JH: Yeah, the traffic circle on 39th and Glisan. For me, it was going and seeing myself on a 10-story billboard at the top of Penn Station across from Madison Square Garden. I wouldn’t necessarily say on the committees, because looking back, we didn’t know at the time that the uniforms would become such a massive thing in college football. I want to say the gravity of the whole thing didn’t really hit until I was in college. It was just a company that was making some shoes that kids wore and were just kind of starting to take off. It’s just kind of like, oh, well, Tom’s a banker, and Susie’s a lawyer, and Tinker’s at Nike. I mean, that’s the thing is, it was never really a big deal. Do you remember how you first made those connections? Was it this moment that Tinker’s talking about them putting you on a committee? Joey, it feels like for people who grew up in Oregon, there are a lot of natural connections to Nike that emerge, whether you’re in Portland or you’re in Eugene. That’s probably why you don’t remember we’re talking. TH: Yeah, you probably had no idea who I was. JH: I was definitely involved for those few years where we were working on changing the uniform game.

Leadership at Nike, headquartered not too far away, sought to enlarge his fame in 2001 by installing a towering portrait of Harrington in New York City to help his Heisman campaign.Īfter his career in the league, Harrington ended up back in Oregon, in the neighborhood he grew up in, where he can still map out families across each block by recalling long lists of last names as if from a census. “Hey, just brought these over for you,” says Hatfield, in his hand a pair of exclusive Air Jordan 14s made for the University of Oregon football team and autographed by Hatfield.Īcross the threshold is Joey Harrington, the 6’4” former NFL quarterback whose college career with the Oregon Ducks at the turn of the century made him a legend in this corner of the world. Here, he is a neighbor, the quirky old guy you might see swerving through the bosky streets on his longboard. At work and among sneaker obsessives, Hatfield is a legend, the person who has contributed more to sneaker design than anyone else. At a house in Northeast Portland, Nike designer Tinker Hatfield is ringing the doorbell.

Jordan 1 attention attention