Nike Chair Gives $100-Million for University Athletic Fund

Philip H. Knight, the chairman and a co-founder of the Nike sportswear company, and his wife, Penelope, plan to give the University of Oregon, in Eugene, $100-million to establish a fund to support all of the university’s athletic programs and operations.

The couple is still working out details with university officials, said Phil Weiler, a university spokesman.

University officials hope to raise an additional $50-million from other donors to add to the fund, but no timetable has been set to reach that goal.

The new fund will be unlike a traditional endowment, Mr. Weiler said; the university’s athletics department will be able to use both the principal and the interest in what is to be called the Oregon Athletics Legacy Fund.

Dave Frohnmayer, president of the University of Oregon, said the arrangement will make it possible for the university’s athletics department, which does not receive money from the university, to continue to pay for its operations on its own.

Mr. Frohnmayer and Mr. Weiler would not say if the university plans to eventually deplete the fund or replenish it through future fund-raising efforts.

Mr. Knight, who received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the university in 1959, and his wife have a long history of giving to the university. In 1996, they gave $25-million to endow professorships and pay for a new building for the law school. The university will not disclose exactly how much money the couple has donated over the years, but their additional donations have gone toward the university’s main library, a stadium, a sports center, and a track program.

Last summer, Mr. Knight gave Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, in California, $105-million to build a new campus to house the school’s management center. He earned an M.B.A. at Stanford in 1962.