Nike decks out Pit Crew

They say there are no free lunches in this world, but there are apparently free shoes. If you know the right people. And go to the right school.

At the University of Oregon, known to some around the nation as Nike U because of the millions of dollars Nike co-founder and alumnus Phil Knight donates to the school’s athletic and academic programs, student-athletes are decked out in expensive, trendy Nike-designed uniforms that have even become a recruiting tool for coaches.

And now, in what Tinker Hatfield, Nike’s vice president of innovation design and special projects, says is a first for college athletics, members of the Pit Crew, the UO’s student cheering section for men’s and women’s basketball games, are getting their own limited-edition, specially designed shoe: The Pit Crew shoe.

“This is yet just another opportunity for us to get involved in another way with the students,” said Hatfield, a UO pole vaulter in the early 1970s and a longtime Nike designer known for his innovative shoe designs — and the creative mind behind that attention-grabbing floor design in the UO’s $227 million Matthew Knight Arena that opened in January.

“And that’s really what we want to do for the University of Oregon — attract a more diverse student body,” Hatfield said Thursday in a phone interview. “It’s all part of the plan.”

The Pit Crew shoe will not go on sale to the general public, but only into the hands of about 500 lucky Pit Crew members this basketball season, beginning with tonight’s “Matthew Knight Madness,” a free introduction for fans to the 2011-12 UO men’s and women’s basketball teams.

The shoe was designed by taking the chassis of a late-1980s Air Jordan 3 basketball shoe and adding distinctive colors and graphics, Hatfield said. The shoes are yellow, black, white and gray, representative of color schemes Nike has added to UO football uniforms in recent years, and have a Pit Crew logo on the sides: two yellow Duck feet on the back of the heel, and a yellow “O” symbol on the tongue.

It’s all part of a “rebranding” of the Pit Crew, which has about 1,000 members, Pit Crew president Alex Horwitch said.

Horwitch said he discussed rebranding the Pit Crew, born in the 1990s at McArthur Court, the UO’s longtime basketball arena, with UO Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director Jim Bartko last year. Bartko put Horwitch, a UO senior from Calabasas, Calif., in touch with Nike Creative Director Todd Van Horne, via e-mail, last fall, and Van Horne invited Horwitch to Nike’s Beaverton headquarters for a meeting with him and Hatfield.

Horwitch said he thought they would just discuss, perhaps, a new logo. But Hatfield asked, “What if we just outfitted you like we did a sports team?” Horwitch recalled.

Horwitch’s response? “That would be incredible. What did you have in mind?”

What Hatfield had in mind arrived early last month, in a shipment of boxes from Nike, filled with about 60 pairs of the new Pit Crew shoes. And not only that, but more than 200 black Nike sweat jackets emblazoned with “Pit Crew” in yellow on one side and white Nike swooshes on the other.

“We weren’t really expecting the jackets,” Pit Crew member and UO senior Matt Bronstein, of Danville, Calif., said. “They just kind of came with (the package).”

Also in the shipment were the usual 1,000 yellow Pit Crew T-shirts that are handed out every fall to the first students who show for the season’s first basketball event. Those will be handed out tonight, Horwitch said.

Also given out tonight will be 10 pairs of Pit Crew shoes, he said. Those will go not just to Pit Crew members, but to any fans who show up and win the shoes by raffle. Ten of the black Pit Crew jackets also will be raffled off.

As for the 60 pairs of shoes that arrived last month, those already have been given to the most-devoted Pit Crew members, the ones who never missed a single men’s basketball game last year, Horwitch said. But recipients were told not to wear them, or photograph them, before tonight’s event, he said.

Nike plans to ship more of the shoes as the basketball season unfolds, about 500 pairs total, Horwitch said. Pit Crew members will be able to earn them, and the jackets, by showing exemplary attendance at the games, good behavior, and maybe even for such extra efforts as having the best sign at a game, he said.

Over the years, the Pit Crew has not exactly earned the most honorable of reputations among the UO’s Pac-12 opponents. Horwitch and Hatfield both said having an incentive program based around some sweet shoes could help.

“We want to have the best student section in the country in two aspects,” Horwitch said. “One, they show up. Two, they’re smart fans,” he said, meaning they don’t cross that “razor’s edge” of inappropriate behavior.