Although they’re not ranked in the top 25 pre-season college football polls, the Oregon Ducks have got plenty of reason to celebrate.
Today it was announced that Nike founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny have given the University of Oregon $100 million for an athletics fund. The pledge, announced by Oregon President Dave Frohnmayer and athletic director Pat Kilkenny, would create the Oregon Athletics Legacy Fund.
The gift, announced through the university’s GoDucks.com Web site, is the largest philanthropic gesture collected in the school’s history.
The Ducks have plans to build a new basketball arena and those plans may have just come a little closer to reality. The arena project will undoubtedly get a shot in the arm from the $100 million windfall. However the gift is intended for the benefit of the entire University of Oregon Athletic department and was not donated specifically to build the new arena.
CEOSMACK has created a panorama of the most animated current and former CEOs. Each CEO is pictured showing off some of their best poses.
Our list includes:
Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Broadcast.com Founder & Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban, and current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. We know that Mark Cuban is not technically a tech CEO, but he made his billions off the Internet so we included him in the group.
Help us decide which of these over the top, super-expressive CEOs should be crowned Most Animated Tech CEO. Happy Voting.
Last night Barry Bonds broke the all-time home-run record when he hit career homer # 756.
It didn’t take long for Victor Conte, the man at the center of the BALCO scandal to come forward and steal some of the spotlight from Bonds. Conte said that he’s convinced he played a small, but important, role in Barry Bonds’ coronation as Major League Baseball’s home run king, saying he designed a complex nutritional regimen from 2000 to 2003 in conjunction with an intense weightlifting program that enabled Bonds to significantly increase his power.
Conte who served prison time for selling designer steroids from his Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, said the supplements he sold Bonds were all legal. “I never gave him steroids,” Conte said. “I never had those discussions with Barry because there was no need to.”
He said Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson also deserves some credit for helping Bonds break Hank Aaron’s home-run record.
Anderson has been in a federal minimum security prison since November for refusing to testify in the federal government’s perjury probe of the new home-run king. There is speculation that Bonds has plans to “Take Care” of Anderson once he’s released.
After recently announcing his retirement from the NFL, former New England Patriots & New York Jets running back Curtis Martin commented that, “Football has the greatest fan base of any sport. With fan base comes influence, and with influence comes responsibility. My whole career has been about maintaining that responsibility as a player.”
Martin went on to say that he believes in using football as a vehicle to reach out and do some good both in society to individual lives… and that ownership is a larger way of continuing what he has already started.
Martin said he’s had plans to be an NFL owner since early in his professional career.
“I believe I’ve gotten a chance to understand the game from the ground up,” said Martin. “It’s something that very few owners are able to do, simply because they’re not privy to the intimacy of the locker rooms or the brotherhood of the players. I believe that I can bring something new, and something that I think could be better for the NFL overall.”
Tonight Barry Bonds finally hit home-run No. 755 to tie Hank Aaron for the Major League Baseball home-run record. It was an opposite-field drive of 382 feet to left-center. The blast placed Bonds within one swing of having the most hallowed record in sports.
Commissioner Bud Selig stood up and put his hands in his pockets while Bonds hugged and high-fived his son Nikoli.
The game was still in progress at the time of this post, but Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig issued the following statement which was read by the broadcast staff:
Congratulations to Barry Bonds as he ties Major League Baseball’s Home-run record. No matter what anybody thinks of the controversy surrounding this event, Mr. Bonds’ achievement is noteworthy and remarkable.
As I said previously…out of respect for the tradition of the game, the magnitude of the record and the fact that all citizens in this country are innocent until proven guilty, either I or a representative of my office will attend the next few games and make every attempt to observe the breaking of the all-time home-run record.
Yesterday, Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, expressed appreciation and gratitude to Nike for suspending its commercial relationship with Michael Vick.
“The allegations against Michael Vick are so serious and disturbing that The Humane Society called on his corporate backers to end their commercial relationships with the star player ,” said Mr. Pacelle. “We are very pleased that Nike has today signaled it has a zero tolerance policy for athletes who may be involved with staged animal fights and other forms of malicious animal cruelty by indefinitely suspending its relationship with Vick.”
Nike released the following statement:
“Nike has suspended Michael Vick’s contract without pay, and will not sell any more Michael Vick product at Nike owned retail at this time. As we’ve said before, Nike is concerned by the serious and highly disturbing allegations made against Michael Vick and we consider any cruelty to animals inhumane and abhorrent. However, we do believe that Michael Vick should be afforded the same due process as any citizen in the United States, therefore, we have not terminated our relationship”
The HSUS last week renewed its request of Nike that it terminate its commercial relationship with Michael Vick after the federal government presented a 19-page indictment in federal court. In the past week, more than 165,000 HSUS supporters sent messages to Nike through www.humanesociety.org.
Reebok also annunced that it has decided to stop selling Michael Vick-branded products. The company does not have a contract with Vick, but has an official relationship with the NFL to sell its merchandise.
[Via American Chronicle]
