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| In Bill Dellinger's Office, left to right, Bill Dellinger (face blocked), Jim Ryun, Phil Knight, Steve Prefontaine |
Once I’d found my Dunn Hall dorm and unpacked, I headed out on campus to take some photos to send back to my parents. Not only did I feel like a tourist, I was acting like one. The Oregon basketball team played in McArthur Court, an aging, ivy-clad arena that dated to 1926. Next to “Mac Court,” I discovered, were the shoe-box-sized offices of all the university’s athletic coaches, including the man I was supposed to check in with, Dellinger.
His door was open.
Dellinger, it turned out, wasn’t alone. He’d been chatting with three others,
two of whom I’d seen in magazines and newspapers. I tried not to gawk but it
was like a folk-music fan suddenly seeing Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. There sat
Prefontaine and Ryun, along with some other guy, a little older, who did not appear
to be cut from quite the same athletic cloth as the other two.
