15 years after 'I Love My Ducks', Michael Bishop is still writing Oregon's story

Bishop once rapped about Oregon. Now he's a key piece in telling the Ducks' story.

The “I Love My Ducks” kids are grown men now.

Fifteen years after their class project changed the lives of millions — or at least the three Oregon students who posted the music video to YouTube — the Supwitchugirl trio has moved on into adulthood.

Jamie Slade lives in Colorado with two kids. Brian McAndrew lives in Vancouver with two kids.

But Michael Bishop, the one who once rhymed —

We’re your favorite teams’ favorite team

Smooth like a limousine

Everybody’s goin’ every-everybody’s goin’ green

— well, he’s back in Eugene, where the 36-year-old freelance writer with three kids says things are feeling a bit like they did more than a decade ago.

“This feels like the start of something — it's like the continuation of the brand when I was there and that energy,” Bishop said. “But I also feel like it's the start of something new, which is what you need.”

Bishop knows well of Oregon’s story. Over the past few years, he’s played a large part in telling it — from the newly constructed Hayward Hall to writing the scripts for the weekly That Team out West series during fall camp.

Bishop joined The I-5 Corridor for a conversation about “I Love My Ducks,” his time as the voice of @Nike, ghostwriting for Kobe Bryant and that time that replying to a decade-old email ended up with a canceled vacation to Mexico and flying around in Nike’s private jet.

But first, let’s set the mood.

Editor’s note: The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. For the full interview — which includes questions not included below — you can listen here:

Tyson Alger: This is something I’ve wanted to circle back on because I’ve been hearing "I Love My Ducks" at commercial breaks, and it’s always fun to see it pop up on Twitter. It was one of my favorite stories when I was at The Athletic, but it makes me feel pretty old because that was six years ago now. So I’m curious—how does Michael Bishop feel in 2024, as all of this nostalgia around "I Love My Ducks" comes up again?

Michael Bishop: I guess it never gets old, but there’s just so many miles we’ve put on the tires—all three of us. We’ve accomplished a lot past that. That was huge for, like, my grandma and my family and people for sure, but it feels like a blip. I don’t mean to downplay it, but I’ve been so blessed with cool career and life moments after that it just feels like a blip on the radar now. But it’ll hit me. Like you said, when it was on Fox—I was literally sitting there with my five-year-old boy and my twin eight-year-old girls. All four of us are sitting there on the couch, and the game goes to commercial break, and we all hear "I Love My Ducks" at the same time and they just all look over at me and their eyes just get big, like, “No way.” It was such a cool moment. Those moments are really special to jog everyone’s memory.

Tyson Alger: That could have been the high point, the apex. Peaking in college. But what I wanted to talk about today was the career you've made since then and bringing your voice back to Oregon 15 years later. I’m assuming that a lot of it feeling like a blip is because you've had a lot of success in your career since then?

Michael Bishop: Yeah, I mean, it definitely propelled me. It was like the peak of a chapter, I guess, is a good way to look at it. And it just propelled me and us to have really great opportunities.

Coming off “I Love My Ducks”, it was taken off YouTube and I got an email from Howard Slusher, who worked at Nike as Phil’s right-hand guy. He emailed me and said he wanted to give it to his wife for Christmas, but it’s not on YouTube, so I said, “Okay, I’ll literally burn you a DVD.” I sent a DVD — so old school — to his assistant in the mail. He sent me back this pair of Nike sunglasses that were, like, for a dad. I was in college, so I wasn’t going to wear them, but I gave them to my dad. I don’t know if he still has them. And then I let it settle for a while. But as school was wrapping up I just cold-emailed him back, saying, “Hey, I’m graduating in the spring; if there are any opportunities, I’d love to know. Just keep me in the loop.” He was like, “Talk to this person at this date, then we’ll talk again.” Then I got a call from a recruiter who said they just closed their internship program but Howard wanted them to talk to me for an interview.

She told me to show up in Beaverton on June-whatever and that was that. I was just streamlined into this Nike internship just by way of “I Love My Ducks.” And from there it was like my dream job, writing for Nike on social and digital and everything just snowballed from there. Without “I Love My Ducks,” I was studying magazine journalism and I honestly have no idea where I’d be. 

Tyson Alger: What was the high point of being the voice of Nike?

Michael Bishop: I grew up idolizing Nike and I always inspired — I know it sounds cheesy — by the voice. The voice of the athlete. That got me. I was obsessed with commercials from a young age and would go recreate the Frozen Moment Jordan commercial. They just stuck with me.

There was a little period before I got on where they were unsure of their voice on social and digital. This is like 2011 and 2012, so everyone is trying to figure out Instagram and Twitter and how to talk, right? It was really the Wild West and I was like, “I know how to write for Nike.” So I started with Nike Football, and we did so well that they let me run the @Nike voice. Every morning, I’d get to blast a post out to millions and see people respond like, “This makes me want to run” or “This makes me want to play basketball.” You were able to have an impact daily, which was cool for me. 

Tyson Alger: Did that scratch much of a creative itch for you?

Michael Bishop: Going from magazines to writing little headlines was a good challenge for me, but there was room to, like, write a longer manifesto or dig in on a certain subject. So I think I scratched a bunch of creative itches in that way. And then, I mean, I got to go to Brazil for the World Cup. So in comparison to "I Love My Ducks," I was like, “I’m in Brazil, writing for the number one sports brand in the world for the World Cup,” it just kept getting better and better. 

That was also peak Mariota Oregon, so I was writing ads and pieces of content that didn’t come to fruition for that game against Ohio State — it was like another pinch-me moment. You’re mocking up Natty win lines for Oregon.  

Tyson Alger: You also ghostwrote for Kobe Bryant, right? How did you find his voice?

Michael Bishop: It was like method acting. I became kind of an asshole because I channeled the Mamba Mentality. In meetings — this is so dumb — but they would be like, ‘Oh, is that the line?’ and I’d be like, ‘Yeah, it’s the line!’ It was like watching Kobe in a game. Afterward, I’d step outside and be like, “Whoa, I’ve got to get out of character.”

Tyson Alger: So, you were interviewing him or was it just pure ghostwriting?

Michael Bishop: Pure ghostwriting. I’d read all this stuff. Watch all these interviews and absorb all this content and go make and pitch these lessons that he’s learned in correspondence with these shoes that we were launching. So it was very much a year of Mamba Mentality. Looking back, I was probably a jerk that year. But it was another one of those projects where it’s like, you’re writing for Kobe, it’s another dream type of thing.

Tyson Alger: Did you play any hoop at that time? 

Michael Bishop: Oh yeah. It wasn’t as good as the writing.

But, I did become competitive at writing, which is funny. So that was the year before we had kids, then we had kids and I went out on my own and I was getting consistent work. I had a project where I was ghostwriting messages for high school teams from LeBron, so I was getting consistent Nike projects and some random projects and then not too long later, they reached out to me for the track project: Hayward Hall. 

And that’s funny because on the last day of my internship with Howard, he was like “Hey, you’ve done awesome. We’re going to be redoing the Oregon football facilities and we’d like you to lead this museum-type thing of Oregon football.” … That ended up falling through, so then, literally a decade or more later, I saw that they were going to do Hayward Hall, so I cold-replied to my last email from Howard in 2010 and said, “Hey, saw you’re doing a museum, would love to help out in any way.” He was like, “Reach out to Todd Van Horne and he’ll set up a meeting for next week.” I know Todd, he set up a meeting and said to show up on Monday to the Hillsboro Airport.

I was supposed to go to Mexico with my wife, and I was like, “OK… we’re not going to Mexico.”

So we show up to the hangar, get on the Nike jet and travel around and look at different museums around North America for a week. 

Tyson Alger: Did they tell you what to pack? 

Michael Bishop: I brought a backpack, a notebook and a couple changes of clothes. We went up to Anchorage to the Smithsonian, which was incredible. We went to Naismith, we went to Cooperstown, we went to Canton — we were just trying to see what worked in museums. 

And then came back and I picked up my car and left the hangar.

Tyson Alger: And this is all just because you replied to a 10-year-old email? 

Michael Bishop: Yeah. There’s like architects, Todd Van Horne and Slusher on the plane and I’m the youngest by far and they’re like, “Who is this guy?” 

Tyson Alger: What was the small talk like on that plane?