John Eggers - Special Contribution to Sports

John Eggers served as sports information director at Oregon State University for more than 31 years, and helped create a pattern for how to represent and market college athletics through in-house news writing. His efforts helped significantly with Terry Baker receiving the Heisman Trophy in 1962.

Eggers grew up in Pendleton, and excelled in basketball, eventually earning a roster spot at Willamette University before joining the Armed Forces at the start of World War II. Upon returning to Oregon, Eggers schooled at Oregon State and became a sportswriter for the school paper, The Daily Barometer, and then The Oregonian in Portland.

Eggers became Sports Information Director in 1952 after two years as an assistant, and quickly worked to establish the school on a national level by attending annual College Sports Information Directors of America workshops in Chicago.

In 1962, his efforts helped Baker become the first Heisman winner West of the Mississippi River and then Sports Illustrated’s Athlete of the Year. The following year he was Knighted by the Rose Festival Association.

Eggers was inducted to the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 1982, the Oregon State University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1991 and the CoSIDA Hall of Fame in 2010.