Desmond Howard and Joey Galloway break down Oregon's prospects in Willie Taggart's first season as head coach. (1:19)

The birth of Oregon cool happened 2,000 miles from campus in the corner of a Dallas hotel lounge.

Colorado had just smashed the Ducks 38-6 in the 1996 Cotton Bowl. Later that night, the greatest marketing campaign in college football history was conceived.

Ducks' supporters and power brokers gathered for what was supposed to be a victory party but turned into what then-Oregon coach Mike Bellotti describes as "a wake."

Yet out of sorrow came hope.

First for the Ducks. Then for those aspiring to be them.

Huddled together as they drowned their sorrows, Bellotti, Nike chairman Phil Knight, a couple key donors and assistant athletic director Jim Bartko hatched a plan.

"We needed some flash. We needed to rebrand our program," Bartko said. "Phil Knight said, 'I'm in.' Everyone else said, 'We're in, too.' That's where it all started."

Next came alternate uniforms, skyscraper-sized billboards, shiny facilities, breakneck offense and, with Knight and Nike backing it, the coolest brand in college football.

"I'm at USC, and my [three] boys want Oregon stuff," said LSU coach Ed Orgeron, previously an assistant and interim head coach with the rival Trojans. "They wanted to wear the gear and look cool."

Orgeron's sons weren't alone.

The Oregon cool caught the eyes of blue-chip recruits across the country, who came flocking to remote Eugene, giving the upstart Ducks the ammunition they needed to pierce the stranglehold the traditional powers had on the game.

"They were the first ones to say the focus is going to be on what the players like," Kansas coach David Beaty said. "They understood the psychology of kids. They utilized it to the max. It was brilliant.

Multiple uniforms have now long been one of Oregon's calling cards and recruiting ploys. Nike

"They revolutionized college football -- I don't know if there's any other way to say it."

As the Ducks won six Pac-12 titles and played for two national championships, they became the beacon of hope for nontraditional powers everywhere.

Oregon also provided the blueprint.

"We all saw the success they had and the flash and the attraction that players and recruits had to that," Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury said. "You felt like that's a model. If you're not a traditional power, maybe you can follow and make [it] work. A lot of schools started changing their uniforms and tried to do cool, swaggy things in their locker rooms. That was directly attributed to the success that Oregon had."

All of which has brought Oregon to a critical juncture in its history. The Ducks are coming off their worst season in 26 years. For the first time in four decades, they fired a coach, replacing Mark Helfrich with Willie Taggart.

"This is a different kind of deal for Oregon," Bellotti said. "A different kind of pressure."

That includes preserving the identity of being uniquely cool while staying a step ahead of the copycat competition it helped to create.

"Oregon is at a crossroads," said Bartko, now the athletic director at Fresno State. "[Traditional powers] have that history of success. Oregon has 20 years. ... and it doesn't have 50 five-star players in its backyard either.

"That's scary ... because it's really easy to go from the penthouse to the outhouse."

After committing the money for Oregon's indoor practice facility the night of the Cotton Bowl, Knight put his best minds on rebranding the Ducks. That included Tinker Hatfield, a former Oregon pole vaulter behind the "Air Jordan" basketball shoes, and Todd Van Horne, creative director for Nike football.

The Nike team didn't act alone. They talked directly with Oregon athletes. From those conversations came some of the most innovative ideas.

Originally, the plan was to change the uniforms every three years. But after a couple cycles, one player suggested to Nike that they treat Oregon's uniforms the way a college student might his wardrobe: with new looks for every Saturday night.

With that, Oregon's brand came into focus.

"That's what we sold to recruits," Bartko said. "Come to Oregon, and you're going to play fast, and you're going to win, and you're going to have some of the greatest minds at Nike help design the look that you want.

"It snowballed. And it worked."

It dovetailed with style of play and then with the facilities.

"We recruited speed," said Bellotti, who changed Oregon's offense from a pro-set look to a spread shotgun attack. "We couldn't always get the biggest, strongest, most physical athlete. They were going to go elsewhere. We recruited speed from the Bay Area or L.A. or wherever. We hung our hat on, if we're going to choose between two guys, let's go with the faster one."

When Chip Kelly arrived with the no-huddle in 2007, the Ducks kicked into warp-speed.

"They've got these cool guys with cool nicknames and these cool uniforms," Iowa State coach Matt Campbell said. "Then they're winning games, scoring 60 points. They had all this going for them and this phenomenal swagger."

Yet to truly compete with the blue bloods of college football, Oregon sought ways to close the top recruits when they visited Eugene.

The school had given Autzen Stadium a facelift in 2002. But the coup de grâce proved to be the Hatfield-Dowlin football operations center. A jewel of glass and black steel, the six-story facility funded by Knight featured a double-decker locker room, ground-breaking ventilation systems and, of all things, a barbershop -- another player suggestion.

Immediately, Oregon's facility became the envy of college football -- barbershop and all.

"It was different. It was shinier than other places," said Beaty, who was then an assistant at Texas A&M, which was finding itself in recruiting battles with Oregon for premier Texas talent. "You walk into their training room -- we studied it -- it looked like a dadgum New York City club. The ceiling was black. There were lights everywhere. Their locker room was ridiculous."

After Texas A&M moved to the SEC, it needed to increase its visibility to compete in a division with Alabama and LSU.

When the Aggies finished renovations on their football facility in 2014, they included a barbershop.

In college football, whatever happens to be en vogue is always soon replicated. Discerning Oregon's advantage, the copycats and the rest of the college football world have since caught up to the Ducks.

Van Horne estimates that more than 90 percent of his Nike clients invoke Oregon while discussing uniforms or branding. That goes beyond college football to include NFL, soccer and even national teams.

Willie Taggart is trying to relaunch Oregon after a 4-8 season. Scott Olmos/USA TODAY Sports

Under Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State, for example, saw Oregon as the sketch to success.

"We had discussions and said, 'OK, can we be the Oregon of the Midwest?'" Gundy said. "Because they're so far out there that you could actually be them over here, and you could be new."

Behind mega-donor Boone Pickens, the Cowboys built a new stadium. Then they began changing their uniforms weekly. As a result, not only has Oklahoma State's recruiting improved, but the Cowboys are also coming off back-to-back 10-win seasons and are ranked in the top 10 in the preseason polls.

"Before, people wanted to be USC, Penn State, Michigan," Bartko said. "Now, people are saying, 'Let's do what Oregon does.'"

While flattering, that has stripped away much of what made Oregon unique -- especially to precious blue-chip recruits.

"You have to have the facilities and the branding and the name recognition that get you in the door with a kid from Florida or Texas or southern California," Bellotti said. "I don't think Oregon has lost that."

The question moving forward, though: Can Oregon keep it? As Bartko noted, becoming cool is the easy part. Staying that way is far more difficult.

"When you're at a school that has to really fight and claw, the difficult part is how long can you stay because you're still, in most cases, not going to get the same guys the top-10 schools get," Gundy said. "[Oregon] still can't walk in like USC can, even when USC wasn't winning. ... Those schools still get the best kids."

But as he prepares for his first season in Eugene, Taggart and his staff have been netting some of the best on the recruiting trail. Even though they went 4-8 last season and endured a coaching change, the Ducks currently have the nation's fifth-best recruiting class, with commitments from eight states.

Taggart concedes that Oregon might not be as unique as it once was. But for that reason, he says, the Ducks have also never been so cool.

"To be a trend-setter, where teams look at what you're doing and try to build their program around what you've done, I think that's pretty cool," he said. "But there's still only one Oregon. Everyone has the uniforms, but it's not the same. There's just something about that 'O' and the Nike swoosh.

"That's what makes Oregon cool."