Hundreds of University of Oregon boosters are on campus to kick off homecoming weekend, and at 7:30 p.m., they are invited to a special event at Hayward Field which UO has told boosters will be "exciting" and "about the future of the University of Oregon."

That, plus speculation in Eugene Weekly, is fueling rumors that UO Booster in Chief Phil Knight may be announcing a huge donation. Sources including the blogger who writes UO Matters, economics professor Bill Harbaugh, have thrown out unsubstantiated numbers as large as $1 billion.

But the event could be somewhat more mundane. UO officials have been planning their next big fundraising campaign for years, and Chuck Lillis, the chairman of the new UO Board of Trustees, said in June that one would launch in October. Lilles said the goal could be as large as $2 billion or even $3 billion.

If a campaign were launched, eyes would be on Knight, who is by far the largest UO donor in history.

The largest donation ever made to Harvard University, with the nation's biggest college endowment, is $350 million. That gift, made about a month ago, came from a Hong Kong-born investor. Two other private U.S. universities also have received $350 million gifts. And Cal Tech got two $300 million donations at the same time, one from Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife Betty and another from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, for $600 million total.

So Knight could claim a record by giving $351 million -- less than he has pledged to fight cancer at Oregon Health & Science University.

Harbaugh himself acknowledges that the rumors he is hearing could all be based on the same faulty source. As he puts it on his blog, "The Eugene Weekly has a new rumor on my rumor, which was mostly based on their rumor, or a rumor I got from the same person they got it from."

University spokeswoman Julie Brown said details of tonight's announcement are being kept confidential so the invitation-only crowd will hear it first. Calls to communication office at Knight's company, Nike, were not immediately returned, but other Nike sources indicated no Knight fanfare is in the works.

Knight and his wife, Penny, have already contributed what is estimated to be more than $300 million to UO. He helped renovate the library, helped pay for the William W. Knight Law Center, gave $30 million to improve Autzen Stadium, endowed 27 professorships and helped finance Matthew Knight Arena. He paid for the $42 million athlete tutoring center, The John E. Jaqua Academic Center for Student Athletes, named for the late UO alumnus and founding board member of Nike. And he paid for the gleaming $68 million (or more) 145,000-square-foot Hatfield-Dowlin Complex to serve the University's football team. The building is named in honor of Phil Knight's mother, Lota Hatfield, and Penny Knight's mother, Dorothie Dowlin.

-- Betsy Hammond