Doug Koke, local businessman and driver of Autzen Harley, dies at 73

There were few things Doug Koke liked better than firing up the ignition of that green 1996 Harley-Davidson Fat Boy and waiting for the roar that followed.

“It’s pretty crazy when you start that thing up and (the fans) hear the motorcycle,” Koke told “College GameDay” in 2022. “They know that it’s getting close for the team to come out and the game to start. It’s pretty noisy. This crowd is out for blood.”

Koke, who piloted the motorcycle that became synonymous with the start of Oregon football games from 1999-2022, died Dec. 31, from a pulmonary embolism, his family said. He was 73.

In addition to his 23 years igniting the crowd at Autzen Stadium just before kickoff, Koke was the president of QSL Print Communications, a fourth-generation business founded by his grandfather in 1907. He left a simple legacy.

“We believe Doug’s success was due to his personal motto: Be kind to people, do great work, and have fun, damnit,” Melissa Koke, CEO of QSL Print Communications and Doug’s daughter, said in a statement. 

QSL prints materials for Bi-Mart, Kendall Auto Group, Cafe Yumm and multiple community credit unions in town, as well as programs for University of Oregon sporting events, Melissa Koke told Lookout Eugene-Springfield.

Her father embraced technology, she said, but he was “really, really a stickler for quality,” she said. “He himself was a great craftsman.”

And he insisted that the company always employ a person to answer the phone. “We’re still relationship people,” she said.

In addition to his wife, Nancy, and daughter Melissa, Koke is survived by another daughter, Keri Ortiz; and son, Ryan Koke; a sister, brother and four grandchildren.

For the 55,000-plus who came to Eugene for football on Saturday afternoons, Koke was the guy who got the party started.

Koke took over the tradition of leading the Ducks out of the Autzen Tunnel in 1999 — a role he assumed when former athletic administrator Jim Bartko needed someone to replace former Oregon football player Gary Zimmerman, who drove the Harley during the first two years of the tradition.

In his 23 years on the bike, Koke missed only two games before handing off the keys to a new generation. He was ready, Melissa Koke said, to sit in the stands with his family and “be a regular fan.” Should the Ducks make the national championship game in Miami, she and her siblings are thinking they’ll try to go. “He would have wanted that,” she said.

His final ride came during Oregon’s home opener against Brigham Young University in 2022, when Koke hopped on the bike, turned the key and revved up the Willamette Valley one last time.

“It’s been a good ride,” he told the Daily Emerald afterward.

—Sarah Lorge Butler contributed reporting.