Interesting fact about Portland State football

[JALMOND]

In checking the new Phil Steele FCS edition, and confirming it on the PSU website, going back to the 2005 season the only time Portland State has played an FCS non conference opponent other than UC-Davis was McNeese State in 2007.

I think Chisholm (the AD) needs to be aware of this. All the more reason why we should have scheduled FCS for our first home game in the new stadium instead of getting an NAIA team.

Based on this, I doubt they even tried.

[LDopaPDX]

Does Portland State pay a rent to use the stadium? Whether they do or not, I'm pretty much positive they don't get concession money or parking. Eastern had a nice venue at Albi in Spokane that they quit using despite drawing better there than in Cheney simply because it wasn't penciling out.

[JALMOND]

Does Portland State pay a rent to use the stadium? Whether they do or not, I'm pretty much positive they don't get concession money or parking. Eastern had a nice venue at Albi in Spokane that they quit using despite drawing better there than in Cheney simply because it wasn't penciling out.

EWU has a stadium on campus, PSU does not. The city does give the Vikings quite a reduced rate on rent (and this year, the Vikings will benefit greatly from the improvements the city made to facilitate the Timbers). The Timbers are also quite easy to work with in terms of scheduling, from what I hear. I understand what you're saying, though. When we first entered the Big Sky and resurrected our basketball program, we looked at the feasibility of using the Rose Garden and/or Memorial Coliseum. In the long run, it was losing money, even the break the city gave us to use MC.

My point in this is that, because of the lack of scheduling FCS, the casual Portland football fan has no idea about the level of competition the Vikings play in. They may know about the Big Sky, they may know about UC-Davis (as we've played them just about every year), but outside of that, many are clueless. We have what many are saying (around here anyway), one of the state of the art FCS stadiums in the country, yet we won't show it off to any other FCS programs (only those in the Big Sky). We will schedule a money game with TCU as like a homecoming for our Texas athletes, yet we will shy away from a possible home and home with the Texas schools in the Southland or the SWAC. In recent history Western Illinois had a great player from Portland playing for them, yet they were never approached about playing a game in Portland.

[LDopaPDX]

What's so weird is that Portland State used to be a helluva draw, regularly averaging 12,000+ in the old Civic Stadium when they were D-II. I remember that old parking lot of a field; possibly the worst playing surface in the NCAA. It's hard to believe the dump is now such a great place... I went there to watch the Timbers play a month or so ago; it'll be one of the premier FCS venues even though the seating arrangement is so bizarre.

Didn't Portland State bring in Grambling as on out-of-conference opponent a few years back? I remember that being played in front of pretty much a full house based on the capacity at the time... which was probably in the neighborhood of 16,000.

[SuperHornet]

Didn't Portland State bring in Grambling as on out-of-conference opponent a few years back? I remember that being played in front of pretty much a full house based on the capacity at the time... which was probably in the neighborhood of 16,000.

I just looked at the history books. There must have been a change in philosophy right around 2005, because that was the when it seems PDX quit playing OOC FCS schools outside the immediate area. I looked at results from 2000-2004; the Viks played MANY of these games during that period, and won more often than not. I wonder what happened....

2000 -- HOFSTRA W 40-35

2001 -- @ SFA W 16-13
GRAMBLING ST L 29-30
@ SW TX St L 20-23
CS Northridge W 50-43

2002 -- SFA W 31-23
NC A&T W 23-20 OT
SW TX St W 16-0

2003 -- Nicholls St W 44-37

2004 -- McNeese St W 35-14