I believe it’s Nigel Burton, defensive coordinator at Nevada — who is considered a hot property and dynamite recruiter. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s named in the next two or three days.

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Tags: College football, Dwight Jaynes, Nigel Burton, Portland State University

Man, when you’re starting to get blown out of home games in PGE Park, in your third season as the head coach, there are problems.

But I’d also say the even larger problem is that when Oregon and Oregon State are in bye weeks and you’re the only big-school game in the state that day, and all you can draw is a crowd generously called in the 6,000 range, you’re in some trouble.

Glanville made a terrible move last summer when he forced Mouse Davis out of his job as the offensive coordinator because he figured that offense scored so quickly it put his defense in a difficult position. Glanville wanted to establish the run, take time off the clock and not have the poor defense on the field all the time.

That’s after Mouse installed an offense that was one of the best and most efficient in the country.

Now Glanville is stuck with a defense that is still on the field all the time, but now instead of scoring too quickly the offense is punting too quickly. And let’s face it, Glanville is supposed to be a defensive wizard. That’s his coaching strength.

But the sad fact of the matter is the Vikings haven’t stopped anybody since he got there and the problem seems to get worse instead of better.

I just don’t see any progress. In  fact, I see a lot of regression. And it’s becoming very clear, the wrong guy left the program last summer. And it’s a shame.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Jerry Glanville, Mouse Davis, Portland State University

You jump up there and win a couple of conference championships and make two straight trips to the Big Dance, you’re going to get slapped down.

I hate this APR stuff. Nobody ever wants to stand up and say it, but holding athletic departments responsible for academic progress is a joke. Holding coaches responsible for it is even worse. I want the same kind of monitoring for the business and education departments. How many of their students are progressing toward graduation in a timely manner? Let’s fire a professor for that!

The idea that students are being exploited by athletic departments or that the NCAA must make sure ”student-athletes” get degrees is ridiculous. And I suspect it’s just one more thing used to keep the smaller schools from stepping up and challenging the big guys.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — I sent a son off to college once with a baseball scholarship. Whether he got good grades or graduated or flunked out, it wasn’t the responsibility of his coach or athletic department. It was on him. He got the opportunity and what he did with it was up to him.

All these regulations do is lead to extensive use of tutors and aides to help the chosen few in the athletic departments — at the schools that can afford this — get through and be handed a meaningless piece of paper they didn’t earn in the first place.

That a few basketball players at Portland State didn’t chose to continue their education after basketball, or that they didn’t do well in school while playing, well … too bad. Nobody cares how many kids drop out of the library science department along the way. I long ago stopped thinking about college athletics as anything but a completely separate part of a university, barely connected at all to the academic side.

And I’m quite comfortable with that. Sports at the Division I level are a marketing program sponsored by a college designed to bring attention and funds to the schools and help alumni feel good about their college. Until they start recruiting football players out of physical education classes at the colleges rather than high schools thousands of miles away, that’s what I’ll continue to think.

There are a lot of rules about how these programs are run, but most of those rules are broken by the schools that can get away with it.

The athletes are in the middle but most of them are smart enough to prosper, getting either a quality education at a reduced price or a few bucks in a handshake from a booster. Or both. The ones who aren’t smart enough to do that probably shouldn’t have been in college in the first place. Oh well.

It is a fairly nasty business. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. That’s just the reality.

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Tags: academic progress, APR, Dwight Jaynes, Portland State University

Hey, I’ll be the first one to admit, I was conned, too. I sat here all week thinking that Portland State had found a first-round matchup it could handle in the NCAA tournament. Xavier was a team the Viks could play, I said.

Well, it took about five minutes of watching the two teams on the floor together to realize that Portland State was seriously out of its element. The size, the quickness, the defensive skills — it was too much for PSU and it’s ridiculous to expect the Vikings to beat a team of that caliber.

Sure, the close-in three-point line in college basketball always gives an underdog a chance. If you have one of those crazy nights where the ball just goes in all the time, you can beat anybody. It’s a great equalizer. But realistically, even with that line, you can’t expect upsets of that magnitude to happen.

The very idea that these “mid-majors” can compete for very long in the tournament is a little bit silly. No, it’s a lot silly. They might steal a game every once in a while, maybe two. But the only reason these teams are in the tournament is to grab a little piece of the financial pie. Upsets? There are more of them in the regular season than there are in the tournament.

But the NCAA has been selling all this “madness” stuff for so long that people buy in. For every shocking upset there are 40 PSU-Xavier games. It’s all a big lie and I can’t believe I actually swallowed it again.

I’ve written this before and I still believe it: Schools from puny conferences like the Big Sky shouldn’t be in this tournament in the first place. Yeah — get all fired up about being in the “Big Dance.” But for me, why are you in a tournament that you can’t win?

I think the NCAA ought to go back to having Division II and III classifications that are realistic and usable. Why would you ever want your team entering a tournament it can’t possibly compete in? What’s the point? The glory days of Portland State football haven’t come since they’ve moved up to the Big Sky and the I-AA (or whatever they’re calling it these days) level. The glory days came at a lower level, when nearly 20,000 people were jamming the stadium for Division II playoffs. Winning, no matter the level, is what’s fun for players and fans.

I have no problem with schools having big dreams. But let’s all come back down to earth. And if I ever again pick any Big Sky team to win a tournament game, please feel free to spam me all day.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, March Madness, NCAA, Portland State University, Xavier