PSU Viking Game Attendance: PSU's "College Bowl" versus "flunk out" Image

[BroadwayVik]

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With many large political bumps in the road, Portland State developed steadily until the 1970s when the legislature voted to cut their funding severely. Perhaps worried by their College Bowl triumph, the majority of state politicians likely must have felt that drastic measures were necessary to in order to derail Portland State's development. This was likely done, protectively, for the "benefit" of Oregon and Oregon State which, at that time, were still playing at developing with a "Toilet Bowl" mentality. The deluded legislators most likely must have felt that they had to cut Portland State off in order to "save" the two in the southern Willamette valley. The huge cuts forced PSU on to life-support.

This is the time when Oregon's image manipulators did all they could to distort PSU's image of College Bowl Five-time Retired Champions into that of Oregon and Oregon State's "flunk out" school. They couldn't stand the fact that PSU had done so well whereas Oregon and Oregon State had not.

Overt hatred toward Portland State became manifest during Natale Sicuro's tenure. One TV station plotted and carried out "ambush" interviews, likely because Sicuro was bent on making PSU's image great again. They succeeded in getting Sicuro to leave amid other political firestorms.

Wayne Faligowski tried to destroy PSU's College Bowl image through running a quiz bowl show on the station with which he was affiliated in which PSU students competed and did not perform well, and against rather embarrassing competition. No preparation, no warning, no Ben Padrow.

The iconoclasts kept up their work. Why? Why did they want to destroy PSU's College Bowl image?

They couldn't mistreat Judith Ramaley because of "political correctness," though (Sicuro's successor). She established the structuring of relational ties locally. Daniel Bernstine deepened these ties, especially with Tri-Met and now Wim Wiewell is maintaining and strengthening these ties while innovating growth strategies.
Oregon has meanwhile horned in on the Portland market and perhaps OSU is next to follow.

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So, why aren't people in Portland now excited to come to a college football game? If a normal situation were present, I don't believe it would be difficult to get, say, 50.000 to a game in a city like Portland, Oregon, but I think image politics are at play that affect people attending. I think it would be good to compile our reasons here and then address them after a sufficient number are collected.

 

[BroadwayVik]

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Portland State shares the same general landscape with Reed College and Lewis & Clark College. A useful parallel may be to see San Francisco State in its relationship with Stanford and Berkeley. They're all pretty much cut from the same thread, but maybe some just can't afford the tuition at the more well-known institutions. Tony Wolk recently characterized Portland State as a "working class" university.

By contrast, Oregon shares its landscape with Lane Community College and Northwest Christian College. They tend to artifically elevate the former while largely opposing the latter. Oregon State shares its landscape with Linn-Benton Community College.

The southern Willamette Valley institutions are giant fish in their little ponds, whereas Portland State is a large fish in a much, much greater pond. The southern Valley schools may feel bigger to themselves as nearly the only game in town, and are beneficiary members in a conference boasting much greater institutions. They live isolated lives but are comfortable because of their affiliations.

Some politicians and media are trying to foist an image upon Portland State as diseased, malnourished, lacking in both IQ and EQ, from disadvantaged backgrounds.

If this is the image that "sticks," in what, then, is there to take pride? These appear to be the politics of shaming imagery, to influence prevention of feelings of pride in and for the institution. Sources of pride unquestioned needs to be delineated and expounded. Suggestions of shame or illness need to be brought into the light (exposed), refuted and, then, ultimately dispelled so they are unable to "stick" anymore.

If PSU returns to its roots, its College Bowl image and is successful in sloughing off the polltically imposed (and false) "flunk out" school image, this will become a strong point of pride with the shaming influence identified for what it is: A lie told by scheming (and deluded) Oregon politicians and politically-motivated media.

 

[BroadwayVik]

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PRIDE of the institution is what the fans must feel to desire to attend in mass numbers, IMO. They need to feel confidence in the institution's intellectual prowess. It becomes a major social event sponsored and upheld by the institution's reputation.
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Past Tense Oregon: Portland State's College Bowl victory 50 years ago put school on map
John Killen

At the time, they were just a bunch nerdy-looking guys from a no-name college in a rainy lumber town on the left coast.

Why would anyone think that a school that had started out as two-year extension center would rise up and shock the quiz-show world in March of 1965?

After all, Vanport Extension Center had a rough infancy. Created to help GIs returning from World War II get started in college, it first had to escape the Vanport Flood of 1948 before moving three times and finally ending up in some old buildings along the South Park Blocks in downtown.

It wasn't until 1955 that it became four-year Portland State College.

But just 10 years later, by early March of 1965, PSC (now Portland State University) had left its mark. Starting in January of that year, it made an undefeated run through the New York-based G.E. College Bowl quiz game - one of the nation's most popular television shows at the time -by torching every one of its opponents and winning in record fashion.

The climax came on Sunday, March 8, when the team defeated Birmingham Southern 415-60 "in what NBC producers said was the 'most outstanding team performance' in College Bowl history," according to the story on Page One of The Oregonian the next morning.

The team's exploits were front-page news for days and its members were treated like celebrities when they flew home. It won $13,200 in scholarship money for Portland State, but its win also appears to have resonated where it counted for much more - in the state legislature.

Afterward, the legislature invited the team to Salem and Westwood addressed both the Senate and House. The school's course had definitely shifted. Lawmakers began sending more money its way and by 1969, it had a program and achieved university status. Over the next few decades, it added programs, professors and prestige.

Today, it occupies blocks and blocks of the south end of downtown Portland and has a full array of respected programs.

It enrolls 28,214 students compared to 28,886 at Oregon State and 24,181 at Oregon.

"I really think it did," said Jim Westwood, the captain of the team, when asked if the victory was a seminal event in the school's history and in the way it was perceived.

Westwood, a 1962 graduate of Oregon City High School who is now a senior counsel at Stoel Rives, a major Portland law firm, said the win didn't prove that everyone at PSC was smarter than students at other schools, but it had a huge impact on raising the school's visibility and respectability.

"Here was this little-sister school, a commuter college with five or six thousand students, and all of a sudden, we do this."

"It was kind of like when the Trail Blazers won the championship," he said in that the PSC team pretty much came from nowhere.

Westwood, who now lives in Northeast Portland, said he was a typical PSC student.

Working part-time to put himself through school, he had found out about the College Bowl team from an ad in the student paper, the Vanguard, in the spring of 1964. He said it sounded like fun.

Westwood said about 50 people responded to the ad and the coach, speech professor Ben Padrow, began to hold tryouts. Westwood said he made the first cut and the second and pretty soon, he said, the team was down to eight, mostly local kids.

Of the eventual "starting four," Westwood was from Oregon City, Larry Smith was from Gresham, Mike Smith from Salem and Robin Freeman from Portland. The alternates variously included Doug Hawley, Marv Foust, Al Kotz, Jim Cronin and Jim Watts.

Westwood said Padrow was a marvelous coach. He worked the team hard and they "practiced and practiced."

In the end, he said, "it wasn't so much that we were smarter, but we were faster" and confident. Those qualities proved to be crucial when the team made five trips to New York in six weeks to compete.

"We left Portland every Friday morning and flew back every Sunday evening," he said. Their flights usually landed about 2:30 a.m. Monday. "And I had to be at my 9 a.m. class on Monday."

Early in the tournament, he said, PSC was seen as sort of "fodder" for some of the other schools.

"It was like, 'Portland State? So what? Who's that?' "

But the Vikings kept winning. Each show was a half-hour long and was broadcast live on NBC from Rockefeller Center with a rapid-fire format under host Robert Earl. In its bracket, PSU defeated University of San Francisco, Park College, Kent State and Coe College.

Westwood says the only time the team trailed was briefly against Coe. The cumulative score for the five matches? PSC 1,765, opponents 450.

He said that the trips were fun, if exhausting. After flying to New York on Friday, the team had Saturdays to rest and sight-see and then it buckled down early each Sunday to practice for the contest.

Westwood said perhaps the most remarkable performance was by Mike Smith. Smith had cystic fibrosis and was ill and tired much of the time, but wouldn't let the disease stop him from competing.

Westwood said that on one of the trips, he and Smith decided to take in the Museum of Natural History on Saturday. When they got there, Smith began to feel ill and returned to their hotel by cab. When Westwood got back, he found that Padrow had called a doctor, who said Smith was much too ill to compete the next day.

"Mike said, 'Like hell, I won't,'" and was ready to on Sunday, helping the team to another win.

He said he and Smith remained close afterward, and spent time being typical college kids, studying when necessary and hanging out at local taverns together.

But despite his determination, Smith's health began to fail. The cystic fibrosis finally got the best of him in 1968. Smith Memorial Union on the PSU campus is named in his honor.

Padrow, the coach, died in 1986. Larry Smith died in Newport in 1999 and Freeman died in London in 2004, leaving Westwood as the only surviving member of the "starting four." Hawley said that he, Foust and Kotz now all live in Lake Oswego. Westwood said Watt is still alive and he was pretty sure he'd have heard of something had happened to Cronin.

These days, it's a bit hard to understand just how big a deal it was at the time. The teams that typically won the quiz show before and after PSC were usually from name, nationally known schools. Over the years, College Bowl winners have included MIT, Harvard, Michigan and Stanford.

But the significance wasn't lost on those who were around at the time. After all, Portland State was basically a commuter school struggling to find its place in Oregon, let alone nationally.

Among them was Clarence Hein, the editor of the school paper, The Vanguard, at the time.

"It's still a defining moment in Portland State's history," Hein said when the 40th anniversary of the event was celebrated in 2005. "We proved that we could win on a nationally televised show that had great credibility. It gave everyone a terrific sense of pride and put Portland State College on the national map."

Looking back, Woodward said the victory wasn't expected - nor was it surprising, at least to the team members.

He said Padrow was so good at understanding the show's format and pushed them to practice so much that "we were really confident."

But for a brief scare against Coe College, "we were never really in any danger of losing."

-- John Killen

 

[Alan1]

Nice piece Broadway!

 

[BroadwayVik]

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Thank you.

Now, I think it would be good to compile additional reasons here and then address them after a sufficient number are collected.

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[BroadwayVik]

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All stakeholders need to feel pride in their university. They don't have to manufacture it within themselves. They feel it resonate.

That pride needs to be reflected in every aspect of the football game presentation. Especially for a university football game, the announcer's voice, most importantly, needs to reflect an ascribed level of pride the university has for and in itself, mindful of its goals for the future, where the university seeks to be. The voice needs to be one of greatness and of crowd pleasing tenor in anticipation of these goals being realized.

The decorum of the university event needs to be held in the highest honor. The stakeholders need to have no barriers to or dissonance in believing in that greatness ascribed. The university needs to be touting its dimensions of unquestioned greatness through the use of symbolism, taking advantage of available avenues of opportunities to communicate these openly.

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[CaseyOrourke]

The way I'm seeing it, is that we can't force a complete turnaround in one year. First, we need to prove last season was not a fluke. Coach Barnum needs to show beyond a reasonable doubt that we have the makings of a successful program that can excite people by winning.
Thankfully, as far as I can see, AD Rountree is just as committed to a successful athletics program too. If we can start showing success on the field, the butts will start to show up in the seats for every sporting event.

 

[BroadwayVik]

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So, winning will be pride sufficient?

As long as Barney Ball is indeed revolutionary and not something temporary.

Athletic success drove image upgrades and improvements to academics at Oregon. Donors desire an eROI first and then tend to donate to academic programs is true. Mike Bellotti even donated $25,000 of his salary to the library.

Winning discredits politically-motivated and falsely-ascribed bases of shame (low self-esteem). Barnum has hired winners and has recruited winners. I believe their success will continue.
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