Bruce Barnum goes under the knife as Portland State Vikings gear up for important 2024

With a new knee and heightened expectations, Barnum and the PSU vikings opened up spring ball on Tuesday.

PORTLAND — Bruce Barnum can’t count the number of times he’s sent a player to surgery. 

What the Portland State football coach can tell you, though, is the last time he went under the knife before getting his right knee replaced earlier this year. 

“First time I’ve been cut on since ’85,” Barnum said Tuesday after the Vikings’ first day of spring practice. “I see these guys do it all the time. Yet I’m sitting there, people are asking me what’s wrong, and, well, I was nervous.” 

The surgery was years in the making for the soon-to-be 60-year-old. The knee’s been busted since his playing days at Eastern Washington, and the coach said the last two years have become increasingly difficult to manage. The Vikings aren’t exactly flying private across the Big Sky, and those long bus trips to play games in frigid climates finally took their toll.

“I went in and they took pictures, they pulled them up and said, ‘Here’s your left knee. Great. Everything that’s supposed to be there. Now, here’s your right knee.’ And the doctor chuckles, like, ‘You’ve really been walking around on this thing?’

“So she put a new one in there. Chrome-alloy-titanium. Shit, I could be a golf club.” 

refibri.com

Tuesday’s practice was Barnum’s first day moving around without a cane since the surgery, and he said his doctor told him to go easy on it until at least August — right at the start of fall camp. He timed it that way, he said, because this is admittedly a big season for him.

There’s been a lot of positive talk around the Park Blocks over the last few years. The Vikings have assembled consecutive top-25 FCS recruiting classes, they’ve shown an ability to take advantage of the transfer portal and have had a steady run of stability at the quarterback position. They also haven’t made the playoffs since Barnum’s first year in 2015, and have largely played .500 football in conference play since the pandemic.

But with quarterback Dante Chachere returning for his senior year and dynamic weapons like running back Quincy Craig and former Nebraska WR Darien Chase returning to health, there is good reason to believe the Vikings could have one of the top offenses in the Big Sky — the group was already the conference’s No. 2 scoring offense in 2023. Their No. 8 defense, however, needs to improve for the Vikings to withstand a 12-game schedule that features seven opponents who finished the 2023 season ranked in the top 25 of the FCS.

“If we win seven of them, we go to the playoffs. I want to go to the playoffs. I think if we stay off scooters we will,” Barnum said. “We have a senior quarterback with some talent behind him. Offensively we should be able to keep up with people. But we got to make people punt.”

Which takes us back to the knee.

See, for the first few weeks after surgery, Barnum said he wanted to grit his way through the recovery/rehab process without taking any of his prescribed painkillers. And, well, “honestly, you can’t do what they want you to do without taking something. I don’t care how tough you are. You can’t do it. You just hear about people getting hooked on that stuff all the time, and I didn’t want to get hooked.” Barnum said he stopped needing them about three weeks ago, and he was over the moon about being at work on Tuesday, under sunny skies, instead of stuck at home. That being said, that initial recovery period wasn’t an entirely unproductive time for the coach.

“Wait until you see the defense this year,” he laughed. “You’re going to see some shit you’ve never seen before.”

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor

Editor’s note: Welcome to Toll-Free Month here on The I-5 Corridor. One of my biggest regrets when launching this Substack nearly three years ago was not building up a base of free subscribers to sample my work before flipping the switch over to the paywall. Since April has traditionally been a slower month with adding subscriptions, I’ve decided to test the waters by removing the paywall for this month only.

The goal? I’d like to allow some of the longtime lurkers the opportunity to sample the work here at The I-5 Corridor before football season ratchets up in the fall. So take a look around, read some stories and please share any you may find enjoyable. And hey, if the end of the month comes around and you’ve enjoyed our work, please consider subscribing for the rest of the year. It’s the only way we’ll be able to keep telling the stories of The I-5 Corridor.

Not ready to subscribe? We take tips.