Guest Post from our outspoken Student Commentator

Here is another guest blog post from our student contributor Marnix Brinkhoff.

My post this week is in response to the disappointing news that Coach Bone has left the Portland State Athletic Department to become a Cougar.

Dear Coach Bone,

It is with great sadness that I write to you to wish you the best of luck at Washington State University.

As a student and fan I will certainly miss your presence on the PSU campus. You were always willing to reciprocate a friendly greeting in passing on campus and you had an amazing style and approach to the game of basketball. It’s unfortunate you made the decision to leave 'Viking Nation' and I hope you have completely thought through your decision, because there are a couple points I would like to mention to you that I thought would have been enough to keep you around.

1) Potential: I understand the stigma and prowess of the Pac10 was enticing, but Viking Nation (with you at the helm) had the potential to be the next Gonzaga or even Memphis.

2) Pullman Sucks: I know you’ve been to Pullman because you have coached in the Northwest your entire career so you must realize what an awful place it is. You will never be able to recruit a Seattle-area product and will be forced to resort with the farmers of Spokane and the other surrounding rural areas.

3) Long-Term: No offense, but I hope you aren’t planning on staying at WSU for long. I hope your plan is to win at that program and step up to a better program, because not even your excellent coaching will be able to sustain a competitive program in the beleaguered WSU Athletic Department.

Again, I wish you all the best even though I think you are making a huge mistake by jumping ship just as you had a consistent program established that had the potential to become the next mid-major powerhouse. I thought you had the potential to be the next Mark Few, but you threw that all away for some larger digits in the paycheck and for that I’m disappointed.

Guest Commentary from a Portland State student and fan

Here is another guest blog post from our student contributor Marnix Brinkhoff. In between sessions of working on his jump shot and cheering on the Dutch team at the World Baseball Classic, Brinkhoff gives you his take on the upcoming spring football schedule.

As Spring Football practice begins for the football team, goviks.com is busy wasting our time with beautifully slanted articles about how the upcoming football season will be miraculously different than the last two years.

The article entitled, “Sixteen Returning Starters, Experienced Group Return for 2009 Football Season” fails to understand that those returnee’s are a combined 7-15 (win-loss record) over the past two seasons.

By all means return the entire squad from last year, but the fact remains, we sucked last year!

Even though the athletic department’s propaganda website spins a rosy picture on the upcoming season, I’m hear to explain that it will be just another failing season in the “Almighty” Glanville’s tenure.

The following are points from the article that are expected to be boosts for the upcoming season but they are really just business as usual. That business of late has been losing…

Drew Hubel and Tygue Howland return: YES!!

No one would want to miss out on the drama of who is going to start from week to week. The fact that both of these quarterback’s return doesn’t mean a damn thing, because Glanville and his staff are just going to be as wishy-washy as John Kerry on who there man is going to be.

My take is to just pick one, stick with him, and allow them to get better without fear that next week they are going to be benched!!

McClintock Returns: Wahoo!! We don’t run the ball anyways. Oh by the way, this has been bothersome ever since last year…

Mr. Davis, I realize you are considered the offensive guru, BUT when you play one of the worst run defenses in the NCAA (Washington State last year) maybe just maybe you should try to run the F%$@ing ball!!

Super Mario (D’Ambrosio) is out: And you expect to improve on a season where he was a rockstar?

3 Returning Lineman: For a team that allowed 41 sacks for a yardage loss of 243 yards (Second worse in the Big Sky) this shows promise; because the only thing to do is get better.

The Defense: Expect more basketball scores, because we lost Shantz, McCrae and Jones.

Say whatever you want about the competition in Spring Football, the fact will remain that we will have an inexperienced defense taking the field next season, which means only one thing—lots of scoring…for the other team.

But all is not lost in the Glanville camp.

For those of you worried about Special Teams there is ample competition at the kicker/punter position, which is a good thing since we will probably be punting the ball quite a bit.

Vikings grab No. 2 seed in conference tourney and something special for the second week in a row...

After four straight wins to close the regular season, the men's basketball team earned a first round bye in the Big Sky Tournament and will not open the tournament until the semifinals next Tuesday night.

If the chalk holds out, and its a safe assumption, you can bet that PSU will likely take on Montana in that semifinal game. My feelings about the squad not playing until nine days from now are mixed.

Another home game and you obviously have the chance to keep improving and continue perfecting the offensive scheme of working inside-out. But of course there is always the possibility that the Vikings could lose that game and given the fact that they got beat by Montana State (who would have been their opponent) in Bozeman earlier in the year, it might be a good thing.

Anyhow, we will definitely have a more thorough breakdown of the Big Sky Tournament later this week. As for now, on to other things...

Last week our guest commentator, a Portland State student and fan, made known his feelings about the fans that made their presence known in front of the ESPN cameras... This week he is ranting about another itch: the possible renovation of the Stott Center.

Feelings around campus are mixed. As any observer could tell you, the student section is hardly full and rarely boisterous. Why should we quadruple the seating capacity of the gym when it does not sellout currently?

Well our man Marnix has a solid take on it.

There are many who feel that the Stott Center Renovation is a pointless and wasteful project that Portland State shouldn’t waste there time with. To those “nay sayers” I would like you to think about the following…

As the men’s team wraps up their 2008-2009 season with a 12-1 home record and the women’s team going 13-2, I don’t see any reason why the athletes that represent the PSU colors on the hard-court don't deserve to play in a legitimate gymnasium.

If money is the issue maybe we should take some money from “high-profile” but under-performing coaches (Glanville) or programs (football).

If your complaint is that Portland State should focus on academics, I would propose the notion that investing and building a national athletics program is the road to such an idea. Think about it, outside of the Ivy League schools, all the national powerhouses in either football or basketball are considered to have highly reputable academic institutions.

For example, USC with Football, Duke or North Carolina with Basketball, or Texas that dominates in just about every athletic event are all highly regarded academically in addition to being powerhouses in sports.

Whether or not they are good at academics because they are good at sports is not a concrete correlation, but the fact that its works more times than not is a compelling idea.

With that said, I guess I look forward to coming back to campus in a couple of years and seeing the new beautiful stadium the athletic department is working so diligently to build.

Then again, actually filling the new, larger stadium will be a different story (see my posting from Tuesday, Feb. 24).

A decent effort from Marnix in his second such posting of the year... We'll leave you today with a pretty solid youtube video of Northern Idaho Junior College point guard Melvin Jones hitting an impressive shot to help his current squad defeat CSI, which I believe stands for College of Southern Idaho and not something else.

Who is Melvin Jones? Possibly the man who will replace Jeremiah Dominguez as the Vikings starting point guard next season.

Guest Commentary from a Portland State student and fan

Disclaimer: While we here at the Vanguard pride ourselves in maintaining our journalistic integrity and not having a rooting interest it is often difficult to not get attached to the athletes, teams and coaches that we cover. With that said, our ethical responsibility is to report the truth regardless of what light it depicts our university in.

Luckily enough, we have a guest commentator to give us the PSU Fans' perspective.

His name is Marnix Brinkhoff and he is a senior majoring in Business Accounting. Check out the picture for a glimpse at what this Dutchman looks like...

Marnix will be contributing to the sports blog on a semi-regular basis. Check out his first blog entry as he digs on the Vikings fans that manage to make all the PSU games, as long as they are on national television.

Viking Fans,

With the stars out (well, at least Greg Oden) and the bright lights of ESPN shining on the Stott Center in Saturday’s men’s basketball match up against Boise State, the Portland State student’s showed up to electrify the gymnasium.

Similar to Jeremiah Dominguez’s game, the students of PSU came out of a near year-long hiatus to once again show up in force for an ESPN televised game. The last game with so much support was the Big Sky Championship last March, the last time that the Vikings played on ESPN.

As a devoted fan to the basketball program, I realize how much better basketball at the Stott Center can be with the energy of so many rowdy students.

However, the fact that student’s only show up for a glimpse at the big stage of ESPN is disturbing.

With competitive basketball in the Park Blocks this year, I anticipated some large crowds to cheer on the defending Big Sky Champions, but with most athletic events, I was sorely disappointed in the student turnout this season.

My writing, I hope, will not deter students from attending more games or cheering vigorously but instead will ignite a spark for ALL students to come out to ALL games.

Think about the impact the sold-out crowd had on the game (as the team led by 23 at halftime) and think about what the season would look like right now if those students had been there all year.

With the last home game this Wednesday, my hope is to see just as many vibrant PSU fans this

week as there was for the game last weekend, even without the stigma of ESPN coverage.

Go Vikings!