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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

John Blanchette: Black magic man


Black-clad Jerry Glanville and his black-clad Portland State Vikings leave the field after a Sept. 8 loss to UC Davis. Associated Press
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review

Portland State has splashed even more black on its football uniforms this year and you’d have to think that their new coach, Jerry Glanville, is the inspiration. And you’d be right. But also wrong.

“That wasn’t me,” Glanville insisted. “Now, I designed some uniforms, but then Nike came in with a design and I let the players vote – my uniform or Nike’s. My uniform did not get one vote.

“You should have seen mine – I had some green in there, a little pizzazz. My helmet had the Minnesota Viking horn on it and I thought, ‘This is kick butt.’ I thought the kids would go wild, but they couldn’t have cared less.”

And there you have just one example of the conflict – in message, values, generations, you name it – inherent in the importing of Glanville, once the NFL’s notorious Man in Black, to coach up 20-year-olds in the little old Big Sky Conference.

Glanville brings the Vikings to Cheney on Saturday night to play Eastern Washington – and if you’re thinking about getting in free by picking up the tickets he always leaves for Elvis at Will Call, forget it. He doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore – and, in fact, only did it once. But it made for a good story. Glanville always does – and in each of the Vikings’ six road games this year as well as back home in Portland, he’ll be the hook and the football team, well, not so much.

And that’s OK, to a point. Portland State suffers from a different kind of attention deficit, trying to carve out a niche in a state split down the middle between the Ducks and Beavers, and in a city that very much fancies itself big league in all respects.

So the Vikings went out and got themselves a big-league guy, or at least guy who used to be.

That was back in the 1980s and ‘90s, when he did eight years as an NFL head coach in Houston and Atlanta, and made himself famous for his all-black wardrobe (“There’s nothing in my closet by attitude”) and various dustups with rival coaches, to say nothing of his employers and a few reporters. When he finally wore out his welcome, he moved easily to television, where his glibness was a natural fit on studio shows on three different channels. There’s also been a bunch of race car driving. But then a couple of years ago, Hawaii coach June Jones – who worked for and then succeeded Glanville in Atlanta – lured him to the islands to be defensive coordinator, and this led to that.

Jones was a record-setting quarterback at Portland State. His coach there, Mouse Davis, had also come to help at Hawaii. They pressed Glanville, who said he wasn’t interested, to listen to the PSU folks when the job came open.

“I think they were afraid (the school) might kill football,” Glanville said.

That seems a little extreme – the Vikings weren’t exactly hopeless under Tim Walsh, who won 90 games the previous 14 years. But there have been years when attendance – in the Sky’s biggest market – has been half of what they draw in Bozeman, and there’s been some fiscal hand-to-mouth. Last year, the Vikings played three Division I-A opponents for the paycheck.

So he’s been a B-12 shot in that regard – the Vikings have sold 4,000 season tickets, about four times their recent norm, and sold out 24 suites at PGE Park. His name has opened doors to new corporate sponsors and given the indifferent Portlander a reason to attach himself to the program.

That will last as long as Glanville’s act doesn’t get old, which it’s likely to if the Vikings don’t win – and they’re 1-3 at the moment. Which means finding better players. He acknowledges he sometimes has to remind himself to “coach the football team” and not just be a ringmaster.

It’s an issue when bringing in an aging legend. You can tread on his name to sell a ticket, but maybe not to sell a recruit.

“I don’t think the players really care what I’ve done,” he said candidly, “and a lot of them at this age don’t remember me coaching anywhere. That was a big shock to me when I visited Iraq. There was a young soldier, 18 or 19, who wanted to get his picture taken with me. He was from Round Rock, Texas, and he said, ‘You’re my grandmother’s favorite coach.’ That puts you back where you belong.”

And you have to wonder if he, at 66, he’s both still driven enough but also mellow enough for the college game – especially this level. In the button-down NFL, he couldn’t keep the peace with Chuck Noll and Sam Wyche. Can we expect him to play nice with Paul Wulff? He was often brutally hard on players – the injured had their manhood challenged, others were intimidated and demeaned. Is that still the case, or is he more inclined to motivate with a funny story?

Like the Elvis business.

“We were playing the Patriots in Memphis and the halftime was dedicated to Elvis,” he explained. “It was June who said it would be a fun thing to leave two tickets for him. Now I can’t pick up a paper where it doesn’t say I leave them at every ballgame. It has taken on a life of its own.”

But so has his new role at Portland State. For the time being, anyway.