Canzano: Bruce Barnum fired by Portland State
Firing took place on the airport tarmac.
The aircraft carrying Portland State’s football team home from its final road trip of the season was still unloading on Saturday night when Athletic Director Matt Billings summoned Bruce Barnum to the edge of the tarmac.
The AD didn’t go to the airport to greet the team.
He went to fire its coach.
Maybe you heard the news and thought, “It’s about time” or “Long overdue.” Barnum’s team lost, 24-13, to Northern Colorado on Saturday. It finished the season with a 1-11 record. The last few years have been a slog. But the job is an underwater torture chamber, and Houdini couldn’t have worked his way out of it.
Anyone who follows PSU athletics knows that the football program has been put in an impossible position by an unserious university. The scholarships are 50 percent funded. There’s no external fundraising, which means no revenue sharing or NIL collective. The team doesn’t even have a home football stadium.
The Vikings played four consecutive “payday” games to begin this season. They showed up, went 0-4, got their teeth kicked in by a collective score of 184-23, and lost more than a half-dozen players to season-ending injuries.
I suppose I could tell you about Barnum’s coaching highlights right about here. Or maybe I could outline the lowlights. I’ll do both soon enough, but first I’d like to tell you a little story.
Last summer, I found Barnum sitting in the cab of his pick-up truck in the parking lot at LaSalle High School in Milwaukie. It was 6:45 a.m. Barnum was there along with 25 of his players to volunteer at Camp Exceptional, a summer camp for special-needs and typical kids. It’s an annual event my family runs. Barnum’s team has volunteered to work at the camp for the last 10 years.
It’s not mandatory. The players raise their hands. Barnum and his assistants show up, too. They drag themselves out of bed, carpool to the suburbs, and bring some enthusiasm and joy to the campers.
I asked Barnum, “Why do you guys do it?”
He didn’t say a word at first
He just pointed.
Across the way, one of his players, a linebacker named Keegan Stancato, was down on a knee, tying the shoelaces of a young camper. Beyond that, a defensive lineman named Tupulea “Bam” Afalava was leading some kids through warm-ups.
“Those kids,” Barnum eventually said, “need us.”
I understand that a college football coach’s job is to win games. But I’ve often wondered if anyone noticed how many victories Barnum had away from the football field. I lost count over the years.
One season, the travel budget required PSU to bus to a September road game. There was no money for an airplane. Barnum didn’t complain. He announced, “We’re barnstorming.” On the first road trip, he surprised the team by instructing the bus driver to pull off the freeway at the Pendleton Round-Up.
He texted me a photo of 80 of his players sitting in the rodeo grandstand.
“Life is a journey,” he wrote.
His tenure at PSU started in 2015 with a 9-3 season and a trip to the FCS playoffs. The Vikings upset Mike Leach and Washington State in Pullman that season. It was a magnificent victory. They also beat North Texas, 66-7, that same season. The 59-point margin of victory in that game remains the largest in NCAA history for an FCS school over an FBS school.
His third season?
0-11.
His overall record?
39-75.
I saw the firing coming weeks ago. PSU’s AD didn’t return messages or calls. The university president, Ann Cudd, practically hung up on me when I offered her the chance to give Barnum a vote of confidence two weeks ago.
“I gotta run,” she said. “Tight schedule.”
PSU says it will pay Barnum out for the final year of his contract. I wondered for a couple of years what kept Barnum from throwing in the keys to save his sanity. Which is only to say that no coach in his right mind is going to want the job without the promise of more support from PSU’s administration.
Billings — the AD — is in over his head. He’s miscast as an AD and woefully inadequate as a fundraiser. The dirty little secret is that Billings is being asked by his president to trim nearly $3 million from the athletic department budget over the next two fiscal years. He needs to cut $1 million by next July, per a source in the president’s office.
I’ll bet PSU leaves that tidbit out of the job posting.
The deck is stacked against the hire. But on the bright side, Portland State’s next coach inherits a 2026 schedule that is a tiny bit softer than this season. There are only three “payday” games — not four — at San Diego State, vs. North Dakota, and at the Oregon Ducks.
None of this is Barnum’s problem anymore. He went free on Saturday night. I’ll bet he goes fishing. The football program will eventually get new leadership. A “national search” for the next coach will be launched, per PSU’s announcement.
It’s a tough gig. It might be the most difficult college football job in America. Bruce Barnum got fired. I hope whoever gets the job next has a big heart. Barnum sure did. That’s the real divot left on the tarmac on Saturday night.
What a shame for a once proud program. Using the kids as fodder without funding them properly just to make $$s for other programs is criminal. It seems they have ostriches for the president and AD at PSU.
I still think there was a missed opportunity a few years ago when Lincoln HS was rebuilt. They could have partnered with PPS to build a suitable stadium for PSU's home games. Could have held high school championship games there as well. Sadly, it's probably time that PSU drop the football program if they can't properly support it.