Vikings’ Barnum FCS Coach of Year

Bruce Barnum never asked the question when he was named Portland State’s interim head coach last offseason, but he felt like everyone began to debate how many wins it would take for him to earn the full-time job.

“I never had a number,” Barnum said. “But I heard a lot of, ‘If you won four, you’re doing a heck of a job,’ (and) ‘If you win five football games with that schedule … you’ll be Coach of the Year in the Big Sky.’ ”

By that logic, what would an expectation-shattering nine victories get?

The STATS Football Championship Subdivision Coach of the Year award.

It took less than half of the 2015 season for Barnum — a Vancouver resident and Columbia River High School graduate — to shake that pesky interim tag from his title, overseeing such an instantaneous program-turning job at Portland State that in mid-October the university rewarded him with a five-year extension. Two months later, that decision looks like a pretty good investment, as Barnum won a national media vote Monday for pulling off the FCS’ most impressive coaching effort this season.

He will be honored at STATS’ national awards banquet and presentation in Frisco, Texas, on Jan. 8 — the night before the FCS national championship game.

Barnum engineered quite the turnaround in the Pacific Northwest. The Vikings’ offensive coordinator when they finished a mere 3-9 last year, the team improved to 9-2 in the 2015 regular season, capped by a No. 5 national ranking and its second FCS playoff berth — its first since 2000.

Not surprisingly, Barnum also brought home Big Sky coach of the year honors.

“It’s been fun to watch it,” Barnum said. “Even after the losses — we lost two games this year — and nothing changed. It wasn’t a locker room full of names flying, ‘Your fault,’ fingers pointing … it was, ‘Hey, we fixing it? Where we going?’ And the next game, they responded.”

In the end, the Vikings wound up 9-3 after losing to Northern Iowa in a second-round playoff game last Saturday, but that hardly took the polish off the season.

A national panel of 150 sports information and media relations directors, broadcasters, writers and other dignitaries voted for the STATS FCS Coach of the Year, selecting a top five among 15 finalists.