Balancing an Offense : Portland State Still Winning After Scrapping Its Aerial Circus

Neil Lomax may work in St. Louis, but he lives in this city. You could look it up.

No, not in the phone book, or any other directory for that matter. The quarterback of the Cardinals lives in Missouri during the season. But the place he may never vacate is in the Portland State football record book.

His picture is right there on Page 55 of the media guide--the one that leads the record section. Compare it to the author’s photo appearing on the cover of his autobiography.

Maybe Lomax didn’t write the Portland State record book in literal terms, but he certainly made it more interesting to leaf through.

Bill Walton and the Trailblazers put Portland on the national sports map in 1978 by winning the NBA championship.

Lomax and a man named Mouse kept the city visible.

Mouse Davis was coach at Portland State for six seasons, and Lomax was his starting quarterback for 3 1/2. When both left after the 1980 season, Davis had gained a national reputation as the father of a wing-it-and-fling-it offense called the run-and-shoot and Lomax had the NCAA career passing record with 13,220 yards.

Portland hasn’t been the same since.

For years after Lomax left, Viking fans cared as much about how the team won as they did if it won. The pass was a gas. The run was no fun.

Pity poor Don Read, the coach who replaced Davis. He wanted his teams to run the veer. Some fans wanted him to veer--deep into the Pacific.

“The kids and everyone else was sold on the run-and-shoot,” said Dave Stromswold, the only Portland assistant remaining from Davis’ staff. “There were a lot of mixed feelings about running the ball. It was a mess for a few years.”

Lately, however, just about everyone who follows Portland State football has been sold on a new trend: winning.

The Vikings are 8-1-1, have won six in a row, and are ranked No. 3 in Division II going into today’s game against Cal State Northridge. Why, they’ve even found another quarterback to swoon over.

His name is Chris Crawford and about all he has in common with Lomax is that they both hail from a small Portland suburb.

Crawford is 5-11 and left-handed. Lomax is 6-3 and right-handed. Crawford is a drop-back passer. Lomax, in the run-and-shoot system, used to roll out. Crawford hears about Lomax almost daily. Lomax, in all probability, wouldn’t know Crawford if he caught one of his spirals right in the kisser.

“You learn to live with it,” Crawford said in a telephone interview from Portland. “I can’t really be compared to him because he’s in a class by himself. He’s set so many records that I don’t even think about them. I’m not worried about that stuff. All I want to do is win football games.”

And he is doing quite well at that, thank you, while putting up some impressive statistics of his sown.

Crawford has completed 174 of 263 passes (66.2%) for 2,177 yards and 14 touchdowns. He is third in Division II with a passing-efficiency rating of 144.8. In a 41-0 win over 19th-ranked Santa Clara last week, he completed his first 13 passes and finished 17 of 20 for 269 yards and 2 touchdowns.

“I don’t know if he’s in the class of Lomax,” Stromswold said, “but he does what he needs to do for us to win.”

Crawford, a junior, grew up in Beaverton, which is about seven miles west--and 10 minutes away--from the Portland State campus. He said he never followed the Vikings much as a youngster but did on two occasions go to watch Lomax.

“I didn’t have a favorite team, but I enjoyed playing and liked watching a great quarterback.”

The image of Lomax’s passes filling the sky was still fresh in Crawford’s mind the day he signed a letter of intent with Portland.

“I knew they liked to throw the ball about as much as I did,” Crawford said.

But they like winning even better, which is why balance is the Vikings’ new rallying cry under second-year Coach Pokey Allen.

“With Neil’s group, we were all offense,” Stromswold said. “When we ran into a team that could move the ball on us, we were in trouble. We got outscored. We still pass, but we also run and play defense.”

To wit: Curtis Delgardo, Portland’s 5-6 tailback, leads the Western Football Conference in rushing with 922 yards in 10 games. Portland’s rushing defense is third and its scoring defense is first in Division II.

Larry Sellers, Portland State’s sports information director, said the fans have followed in line with Allen’s strategy on offense.

“They’re still fond of the pass,” he said. “But mostly they’re fond of winning.”