All-star tailgates: big on flavor - and tradition - recipes - includes related article on college football - Tailgate Traditions

Sunset, Sept, 1993 by Christine Weber Hale, Bill Crosby, Peter Fish

Extracurriculars. At the intersection of Shaw and Cedar avenues, the Bulldogmania shop is open game nights for any last-minute sweatshirts, sponge fingers, or pompons fans might need.

Take some delectable local Armenian cuisine to the game: George's Shish Kebob, 4081 Blackstone Avenue (just south of Ashlan Avenue), will pack to go its namesake dish or anything else on the menu.

Portland State University

Two great things about PSU football are the wonderfully weird stadium where it's played and its downtown location. An easy walk from the campus, the rest of downtown, or the Nob Hill or Northwest neighborhoods, old Civic Stadium is virtually ringed by a prodigious number of fine watering holes, among them the Bullpen, the Driftwood Room, Goose Hollow Inn, The Kingston Saloon, and The Ram's Head. Better to share a pitcher of Henry's, check up on other games in progress, and play a little state-sponsored video poker within the cozy confines of The Kingston than to stand in the cold and the dark for the $3-a-head pregame fete in a parking lot across from the stadium.

Ambience, spirit. This is a serious school; 1992 homecoming highlights included all sorts of seminars and a lecture by National Public Radio reporter Susan Stamberg. Nevertheless, PSU always ranks among the top-drawing NCAA Division II colleges (12,000 average attendance last year). Why? The team is good (five playoffs in the past six years), and the place is wacky.

Sure, there are the usual cheerleaders and mascots. But the "band" is a combo that plays Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song as the rallying riff; it also does a fine rendition of Low Rider. The National Anthem was played as a trumpet solo in fine lounge lizard form.

The battlefield. Make no mistake: this is a baseball stadium, and a fine one at that, despite the plastic turf. It's as though Pacific Coast League baseball lives on through autumn as PSU football. Summer supporters of the Portland Beavers may well supply the bulk of fall Vikings fans.

The 50-yard-line seats in the left-field bleachers are 60 yards from the sideline. Over the right-field wall (the south end zone), the fitness buffs in the posh Multnomah Athletic Club watch the game through picture windows while working out on treadmills and StairMasters. The 18-foot-long Jantzen lady still swims over the left-field wall, though she looks a tad cold on November nights. Between them on the outfield fences, it's billboards, billboards, billboards. The old stadium really echoes. Sit in the upper deck and you'll stand a fair chance of looking around a post.

How about those Vikings? A perennial Division II powerhouse, PSU looks to make the play-offs again this season, the first as an independent in a decade. Quarterback-of-the-future Bill Matos got early experience at the end of last season, when star John Charles's college career ended with a broken wrist. PSU has a rich history of record-setting signal callers; recall Neil Lomax throwing eight TD passes to lead the Vikings to a 105-0 victory over Delaware State in 1980.