Mike Lund Announces Retirement after 37 Years with Portland State Athletics

Show of hands. Who knows what SID stands for? And without even waiting for your response, we’ll quote former Buffalo Bills quarterback Jim Kelly and say: “You’re a liar, you’re a liar, you’re a liar.”

Tell someone you’re an SID, and you’re more likely to get their sympathies on the disorder they think you just told them you have than a look of understanding.

It’s understandable in some ways. Because there’s no way an acronym like SID – Sports Information Director, expanded out – can describe every part of the job. You’re the athletic department’s front door to the public. Storyteller. Communicator. Statistician. Historian. You have your hands on nearly every piece of content the public interacts with – website, social media, TV broadcasts, game programs, and earned media.

That’s not news to Mike Lund, who will step aside as Portland State’s head SID on July 30th after 37 years at Portland State.

“I come in contact with everybody. I come in contact with the administration, coaches, players, media, boosters, you name it,” Lund said of the SID role. “You engage with every possible group of people involved in college athletics on some level. And you have to find a way to, for lack of a better term, get along and present yourself and your program in the best possible way.”

And it bears repeating, Lund has been doing that for 37 years. To put that into perspective, Portland State University is only 80 years old. So, Lund has been representing the department to all those groups he mentioned for nearly half of the university’s existence. 

Add it all up and Lund’s total contact list would have to be in the tens of thousands.

“That's what I'll always remember, just the people,” Lund said in reflecting on his career. “We all have our path in life, but you've got to be able to go through it and enjoy all the people that you work with on a day-to-day basis. I've been pretty lucky in that regard.”

In an alternate timeline, Lund’s PSU tenure would have only lasted six months. That was the length of his first contract back in 1989. Six months and $5,400 dollars. But Lund quickly proved himself to his boss Larry Sellers, PSU’s Sports Information Director from 1968-99, earning a full-time contract. Then he never left.

Lund credits his start in the Sports Information field to Chuck Charnquist. It was a fortuitous meeting for Lund as Charnquist represented the godfather of the profession within Portland.

“Anybody who's worked in sports information in the Pacific Northwest in the last 50 years, Chuck probably got them the job,” Lund said of Charnquist.

Lund met Charnquist, who preceded Sellers as PSU Sports Information Director from 1965-68, while a student at Lewis & Clark College where Charnquist worked as a Public Information Director. Charnquist got Lund involved in sports information at Lewis & Clark, and then as a member of the stat crew for the Portland Trail Blazers where he’s worked continuously since 1987.

“That's where I met Larry,” Lund said of working for the Blazers. “I sat next to Larry at Blazers games when we were still doing stats with pencil and paper. But I got to know him. And through that relationship, I thought, ‘gee, maybe one day there'd be a chance here [at Portland State].”

Lund had been working as Sports Information Director at Lewis & Clark since graduating in 1987. He was earning more money than he was initially offered at Portland State. And had a guaranteed contract.

But Lund bet on himself when choosing to jump to Portland State, and it worked out. 

“I just thought, man, here's a chance. It's not much money, but if I just get in and show them I can do it, maybe they'll keep me.

“And now we're Division I, and that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to work in a Division I athletics program, and I wanted to live in Portland. It's my home, and I was lucky that those two things came together for me.”

Lund helped modernize the department. They had one computer – “a little boxy Mac” – when he joined and Lund was one of the few in the department who knew how to use it. 

“Larry was typing everything on a typewriter. So, if he had a typo, he had a white out or X out or whatever, and that was just what the press release looked like,” Lund said.

Even more scarce? Fax machines. The entire PSU campus only had one. But before email, it was the most efficient way to send a roster to an opposing school, and so cross-campus trips to send out information became a regular thing.

Technology quickly evolved from there, of course. But Lund’s foresight remained a hallmark throughout his PSU tenure.

That included knowing what to preserve in the moment as custodian of the department’s history. When Lund arrived at PSU, there wasn’t much in the way of records for the department’s women’s sports. The NCAA had only started sponsoring women’s athletics in 1982.

But the Vikings clearly had history worth preserving between four NCAA Division II national titles in women’s volleyball (1984, 1985, 1988 and 1992) as well as deep runs at national tournaments for softball and women’s basketball, among other accomplishments.

“We had such great women's programs. It's like, God, we have to preserve this history. We have to have these record books and these photos and all this stuff,” Lund said. “So, that's one thing I did in the early 90s is I really culled all that information and did the best I could to get it all put together.”

Lund was also at Portland State for the start of the women’s golf (1997-98) and women’s soccer (1993) programs, as well as the restart of the men’s basketball program in 1996-97.

His diligent documentation of those programs and all others at Portland State have given credibility to the records countless Vikings, both past and present, have set over the years. Additionally, the work helped the Vikings establish a Hall of Fame, which inducted its first class in 1997 – Lund’s eighth year at Portland State.

Lund was present for the volleyball team’s 1992 NCAA Division II national title. The team clinched the title on the Portland State campus, with Lund serving as the media coordinator for the tournament.

That made his personal highlight list. “We won a national championship right here on this floor. That was unbelievable.” 

He was hesitant to list others so as not to offend anyone. But other moments Lund noted included the steady rise of the Portland State football program as it transitioned to the FCS level (or Division I-AA as it was known at the time) starting in 1996.

“Tim Walsh did a phenomenal job,” Lund said. “[Our records were] three and eight, four and seven, five and six. Eight and three. Playoffs. Boom. It took us five years. We were in the NCAA FCS playoffs.”

The Vikings returned to the FCS Playoffs in 2015, a season they kicked off with a bang, beating Washington State, 24-17 – another highlight Lund noted. The victory marked the Vikings’ first over a Pac-12 Conference team in program history. They followed with five wins over nationally ranked FCS teams that season, as well as what’s still the biggest win by an FCS school over an FBS with a 66-7 victory over North Texas.

“Everything that happened that entire season…I mean, beating Washington State in that game was unbelievable,” Lund said in reflection.

An avid basketball fan, another highlight for Lund came when the Portland State men’s basketball team made its first trip to March Madness in 2008. The Vikings swept the Big Sky Conference regular season and tournament titles that season, after missing out on March Madness in 2005 when they won the regular season but not the tournament.

The Viking men won the Big Sky regular-season title again this past season, giving Lund one final highlight in his last year on the Park Blocks.

Each highlight fueled Lund. Not out of a sense of personal triumph. But rather, out of a desire to honor the accomplishment that the student-athletes achieved with the content he produced from it.

“I loved coming back to my computer when something really great happened and thinking, I really want to do this justice.”

Lund went back to the 2015 upset of Washington State – which was former head coach Bruce Barnum’s first at the helm for the Vikings – as an example of when he felt like he met the moment. His recap of the game started:

Pullman, WA - As the raindrops fell on an ecstatic Viking football team, celebrating an unprecedented win over a Pac-12 opponent Saturday afternoon, the question was asked, "Has there been a better coaching debut?"

The college football answer would create a myriad of possibilities, but in Portland State history, it would be an emphatic, "No!" Because BarnyBall sure played well in the Palouse.

“I was super proud of that. I mean, there are few occasions when you can write something like that, and that's my ego now, but I'm so proud of the opening of that story. And it was such a moment in Portland State Athletics history,” Lund said.

It speaks to Lund’s thoroughness in his job that he would have completed that recap while others in the department were off celebrating. The job’s not done for the SID, after all, even several hours after the final whistle.

“You do the job the right way, the first time, to completion. You don't go, oh, this is good enough for now. It was never that way. And hopefully I always did the job the right way to the best of my ability to completion,” Lund said.

“That's writing the game story, getting the stats out, you know, all the stuff you have to do that surrounds the game. Because I would always tell people, ‘the game is over, but my work starts now.’”

He credits that philosophy to two people. One, his father. And two, John Hilsenteger, who he lists equal with Charnquist and Sellers as his three most influential professional mentors.

Lund also credits Sellers with helping instill his even-keel approach to game operations. Watch Lund at the table at a basketball game and you’d be hard-pressed to guess if anything operationally was going wrong, or even the score of the game.

“You know what? There's another game next week,” Lund said of his philosophy when things go awry at games. “You move on, and then next week you get it right. There's always another game coming right around the corner.”

Of course, there’s not a next game for Lund. Not at Portland State at least – he’s keeping his Blazers job where he’s been the official scorer for more than two decades.

Now it’s time for Lund to reap the adulation he spent 37 years putting on others. That’s been the past couple weeks for Lund. When he finalized his decision to retire earlier this month, the messages started rolling in from former colleagues, coaches, student-athletes, family and friends. 

“I mean, that's the highlight for me. It's just that people have been so nice and appreciative. That's my reward,” Lund said.

“It tells me I did a good job. I feel like I've done well at what I do. I feel like I've created tremendous relationships with the people I'm supposed to have tremendous relationships with.”

It’s what happens naturally from 37 years of preserving history, telling stories, recording stats, and making connections.

“I'm just grateful that I had the opportunity to do what I wanted to do in the place I wanted to do it and have a lot of people I could really care about and that cared about me.

“I think that sums it up. I'm a Viking. It was a hard job and a hard place to work, you know? But I relished it. Every day.”