Portland State Player Treated For ‘Partial Ear Detachment’ During Blowout Loss To Oregon

Getty Image

Portland State essentially signed up for a loss when they agreed to play Oregon to open up their football season this year, but one member of the Vikings almost had to deal with an even bigger loss thanks to the gruesome ear injury they succumbed to during the contest.

I’m going to assume most people reading this aren’t intimately familiar with Portland State, an FCS program that plays in the Big Sky Conference.

The Vikings are just one of the many teams at that level that rely on FBS schools to supply a solid chunk of their annual budget, and they received a grand total of $575,000 to make the trek to Eugene and face off against the Ducks at Autzen Stadium on Saturday to kick off the 2023 campaign.

Oregon was favored to win by 48 points heading into the contest, and anyone who bet on the over didn’t really have to spend that much time stressing about cashing in thanks to the wildly lopsided nature of a game that ended with the home team walking away with the 81-7 victory.

It’s only natural that plenty of Portland State players got banged up over the course of that contest, but based on what Vikings head coach Bruce Barnum had to say while recapping the showdown with John Canzano, there was one guy who really bore the brunt of a battle that left him with an incredibly gnarly injury on top of the concussion he was also diagnosed with.

Here’s what he had to say when asked about the potential long-term ramifications of the beating Portland State took in the blowout loss:

“We’re fine. We had one guy get his ear ripped off. They sewed it back on and now they say he has a concussion, so he’s out, but I think he’s fine…

Not the whole ear; a partial ear detachment. I think it was from when he got his helmet knocked off, so I think his ear didn’t come out of his helmet.”

Barnam declined to name the player in question, and there’s currently no injury report that would narrow down the list of potential candidates. With that said, if you somehow needed any more proof football is a brutal sport, you just got some.