PORTLAND — Jerry Glanville has always loved a challenge, and he’s getting all he ever could have bargained for during his first two years as head coach of the Portland State football team.

Glanville came to the Vikings with an impressive resume, including eight years as a head coach in the NFL. Everyone seemed to think that the “man in black” was the perfect person to lift the Portland State program to a level of national prominence.

But the Vikings stumbled out of the gate last season and they never really recovered en route to an embarrassing 3-8 season. The most glaring problems occurred on defense, which has always been Glanville’s forte. Unfortunately for the Vikings, there are now more questions that ever on that side of the ball.

As a whole, the 2008 edition of the Vikings will have a serious lack of bona fide stars. Plus, the team has so little depth coming back from last year that Glanville has already announced that the Vikings will depend heavily on freshmen this year. That’s almost unheard of at this level of college football.

“Right now, we’re so young and inexperienced that we’re setting our roster as we go. It probably will be changing every day,” Glanville said after putting his team through its first preseason practice on Monday.

Away from the gridiron, Glanville is a fun-loving, easy-going guy who looks comfortable in almost any situation. But he now has a bit of an apprehensive look as he embarks on what could be another tough season at PSU.

“I wouldn’t use the word comfortable,” Glanville said when he was asked about his team’s prospects for the season.

One thing is sure, though. It won’t be a dull season. Thanks largely to assistant Mouse Davis’ patented run-and-shoot, the Vikings are expected to have one of the most potent offenses in the Big Sky Conference.

But even on offense the Vikings have some unanswered questions. They should be OK at quarterback, though, with sophomore Drew Hubel and Tygue Howland both returning. Howland won the job at the beginning of last season but got hurt in the first game and missed the rest of the season.

By late October, the Vikings were down to Hubel, their third-string signal-caller. He got his first start against Weber State and responded with a performance for the record books. In that game, Hubel completed 35 of 56 passes for 485 yards and an NCAA-record nine touchdowns passes.

With a performance like that it wasn’t surprising that Portland State put 68 points on the board that day. Unfortunately, the Vikings’ defense was virtually nowhere to be found and Weber State wound up scoring 73 points. The combined 141 points also set an NCAA record.

No one is expecting scores like that this season, but fans will still see plenty of action whenever the Vikings take the field.

“It will be exciting,” Glanville promised.

Glanville’s biggest concerns at this point are the offensive and defensive lines, which feature no returning starters. One of the team’s strengths is at linebacker where three returning starters K.J. McCrae, Ryan Pedersen and Andy Shantz reside.

Plus, place kicker Danny Urrego, who set a school record for accuracy by connecting on 8 of 9 kicks last year, is back.

Portland State will open the season on Aug. 30 with a home game against Western Oregon. The Vikings will then hit the road for three weeks, including a Sept. 20 trip to Washington State.

Several other big games loom on the Vikings’ schedule, including Oct. 4 at home against Eastern Washington, Oct. 11 at Northern Arizona and Nov. 8 at home against Montana.