Bears buck trend with Maine kids

Of all the numbers associated with the University of Maine football team as it prepares for the upcoming season, this could be the most significant: 31.

There are 31 native Maine players on the 92-man UM roster.

It’s a significant number because it marks the third consecutive year 30 or more Maine kids have been on the UM squad. And with six out of 15 top recruits this year coming from Maine, second-year head coach Jack Cosgrove appears intent on pushing the native composition of the team even higher.

“Our feeling is the (Maine) players are out there,” Cosgrove affirmed.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Taxpayers should welcome the state university’s Division I-AA football program being populated by more Maine kids.

Smart move, too. A coach really can’t go wrong taking this approach… That is, unless he is judged on wins and losses.

What Cosgrove is doing by recruiting more Maine kids is bucking the numbers that predict success on the field.

Last week USA Today analyzed the distribution of football talent across the nation. It found only three states did not have a single former high school player either on a Top 25 Division I-A college team or on an NFL squad in 1993. The three: Vermont, South Dakota, and Maine.

We all know the reason for this. With 1.2 million people in the state and only 57 high school football teams, the talent pool in Maine is smaller than that found in a lot of American cities. The numbers tell big-time recruiters not to bother coming here.

The question, then, is what does Cosgrove know that the number crunchers don’t?

It’s not only a national trend Cosgrove is bucking by relying more on Maine kids. He’s bucking his predecessors as well.

Modern football history at UMaine has been marked by a steady drop in the percentage of in-state kids on the team.

On the 1965 Tangerine Bowl squad, there were 31 Mainers on a squad of 45 players, or 69 percent. By 1970 both the number and percentage of Mainers had dropped to 28 on a 69-man roster, which is 40 percent.

Flash ahead to 1987 and there were 27 Mainers on a 113-man squad (24 percent). In 1989, Maine’s winningest football season ever, there were 19 Maine natives on a 99-man roster.

Cosgrove, part of Maine’s coaching staff since 1987, prefers to attribute the decline in native players during that era to intimidation more than a lack of recruiting emphasis.

“I think what happened is Maine kids started getting the idea we were getting too big-time for them,” he said.

It was former head coach Kirk Ferentz who began reversing the trend by recruiting more Maine kids beginning in 1991. The number of Maine players jumped from 18 on a 94-man roster in 1991 to 32 on a 100-player roster in 1992. Last season, Cosgrove’s first as head coach, there were 36 natives on the 101-player roster.

If the increase in Maine players has been heartening, the on-field results have not. In that three-season span, Maine had records of 3-8, 6-5, and 3-8.

Cosgrove remains confident UM can win with Maine kids.

“There is talent here,” he said. “Maine players are legit. Look at our team this year. Both our captains are Maine kids. Two of our top offensive skill players are Maine kids. On defense, Todd Park and Ross Fichthorn are as good as you’ll find in the Yankee Conference.”

Fichthorn, a junior linebacker out of Class C Madison High, was recently named both preseason All-Yankee Conference and second team All-American. He dismisses the notion recruiting more Maine players and winning are mutually exclusive.

“Football is football,” Fichthorn said. “People that think it matters where you come from don’t understand the game.”

Maybe. The only certainty is Cosgrove’s philosophy is going to make for an interesting next few football seasons in Orono.

If wins and losses continue to be the measuring stick by which coaches are measured, then Cosgrove is gambling his future by relying more on Maine kids. At the same time, he is holding Maine high school football up for all to inspect.

Is there more to the game in Maine than the numbers say? We’ll find out, beginning Sept. 3.