Southern Maine should support football Bears

From the gridiron …

Even though the comment was made about 15 years ago, it still grates on me. It occurred before a state championship basketball game at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland, when an older and considerably crustier sportswriter from the Portland Press Herald greeted me at the press table by saying, “How’s it feel to be in a real city?”

OK, perhaps I was being a bit thin-skinned by letting the remark – targeted at the city of Bangor – get to me, but it wasn’t said in a lighthearted, joking tone. I was there, however, to cover a ballgame and chose to just give the guy a sarcastic “just great” reply, and went on to focus on the game.

Finally, after all these years, I have a better reply: “Why can’t a real city – Maine’s largest – fill the stands for a University of Maine football game?”

It couldn’t on Saturday when the Black Bears played a so-called “home game” in Portland’s Fitzpatrick Stadium against Florida International. Fitzpatrick holds 7,000. A crowd of 6,227 watched Maine beat Florida International, 24-14.

Sure, not bad, but not nearly good enough for a city that is Maine’s largest and at a location that is fairly close to Maine’s second-largest city, Lewiston – as well as being in an area that attracts thousands of fans for high school football games such as those in Biddeford.

If the Black Bears are going to play at what actually is a neutral site, if they are going to leave an attractive new facility such as Alfond Stadium, and if they are going to leave behind a vocal, supportive college-student crowd, then at least they should be able to play before a packed stadium.

Maine heads south each season to placate alums who live in Portland, and to show that it is a state university that cares about its southern Maine populace. If that is to continue, then the big city should show better support that may help the Black Bears achieve better than the 6-7-1 record they have compiled there.

– . –

The hardest-working sportscaster in Maine on Saturday wasn’t any of the promising, young media types breaking in on the airwaves these days, but rather one who has been behind a microphone in Bangor since 1956: George Hale.

Hale, who has called hundreds of high school and college games through all seasons, worked the Bangor-Cheverus high school football game in Portland on Saturday afternoon for WABI radio, and then did the Maine-Florida International game that night for WABI-TV.

It’s evident that Hale still loves his job after all these years, and his enthusiasm for his work must supply him with the energy to sustain a long day that would be trying for those of us 30 and 40 years younger than him.

– . –

Congratulations to the John Bapst football team for breaking the school’s 41-game losing streak by beating Maranacook in Readfield on Saturday 22-6. Credit must go to the players for their fortitude and positive attitude, especially to those seniors who have not experienced a victory in the past three seasons.

Credit also should go to their new coach, Dan O’Connell, a former Bangor High School football standout, who may have injected some new energy into the program.

Bapst, a private school, suffers from not having a feeder system for its football program, and thus may have to spend more time on teaching the fundamentals. But O’Connell and his staff certainly have the football knowledge to help battle that obstacle.