Maine picks up forfeit victory William & Mary receives a ‘no contest’

For the first time in his career, University of Maine football coach Jack Cosgrove picked up a victory without stepping onto a field.

And no one sustained even a bruise.

The Black Bears were awarded a forfeit victory over William & Mary by the Atlantic 10 presidents Friday and William & Mary received a no-contest resulting from the cancellation of Saturday’s game.

The game had been scheduled to be played in Williamsburg, Va., but damage caused by Hurricane Isabel prompted William & Mary President Timothy Sullivan to cancel the game.

Maine’s record improved to 3-2 overall, 2-1 in the conference. William & Mary remained 1-2 and 0-1, respectively.

Atlantic 10 Commissioner Linda Bruno and Maine Athletic Director Patrick Nero came up with several solutions that would have enabled the game to be played at a different site but William & Mary administrators rejected the offers.

Maine offered to host the game, pick up all costs and donate game proceeds to a hurricane relief fund and the Bears were also willing to travel to play the game in Richmond, Va., on Sunday.

Bruno said in a press release that the hurricane had a “devastating” effect on the region.

“Safety is a major concern. Power and water supplies are still not fully operational and may not be so for a number of days, if not weeks. Our presidents and directors of athletics appreciate what the student-athletes at William & Mary are going through and respect the decision of President Timothy Sullivan not to play the game.”

Bruno praised Nero and his administration for doing “everything they could to accommodate the game. Unfortunately, the extenuating circumstances surrounding this game made playing it impossible.

“Our presidents and directors of athletics all agree that Maine should not be penalized because of its efforts nor should William & Mary because of the circumstances,” concluded Bruno.

Cosgrove said he sympathized with William & Mary’s plight, but was also glad his program wasn’t penalized by receiving a no-contest.

“It was a good decision. At least it puts a win in the column for us,” said Cosgrove. “If we were short a game, there might have been ramifications down the road as a result of it.”

If the Bears are under consideration for their third straight NCAA Division I-AA playoff appearance at the end of the year, will the forfeit win carry less weight and hurt their chances?

“Based on our situation right now, I’m not even looking at that. We’ve got to play great football to be there at the end. We have a lot of work to do between now and then,” said Cosgrove.

Maine began preparing for next Saturday’s Homecoming game with Richmond this past Wednesday after it became clear they would not play William & Mary.

Cosgrove said there are two ways to look at having an unexpected weekend off.

On the negative side, the Black Bears were denied an opportunity to rebound from a frustrating 24-16 home loss to UMass. On the positive side, some of their injured players will have another week to heal.

“It was similar to the situation after the Montana game,” said Cosgrove referring to their season-opening 30-20 loss. “We played pretty well but made some costly mistakes. Then we went on the road, put forth a great effort against Hofstra [44-21 win] and felt good about ourselves. After the UMass, game, we were hoping to get on the road and play the same type of game as we did against Hofstra. Now we won’t have that opportunity.

“But we do have a number of guys banged up and hopefully, we’ll get some of them back for Richmond,” added Cosgrove.

The Bears have a bye after the Richmond game so they will enter a critical showdown at Northeastern in Boston on Oct. 18 having played just once in 28 days.

“We’ll have to make adjustments and we’ve already started,” said Cosgrove.