Patrick Reusse: Glory days only a memory for once-proud Dragons

Ross Fortier was the Moorhead State football coach from 1970 through 1992. The Dragons won nine conference championships and were in the NAIA playoffs 10 times in his 23 seasons.

There was considerable change both simultaneously and following Fortier's departure.

The Northern Intercollegiate Conference changed its name to the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. The league's affiliation changed from NAIA to NCAA Division II. The school changed its name to Minnesota State University Moorhead in the summer of 2000.

And with football, what changed most dramatically in Moorhead were the results.

Ralph Micheli, Fortier's replacement, was able to win a conference title in 1995. It has been mostly downhill since -- and now the competition has an added ferocity with the arrivals of North Central expatriates Minnesota Duluth, MSU Mankato, St. Cloud State and Augustana (S.D.) to what's a 14-team league.

Moorhead football has been dreadfully underfunded. The Dragons have nine scholarships compared to the Division II limit of 36.

Mike McFeely, a Fargo Forum sports columnist and Moorhead graduate, gave a candid interview this fall on the state of athletics to the school's alumni magazine. His responses included:

"The Dragon football program right now is behind Minnesota-Crookston in scholarships, for God's sake."

California native Damon Tomeo is the coach trying to bring back the competitiveness to Dragons football -- and do so with an administration that McFeely told his fellow alums, "never adjusted to the Division II move."

Tomeo is in his third season. A year ago, he became notorious in the Fargo-Moorhead area both for coaching and public relations blunders in the wake of a 34-32 loss to city rival Concordia.

He failed to have his team run down the clock, giving the Division III Cobbers a chance to rally in the last minute. Then, Tomeo completely lost his composure, pushing a player away from two Forum reporters as he was being interviewed and screaming at players and assistants to head back to campus.

Overall, the '07 Dragons went 4-7, with five losses coming by a combined 13 points.

The Dragons came to St. Paul on Saturday to play this Concordia, a Northern Sun rival. There was a mist through the first half and a hard rain during the second half.

Most of the athletes probably weren't aware that the switch to artificial turf at Griffin Stadium a few years back prevented them from playing in what used to be among the Twin Cities' most famous mud holes.

As has happened often in Tomeo's tenure, the Dragons jumped in front. They drove 52 yards for the game's first touchdown and then went ahead 14-0 when quarterback Craig Kutz hit Tyrone Small with an 80-yard pass over the top of Concordia's defense.

The 14-0 lead still was good when Concordia took the ball at midfield with 4:06 left in the first half. There were a couple of big plays from running back Jerry Shaw, one of which was assisted when the officiating crew chose to ignore a Moorhead defender having his jersey stretched a couple of feet by the hold of a Concordia blocker.

Soon, Hayden Vavra scored on a 1-yard run and the Moorhead lead was 14-7. Twenty-four seconds later, Concordia safety Joey Lehman was streaking into the end zone with a tipped-ball interception to make it 14-13.

They punted then, and fell behind on Vavra's halfback pass to Calvin Simon late in the third quarter. The final was Concordia, 27-23.

It was a narrow and familiar loss for a Moorhead football program now far removed from the glory days -- and facing longer odds than ever to regain them in this expanded NSIC.