LEWISTON – Brian Bachow buried his right football cleat into a mudhole two inches deep, just shy of the rumored 20-yard line at Garcelon Field.

“This,” said the 5-foot-11, 170-pound Colby College kicker, emphatically stomping his foot three times, “is where the first one missed.”

He could afford to crack a joke or two. Or maybe four, as in one for each overtime.

Two saturated extra sessions after Bachow shanked his first attempt like one of Rodney Dangerfield’s drives in “Caddyshack,” the sophomore made like Morten Andersen and knocked the daylights out of a 22-yarder through a swirling wind and a sideways rain.

Though its 10-7 triumph was excruciating to watch, at times, Colby celebrated with the utter disregard for health and personal safety reserved for Super Bowls. And Bachow, whose grandchildren will hear that Pops kicked a 55-yarder … in the dark … in the ninth overtime, etched a permanent line in CBB lore.

There are essentially two kinds of people in the world: Those who should love CBB football, or those who hate sports. Sorry, but I don’t see a middle ground.

Go ahead. Take a look at Bachow, a kid from Boca Raton, Fla., with soccer written all over him, and Leo Trudel, a once home-schooled defensive back from Fort Kent, rolling around in the slop like two brothers celebrating a winning $300 million Powerball ticket. Then keep an eye on Terrell Owens’ next touchdown catch. See him stomp on the lone star and bask in the adulation of nobody in particular. Afterward, tell me which moment packed more panache.

Take the purest level of grown-up football there is, run it through the washing machine a half-dozen times, and you have the annual Colby-Bates-Bowdoin football sweepstakes.

With rare exceptions, they are second-division teams in an afterthought NCAA Division III league. The New England Small College Athletic Conference sends a player to the NFL as frequently as the University of Miami graduates one into nuclear physics.

Bates won’t be cutting a cake, mind you, but this fall is the 25th anniversary of its last winning football season. Counting Colby’s conquest in this tropical storm, the three northernmost NESCAC teams are a combined 2-16 this autumn and have been outscored by a mind-numbing aggregate total of nearly 300 points.

Still, if you think there’s a more exhilarating feeling in college football than the one Colby quarterback Justin Smith experienced Saturday, hoisting his helmet heavenward and chanting, ‘C-B-B! C-B-B! C-B-B!’ with 70 other dreamers, you’re crazy.

“CBB football doesn’t mean much to most people,” said Smith, “but it means a hell of a lot to a few people.”

Some have devoted their lives to it. Fifty-two years ago, a Bates graduate named Al Goddard sent his head coach, Bob Hatch, a check and a request to institute an annual award for well-rounded members of the Bates football team.

Saturday, the school gave it back to him. A majority of the hundred-plus past winners of the Alan C. Goddard Award showed up for a halftime ceremony at which Goddard, who suffers from Lou Gehrig’s Disease, received a crystal trophy in honor of his lifetime contributions to Bates football.

The fast-progressing neuromuscular disease has robbed Goddard of his ability to speak loudly and clearly, but he mustered one message for his captive audience: “I hope to do a lot more for Bates.”

Goddard watched the second half and all four overtimes in the climate-controlled comfort of his family’s car, strategically parked to overlook the south end zone. He was one of the smart ones. Two hundred others stood in soaked bleachers overlooking a flooded track, wrestling umbrellas that didn’t want to obey their owners’ commands in the 40 mph winds.

Admission was free. It was also a privilege. Hopefully it reminded some of us why we fell in love with a game that has become so serious, so commercial, so ESPN-ized.

“Coach (Ed Mestieri) told us to go out and do what we always wanted to do when we were eight years old,” Smith said.

One problem, Justin. Mom wouldn’t have let you out of the house on a day like this when you were 8. Or 16. And surely she would have demanded that you guys stop rolling around in the mud.

But you’re adults now. Adults who get it. And by God, in this insanely prioritized world, that is something to celebrate, isn’t it?

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].