Football coaches are besieged by blame when their teams lose.

Or so we hear and see. The Dallas Cowboys and University of Colorado are a mess. This week the respective coaches, Wade Phillips and Dan Hawkins, took the fall for it. The Minnesota Vikings are a house divided. Their boss, Brad Childress, enjoys less apparent job security than Nancy Pelosi.

That’s how it works in the professional ranks, and increasingly at the collegiate level. Athletes and fans/boosters run the asylum. The days of a monolithic figure sporting cola-bottle glasses, shouting expressions that begin with the words “you’se guys” and staying put for 40-plus years are over.

Everyone else has great players, too. You’re at the mercy of the ones who storm out of the tunnel and either play passionately or quit quietly for you.

High school, thank heaven, is different. There remains room for discipline and ingenuity. Players still have to go out and make the plays, but there’s a strong likelihood that the skills and philosophies you’ve taught are what enable them to complete the task.

Fourteen schools from the tri-county area played varsity football in 2010. Four are still practicing as we wait out the waning hours of Standard Time until regional championship weekend.

It’s no coincidence that those four teams are led by the four men whose profiles probably would grace the Mount Rushmore (OK, Tumbledown) of high school football in our neighborhood.

Bill County, Dick Mynahan, Jim Aylward and Mike Hathaway are the best at what they do.

They win in those rare seasons when their teams are absolutely loaded. They win in what would be the harshest of rebuilding years for anyone else.

They do it with class and dignity. They do it under the often unbearable weight of tradition that they’ve mostly created.

And they’ve done it for a long time with no end in sight.

Together, our fab four flaunt nearly 80 years of varsity coaching experience. Each can count his number of losing seasons on a single hand. Their collective take is nine state championships, 14 regional titles and counting.

County arrived at Lewiston and inherited a program that had mostly struggled since the 1980s. Three years later, he had the Blue Devils to the 2002 Pine Tree Conference championship game.

Much of the credit for his string of winning seasons and playoff victories at Lewiston (and earlier, Leavitt) is ascribed to the great athletes who have thrown or carried the ball for him. All were put in position to succeed by a gentleman who is a master at delegating authority and shepherding talent.

Of course, if County is a master, Mynahan must be the guru.

Class C programs have no business winning as consistently as Lisbon does. There are too many x-factors. Graduation. Eligibility issues. Sheer numbers.

I’ve lost track of how many 130-pound running backs and linebackers Mynahan has groomed into all-state players. And I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen the Greyhounds win a playoff game at the expense of an opponent I thought was clearly the deeper, more gifted team. Which is too bad, because we might have to add another tally to that column on Saturday.

Mountain Valley’s Aylward and Leavitt’s Hathaway, on a collision course for that dream matchup in the Class B championship game, borrow elements from each of their other colleagues.

Aylward has County’s penchant for giving his assistant coaches the freedom to do their jobs. He shares Mynahan’s knack for cobbling together a top-flight team in those rare years when it doesn’t appear the Falcons have a prayer.

He combines old-school sensibilities and theatrics with an uncanny ability for connecting with today’s young, suspicious minds.

Hathaway couples the look and the mind of a science teacher with the vision of a former quarterback. He was one of the first Maine coaches to adopt the spread option offense that took the college game by storm, and the Hornets have reaped the rewards ever since.

He has struck the perfect balance of running a disciplined program with compassion and good humor. If I had to rank all four men in the order for whom I’d want to suit up if I could travel back 20 years, Hathaway probably would top the list.

All four, however, pass every test I could drum up as a parent and fan of the sport. They were born to coach this game, in this state, in this era.

The city and towns they represent are quadruply blessed.

Be thankful. Be very thankful.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. He covered Leavitt back when County was an assistant and Hathaway was a student.

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