And then there were two.

Yes, I received the memo. Twelve high school football teams are playing in Maine this weekend, each of them having earned the opportunity like a helmet sticker.

Here in the land of deadlines, home delivery and jagged, nonsensical county lines, however, we tend to get tunnel vision about the teams are in our “coverage area.”

Two of them survived the second week of playoffs and aren’t scratching at the walls waiting for the start of basketball, hockey or skiing.

It’s kind of an average number and absolutely a manageable number, I remember only two years ago when we were juggling Lewiston, Mountain Valley, Leavitt and Lisbon, and the ‘House and I were wishing we could clone ourselves.

So bring it on. Fill our eyes with that double vision.

Congratulations, Mt. Blue and Dirigo. They’re two breeds of Cougars with a flair for the dramatic and a predisposition to win close games.

That’s pretty much where the similarities stop in their feline tracks.

Mt. Blue expected to be here. The team doesn’t pretend otherwise. There’s no reason for us to overstate the accomplishment of playing in the Eastern Class B final, either.

It is perhaps the final building block in a natural progression. Farmington’s Cougars were a quarter away from a significant upset of Bangor in the Eastern A semifinal two years ago. One year older, wiser, stronger and picking on schools their own size (OK, usually smaller), Mt. Blue felt it gave one away when Leavitt survived a double-overtime 2011 Eastern B title-game classic in Turner.

Look at these guys on paper and it’s easy to see that they didn’t need that level of motivation. It’s like feeding the bears at the zoo right before all the nice little people show up with their cameras.

They’re led by Jordan Whitney, who is the latest in a 20-year line of quarterbacks that appear born to direct Coach Gary Parlin’s unpredictable, ever-evolving offense.

Whitney was statistically perfect in the conference semifinals, completing all his passes and throwing and rushing for nearly 300 combined yards in a 33-21 win over Gardiner.

It was a heart-palpitating show that put Parlin and longtime assistant Peter Franchetti on the Fitzpatrick Trophy stump, each suggesting that either Whitney should be a finalist for the award or that it should remain vacant.

Heck, I’ll join the chorus. With all due respect to Brunswick running back Jared Jensen and his 2,200 yards and to Cheverus’ pick-one-from-a-hat gaggle of seniors who are about to hoist their third straight Class A championship trophy, I can’t comprehend a player in the state more valuable to his team than Whitney. We haven’t even addressed his defensive, punting and kick return skills, which are tremendous.

But the Cougars are more than Whitney.

They are fullback Chad Luker and tight end Zak Kendall, built like the Division I college students that play their positions, pancaking people on the way to another first down. They are Calan Lucas and Nate Backus, making two would-be tacklers miss and leaving behind the other nine on a 75-yard sprint to the end zone. They are an offensive line giving Whitney time to write a senior thesis in the pocket. They are a defense led by Luker and Bradley Jackson; for my money, the best linebacker tandem in Maine regardless of class.

Despite all that, this wasn’t a silver-platter smorgasbord. Mt. Blue isn’t one of those all-too-frequent Class B or C juggernauts that reached the championship round without any concept of what it’s like to perform when those shoulder pads feel like they’re creeping closer to the collar.

The Cougars played in four games — Leavitt, Mount Desert Island and two against Gardiner — that could have gone either way in the final five minutes, yet emerged singing the alma mater at the end of each one.

That seems like a nice place to make the transition about 30 minutes up Route 2, because nobody in this season’s championship round understands the stress of the fourth quarter quite as keenly as Dirigo.

If Dirigo’s games ended at halftime — or if they played out according to my fearless, at times hapless predictions, for that matter — Dixfield’s Cougars would have been 3-6 and eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

But while the rest of the Maine high school football community was playing out the string in 56-0 blowouts with alarming frequency, Dirigo was winning a close game and beating one of the best teams in its conference, every week, almost without exception.

Sure, there were hiccups. Dirigo endured rough nights at home against Maranacook and Oak Hill, each team at the peak of its season.

Throw those out and you can make the case that no team in the state had a better body of work.

Dirigo beat then-undefeated Traip on the road (200-plus round trip miles on the road, jack) with a late defensive stand. Handed Saturday’s regional championship opponent Winslow its lone loss of the season with a fourth-quarter rally at Poulin Field, a place most visiting teams would agree is haunted. And most recently, avenged the stigmatizing 33-0 loss to Oak Hill with a 13-6 semifinal victory in Wales.

These Cougars are led by a quarterback, Brett Whittemore, who endured a lifetime’s worth of injuries in his first three years and a tailback, Spencer Trenoweth, who hadn’t played the position since middle school. Each accounted for more than 1,000 yards.

Tyler Frost is a human bowling ball on both sides of the line of scrimmage. Zack White consistently climbs from his three-point stance and pushes aside antagonists who outweigh him by 40 pounds.

And they do it all with a devil-may-care, what-me-worry approach that seems to flabbergast and puzzle Coach David Crutchfield, shooting down the conventional wisdom and history of this hard-nosed game. They have an inordinate amount of fun at this game. Probably that’s why they’re still playing it on the second Saturday in November.

Two sets of Cougars. Two vastly different journeys through a perilous forest.

One manageable doubleheader that my partner in crime and I wouldn’t miss for the world.

Call it in the air.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter (@Oaksie72).