Dakota Tracy's hometown of Geneva, Minn., is populated by 449 people and sits about 85 miles south of St. Paul. St. Thomas photo by Greg Smith

By Gene McGivern and Jake Navarro
St. Thomas Sports Information

America loves an underdog, especially in its sports movies.

Rocky Balboa was “a million-to-one longshot” in the 1976 boxingt film, Rocky.

The 1993 movie, Rudy, gave us college football’s ultimate walk-on, Dan “Rudy” Ruettiger, a guy his coach described as “5-foot nothin’, 100 and nothin’ (pounds) … (with) barely a speck of athletic ability.”

Teen hoopster Merle Webb, in the 1986 movie Hoosiers, encouraged his Hickory High teammates at the 1952 Indiana state tournament to “win this game for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here.”

In the 2009 film, The Blind Side, we witnessed gentle giant Michael Oher and his remarkable transition from homeless teen to a scholarship player and later an NFL starter.

Another inspirational story can be mined from the fine print of 2010 college football rosters. It can be found on teams that draw 1,000 fans each Saturday, and even on one team that attracts 100,000 for its games.

Call it small-town value.

The Ohio State Buckeyes are a household name, and everyone recognizes their quarterback, Terrelle Pryor. Yet few have ever heard of Pryor's hometown: Jeannette, Pa.

And with its 9,800 residents, Jeannette could be considered a metropolis compared to the hometowns of some other college starting quarterbacks, like Attapulgus, Ga. (population 468), Iron Ridge, Wis. (pop. 994), or Waldo, Ohio (pop. 311).

Where’s Waldo? It’s where locals flock to G&R Tavern for a fried bologna sandwich, and it’s also the hometown of Edinboro University starting quarterback Cody Harris.

Attapulgus, a Native American word meaning “dogwood,” is the hometown of Benedict (S.C.)’s Pat Riley.

Iron Ridge is a burb located near 36 wind turbines that stand 300 feet wide and 260 feet tall. It also gave us UW-Eau Claire’s Austin Neu, the kid who once threw seven touchdown passes to win his high school's homecoming game.

In his 14 seasons as a head or assistant football coach, St. Thomas' Glenn Caruso has found some gems as he’s scoured the interstates and the back roads in recruiting.

“There is a sense of pride you get from finding a special kid from a small town, you almost feel as though you won a secret lottery," Caruso said. "Most of these kids are three- and sometimes four-sport athletes if the school will allow. They have been competing on a myriad of settings since they can remember, and regardless of the size of their hometown or their physical stature, many have become among the giants on our gridiron.”

Thirty ‘Somethings’

Josh Aakre has his Bethel team in the playoffs despite being woefully short-handed in the receiving corps. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com

Out of 800-plus four-year colleges, at least 30 starting quarterbacks come from towns of 1,300 or fewer residents. The list includes six players from Texas, four from Minnesota, and three from Ohio. It includes 19 NCAA players and 11 from NAIA institutions. It also includes one major-college player -- Ryan Radcliff of Central Michigan, who hails from Sherwood, Ohio (pop. 801).

A wider list of Division I starters includes three players from top-10 ranked teams who hail from towns of less than 10,000 residents -- Ohio State's Pryor; Boise State's Kellen  Moore (Prosser, Wash., pop. 5,282); and Louisiana State's Jordan Jefferson (St. Rose, La., pop. 6,540).

The 2010 Division I group also includes starting signal callers  from Eastern Michigan (Alex Gillett, Green Springs, Ohio, pop. 1,190); Penn State (Rob Bolden, Orchard Lake, Mich., pop. 2,225); Ball State (Keith Wenning, Coldwater, Ohio, pop., 4,393); Kansas State (Carson Coffman, Peculiar, Mo., pop. 4,745); Connecticut (Zach Frazer, Mechanicsburg, Pa., pop. 8,790); and Kansas (Jordan Webb, Union, Mo., pop. 9,741).

One of the 2009 Heisman Trophy finalists, NFL rookie Colt McCoy, played high school ball at Jim Ned High School in Tuscola, Tex., (pop. 714) prior to joining the Texas Longhorns.

Division III leaders
Can these small-town guys cut it in a high-profile position like quarterback? Ask legendary St. John’s coach John Gagliardi, who has made a living out of discovering and developing guys from dots on the map near his headquarters in Collegeville, Minn.

LiDarral Bailey's hometown of Bremond, Texas, was founded in 1869 and trumpets its friendly people and Polish heritage. Mary Hardin-Baylor athletics photo

St. John’s went 6-4 in a 10-game stretch since November 2009 -- a slump by Johnnie standards. All four defeats came against teams with quarterbacks from hometowns with 1,300 or fewer residents -- Coe, UW-Eau Claire, St. Thomas and Bethel.

This season’s Division III playoff bracket includes four starting quarterbacks who grew up in towns of 1,300 or less.

No. 4-ranked St. Thomas is 10-0 for the first time in its 105-year football history, thanks in part to junior Dakota Tracy (Geneva, Minn., pop. 449), a 5-foot-10 athlete with a 162.0 QB rating. Tracy is now 13-0 on his career as a starter with 23 touchdown passes in his last 13 games. He once pitched a perfect game and fanned 13 of the 15 batters faced while at New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva High School.

Joining Tracy on the Tommies’ quarterback depth chart are players who hail from St. Paul (pop., 280,000), Miami (pop, 700,000) and suburban Kansas City.

“I'm a smaller guy without the biggest arm or the fastest legs,” explained Tracy, whose hometown has no stoplights. “I just work on being efficient with ball security and a high-completion percentage.” 

Bethel is 9-1 and ranked No. 14, and its lone loss came by a 10-6 score at St. Thomas. The Royals’ attack is guided by senior quarterback Josh Aakre of Dawson, Minn., which is also the hometown of Olympic distance runner Carrie Tollefson.

Brad Boyle threw just one interception in the regular season in 2009 and just five so far in 2010. Coe athletics photo

Mary Hardin-Baylor of Belton, Texas, has won 45 of its last 49 regular-season games. The 2010 edition of the Crusaders, 10-0 and ranked sixth nationally, is led by 5-foot-11 sophomore quarterback LiDarral Bailey of Bremond, Texas (pop. 876). Bailey has 17 passing touchdowns and 16 rushing touchdowns thus far in his two-year career.

Another 8-1 team, Coe is ranked No. 13 and got an at-large bid to the NCAA playoffs. The Kohawks’ attack is led by junior quarterback Brad Boyle of New Sharon, Iowa (pop., 1,276), which is just down the road from an even smaller town known as What Cheer.  Boyle has won 19 of his last 21 starts and sports a 168.6 QB rating this fall. In the 2009 NCAA playoffs, Boyle led Coe's upset win at St. John's but missed the loss at St. Thomas due to an injury.

Lake Wobegon?
Elsewhere in Minnesota, where Kiln, Miss., native Brett Favre is still flinging passes for the professional team, nearly half of the state’s 25 football-playing colleges have smaller-town guys running the offenses. That’s fitting in a state where the NFL’s Vikings have employed quarterbacks like Favre (Kiln, pop. 2,000); Todd Bouman of Ruthton, Minn., (pop. 284); Brad Johnson from Black Mountain, N.C. (pop. 7,800); Sage Rosenfels from Maquoketa, Iowa (pop. 6,100); and Gus Frerotte from Ford City, Pa. (pop. 3,400).

Four of the nine college teams in Minneapolis, St. Paul or their suburbs have starters from towns of 2,000 or less: St. Thomas’ Tracy; Bethel’s Aakre; Crown College’s Adam Hayes (Chinook, Mont., pop. 1,272); and Concordia University’s Spencer Ohm (Blooming Prairie, Minn.,  pop. 1,979). Ohm has 21 TD passes and a 159.6 QB rating in leading the Golden Bears to their best season since 2005.

Seven other teams from the Gopher state also have guys from towns of fewer than 10,000 residents – Gustavus Adolphus (Logan Becker, Easton, Minn., pop. 186); Minnesota-Morris (Derrick Foss, Hancock, Minn., pop. 692); Hamline (Adam Meyer, Cold Spring, Minn., pop. 3,779); St. Cloud State (Phillip Klaphake, Princeton, Minn., pop. 4,754); St. Scholastica (Alex Thiry, Cambridge, Minn., pop. 7,734); Carleton (Vaughn Schmid, Mahtomedi, Minn., pop. 8,110); and Macalester (Trevor Miehe, Holmen, Wis., pop. 8,726). Klaphake has a 161.2 QB rating with 19 TD passes for Division II’s No. 15-ranked St. Cloud State.

If you took the residents of all 11 hometowns of these Minnesota quarterbacks, you still couldn’t fill the two-year-old 50,000-seat TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

At Gustavus, it's the third year in a row that a small-town Becker brother has run the Gustie offense. Jordan Becker started in 2008 and 2009, and passed for 3,653 yards and 30 touchdowns while running for nine TDs. Younger brother Logan is this season's starter and has 10 TD passes and four TD runs while throwing for just under 150 yards a game.

Americana

Hayes, who carries a 3.90 grade-point average in Social Studies Ed and Biblical Studies, has thrown 70 career touchdown passes for Crown, which sits in a quiet town of 2,300 residents 30 miles from downtown Minneapolis. His hometown of Chinook, which sits on Highway 2, has 1,271 residents, no stoplights, and no fast food. It now has an 8-man high school team. Its school mascot is the “Sugarbeeter,” since the local sugar beet factory paid for the football jerseys back in the 1950s.

Valley City State’s Trent Kosel hails from Edgeley, N.D. (pop. 515). Edgeley is known as “The Gateway to Wind Energy” as the home of North Dakota’s first wind farm. Kosel was the quarterback on the 2004 Edgeley-Kuhn High 9-man state championship team. That 12-0 squad had seven on its 32-man roster go on to play college football. At Valley City, Kosel threw six touchdown passes this season on Senior Day.
 
Gettysburg College brings to mind a famous address. Gettysburg’s quarterback, Kyle Whitmoyer, also has a well-known address -- Arendtsville, Pa.  (pop. 848). Located in Adams County, one of the nation's leaders in apple production, Arendtsville is the site of the annual National Apple Harvest Festival. Students from Arendtsville attend Biglerville High School, which has the nickname of "Canner," named after the town's canning plant.

West Georgia’s Brandon Behenna hails from Sharpsburg, Ga. (pop. 339), which has produced Dallas Cowboy tight end Keith Brookings and child actor Rusty Stevens, aka Beaver Cleaver’s pal Larry Mondello.

Louisiana College’s Will McLaughlin comes from Dierks, Ark., (pop. 1,230), where the annual Pine Tree Festival has attracted country music stars like Reba McIntyre and Hank (Are you ready for some football?) Williams, Jr.

Incarnate Word’s Paden Lynch comes from D'Hanis, Tex., (pop. 548), a town that SID Wayne Witt pinpoints as being "eight miles west of Hondo, 11 miles east of Sabinal, and 33 miles east of Uvalde." According to Witt, no college recruiter had ever visited D'Hanis until the fall of 2007. That's when Lynch got onto the radar of Incarnate Word, which was building its first recruiting class for its inaugural season of 2009.

Living right
Coach Steve Johnson, who has 152 victories in 22 seasons at Bethel (Minn.), loves to recruit small towns. He cites the abundance of leaders, a strong work ethic, and pure athletes. Johnson describes his current quarterback, Aakre, as “a guy who you like to have in your huddle. He’s a leader, and he tells guys, ‘Hop on board, let’s do this.’ ”

Johnson still recalls his three-hour drive home from Dawson on a 2007 recruiting trip to watch Aakre play a playoff basketball game. The coach was pulled over three times by state troopers or county officers, resulting in three ... warning tickets.

The Bethel coach learned two things: There’s talent in those small towns.

And if you really get lucky, you catch Sheriff Andy Taylor on patrol instead of Deputy Barney Fife.