Hometown Report: Hilmar’s Costa joins three local players for Oregon’s title push

Nate Costa got a few days off around the holidays, and made the drive from Eugene, Ore., to Hilmar to grab some family face-time.

About 540 miles into the 570-mile southbound jaunt, he looked up at a Highway 99 beer billboard that informed him and all who passed that Modesto is University of Oregon football territory.

Despite having three other Division I FBS programs within 95 miles, the billboard proclaimed Central California as Ducks Country.

“That billboard intrigues me,” said the 26-year-old former Oregon quarterback, finishing his second season as a graduate assistant coach with the Ducks. “I was home during Christmas week and I saw the billboard. I wanted to pull over and take a photo of it with my cellphone, but then I thought that maybe I shouldn’t be sharing beer ads with players.”

The billboard – actually two frequently changing billboards that routinely feature sports teams – no longer features the Ducks, even though they’re in Texas to battle Ohio State on Monday in Division I college football’s first playoff-based title game.

And all of that – this being Oregon territory and the Ducks playing for a title – is OK by Costa. As it is with the three local high school products on the current Oregon roster. Tight end John Mundt and defensive lineman Spencer Stark attended Central Catholic, while tight end Jake McCreath went to Ripon High and Modesto Junior College. Mundt and McCreath both saw playing time in the Ducks’ 59-20 Rose Bowl thrashing of Florida State on New Year’s Day.

“That billboard does show you the scope of the program and the influence it can have on an area when guys like me and Johnny Mundt, McCreath and Spencer are in a successful program,” Costa said.

Costa’s own Oregon career (2006-10) was limited by knee injuries, the lingering effects of which curtailed what he hoped would be a career in law enforcement. He jumped on the Oregon staff and headlong into coaching when previous head coach Chip Kelly bolted Eugene for the Philadelphia Eagles and took half a brace of assistants with him.

Costa has enjoyed the coaching experience so much that he’s taken a new career path and is hoping to parlay his time on the Ducks’ staff into a coaching position that will pay the bills. As a graduate assistant, he basically is back on scholarship, although – unlike players – he can augment his bank account by running football clinics.

NCAA rules limit graduate assistants to three years in a program, and since Costa will have completed his master’s degree in educational leadership within a few months, he’s itching to leave the Oregon nest.

“I could get a third year if I want, but eventually it will be time for me to spread my own wings,” Costa said. “Staying on here as a full-time assistant would be ideal, but those are rare jobs. When guys get jobs here they tend not to leave.

“I think I might have to leave Oregon to get a full-time assistant’s position, but what I’ve gone through here has been the greatest apprenticeship toward that goal. Based on the success of the program, maybe some doors will open for me.”

It’s hard to imagine a better resume for a young coach. He spent five years quarterbacking at an elite Division I school, and upon returning has not only seen first-hand the inner workings of a program 60 minutes from a national championship, but also has witnessed the development of the first West Coast Heisman Trophy winner not from USC since Jim Plunkett won one for Stanford in 1970.

Since Costa works mainly with receivers, he’s in regular direct contact with Marcus Mariota.

“I’m learning a lot every day from Marcus in the way he goes about his business and handles situations,” Costa said. “One the the things I’m happiest about is that everything he portrays about himself in the media is true. His high-character stature nationally is well-known and he deserves it. He’s a great kid and hes very coachable. I love that about him.”

The Oregon program and substantial official entourage arrived in Dallas on Friday. If you’re familiar with the way bowl games work, that alone will tell you this contest against Ohio State is no bowl game.

There will be no beef-eating contests, parades or visits to amusement parks associated with Monday’s national championship game. All of that was addressed, by plan, last week in Pasadena.

“This isn’t a bowl experience,” Costa said. “This is the culmination of a long season and is more of a business trip for the teams. They set it up that way so the losers of the semifinal games wouldn’t be robbed of the full bowl experience. All of us got a full bowl week at the Rose Bowl.”

Win or lose on Monday, there is a chance that this could be Costa’s final game with the Ducks. It might not be what he wants, but he knows it’s what he probably needs to get his college coaching career moving.

College coaching ensures a vagabond’s life. It’s a career based on the successes one can glean from a group of 19-year-old males at the testosterone-driven indestructible youth, which means coaches keep Mayflower on speed dial.

Wherever Costa lands, he will be back in Central California to recruit, even if the college at which he’s coaching is not quite popular enough to warrant billboards in Modesto.

Costa not only identifies with those three local kids on the Oregon roster, having been one of them not to many years ago, but he sees a quality in that trio that he directly associates with the fertile farmland of the Stanislaus District.

“The biggest thing about those three is that they’re Central Valley kids, and by that I mean that they’re all ultimate team kids,” Costa said. “They play thankless positions right now in the program. They’re not in position to get a great deal of credit in the grand scheme of things. But all three have done everything we’ve asked them to do.

“They work hard and they’ll do anything for the team, which is a testament to how and where they were raised.”

This story was originally published January 9, 2015 at 4:32 PM with the headline "Hometown Report: Hilmar’s Costa joins three local players for Oregon’s title push."