Do you honestly think that is going to happen in Maine, i.e. pay raise and more support for athletics? Full-disclosure here, I attended the UMaine some time ago for my undergraduate degree (a great party school I might add). After I left Orono Maine I moved to Fargo (or Fargo-Moorehead) were I attended graduate school at NDSU. I lived in F-M for several years where I met my wife and got married and so I have interests, appreciation and a fondness for both communities. However, the differences between Maine and ND people are large. When i attended UMaine I found there was more interest in the annual high school basket tournament than athletics at the University level. Also, the state residents or a significant percentage almost seemed resentful of "out-of-staters"(still remember hearing this all the time at UMaine - a bunch of cranky Yankees IMO) who would come in and compete for there jobs. If things have not changed in Maine , then a sizeable portion of the population may be a bit resentful that a large percentage of your team (players and coaches) comes from outside your state (NY, PA, NJ etc) and therefore don't want the state to spend state money on student-athletes or coaches who are not from Maine (born and raised).
Final commnent, I was really hoping UMaine would come through this Saturday setting up a NDSU-UMaine final but I was not surprised. EWU football has been a scoring machine in recent years. Your defense is pretty darn good, but your offense is just so-so IMO and once your team got behind a snowball effect developed. Your Coach is to be congratulated for getting your team to the semis as recruiting up north on Interstate 95 must be very challenging. NDSU football has a lot of great things going for it and extending beyond tradition. The facilities are great for an FCS school, community support is great and geographically it is in a wonderful location drawing talent from the upper-midwest ( + a touch from Florida). Hard to see how the gap between Umaine and NDSU ever gets smaller in the foreseeable future.