BRIDGEPORT — There were 31 kids working out in the pouring rain Thursday morning. Thirty-one kids who could have been home, warm and comfortable, waiting to eat Thanksgiving turkey and watch professional football on TV. Instead, they were wearing shoulder pads and helmets, ready to play some football against their archrivals.

You see that and you cross your fingers and hope that, maybe, this might be the start of something over at Harding High. That head coach Trent Allen can start to build the kind of program that Dave Cadelina has built up at Central. The Central Hilltoppers have numbers — their roster boasted 68 names for this year's Thanksgiving game against the Presidents — and they have started winning too, finishing 8-2 this season, losing only to Staples and Greenwich.

But it wasn't always that way.

Not so long ago, Central and Harding were a lot alike, losing programs with little interest and very low player turnout. But Cadelina got kids interested, got the participation numbers up, and when that happened, wins started to follow.

Now, if only Allen can do that at Harding.

"That's always our goal. This year, we had some kids move away that were vital, that we were looking for to doing some great things," Allen said after Central's 28-0 win Thursday. "We had a couple of defensive linemen move away ... a couple of corners. We have some promising kids here that were ready to play, and when they left, we had to start three or four sophomores

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and they played well ... for sophomores. We're trying to build a program here and just doing everything to get it to the point that we have to get it to."

That's why you hope players like junior running back Byron Jackson — who rushed for over 1,000 yards this season — don't get discouraged after the Presidents' 1-9 season and come back next season. That's why you hope that he will talk to other kids at Harding and convince them to play football. And because of that, maybe next year, the Presidents have 40 or 45 kids playing and maybe get three or four wins. And because of that, even more kids come out for the following season, and eventually Harding is challenging for the FCIAC title. Just like Central is now. n n n The process for voting for the all-tournament team at the Hispanic College Fund Classic last weekend was a big, fat joke. Apparently, voters could only vote for players on the two teams playing in the finals, so that meant Greg Nero had no chance to be recognized. And that's a shame.

Fairfield's 6-foot-7 freshman forward scored 19 points against Mississippi, scored 12 against UConn's big front line and, lastly, netted 15 against Central Arkansas. But because the Stags didn't make the finals, he gets ignored. Come on.

I'm sorry, but how does UConn's Hasheem Thabeet make the team when he goes scoreless against Mississippi in the final game? In the three games, Thabeet scored just 17 points (five against Central Arkansas and 12 against Fairfield). In his three games, Nero scored 46 points. I don't care if Thabeet did have 16 blocks, consistency is supposed to be rewarded, not ignored.

Even UConn coach Jim Calhoun singled out Nero as a rising star after UConn's 74-49 win over Fairfield, saying, "The kid Nero, he is going to be terrific. He more than knows what he's doing. First of all, he is tough; secondly, he is very skilled. And thirdly, he plays hard. He knows exactly where he is on the floor and uses his body." n n n How great would it have been to be at the Yale Bowl Saturday for a Division I-AA first-round playoff game? The Bulldogs (8-2), who won a share of the Ivy League title last week when they clobbered Harvard, would have easily qualified for the 16-team playoff tournament — more so than Lehigh (6-5), whom Yale defeated 26-20 earlier this season. Yale is also a better team than Portland State (7-4) and McNeese State (7-4).

If only the Ivy League still didn't have that stupid "no playoffs" rule. The Elis (26th) finished ahead of three playoff teams in the I-AA Gridiron Power Index, Eastern Illinois (30th), Lehigh (35th) and McNeese State (39th). They finished ranked No. 25 in the latest College Sporting News poll. They deserved a chance to show off their program in the postseason.

-Bridgeport's Jaidon Codrington, the 2002 National Golden Gloves champ, improved his professional record in the super middleweight division to 13-1 with a second-round TKO of Johnny Brooks a week and a half ago at the Manhattan Center in New York City. Codrington, 22, who attended Central High, won for the fourth straight time since his stunning, first-round knockout loss to Allan Green last November.

Contact Chris Elsberry at celsberry@ctpost.com