So many high school football teams, so little consideration of ways to make their lives easier and more equitable.

What’s the fastest-growing interscholastic sport in Maine right now? You could make a case for lacrosse or hockey, but both appear to have maxed out their growth potential after a five-year free-for-all.

No, the game that’s exploding beyond recognition is football. Even long-deceased programs that donated their jerseys to the Salvation Army in the 1970s are being born again, with boosters who missed out on their own chance to play America’s true pastime financing programs for their children.

They’re lacing up the pads again at Mt. Ararat, Maranacook and Dirigo. They’ve launched pigskin programs with the rapid-fire turnaround time of a Cold War lunar landing at Gorham, Windham, Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth, Greely, Poland and Gray-New Gloucester.

Freeport and Buckfield won’t be far behind. Heck, even my tiny alma mater, Monmouth, much to the chagrin of those who’ve perspired blood in the name of soccer for three decades, has a parent-funded high school club team and a thriving junior high program.

Sixty-seven and rising. That’s the current number of varsity football programs in the Pine Tree State, up from the mid-50s in less than a dozen autumns and defying every nationwide trend that slashes the sport because it’s too expensive, too dangerous or violates Title IX.

And what has the Maine Principals’ Association, overseer of all student athletic and academic endeavors in our fair state, done in an effort to protect competitive balance in this era of frenzied expansion?

Not a blessed thing.

Sadly, this inattention falls in line with MPA tradition of steadfastly refusing to consider individual sports on a case-by-case basis.

Hockey has been screaming for a tiered system or three-class system for years, lest the same half-dozen programs continue beating the bejeebers out of infant programs and perpetual have-nots. Only last spring did the principals finally weigh the merits of a multi-class system in lacrosse, and even then, perennial powers were puzzlingly installed as Class B teams by virtue of the hallowed, precious, all-powerful enrollment figures.

Oh, good grief. If enrollment numbers are so important, why in the devil are Mt. Blue (enrollment hovering around 900 and dropping as families bail more quickly than you can say “outsourcing”) and Bangor (above 1,200 and growing as Aroostook County parents migrate south to find jobs) competing for the same football championship?

Mt. Blue coach Gary Parlin spent innumerable hours devising a system that would resurrect a fourth football classification in the state. Keep in mind that Maine football operated with Classes A, B, C and D well into the 1980s, when significantly fewer programs played the game.

You might think Parlin’s plan is a mite self-serving. Not so. Yes, it benefits his Cougars. But it would also bless a program such as Oak Hill, typically on the borderline of Classes B and C, which must currently compete against Leavitt and Gardiner teams much closer to the Class A-B cutoff.

It would be a godsend to all classes, because right now, they’re all plagued with odd numbers, odder schedules and ridiculous travel itineraries.

Currently, there are 27 teams in Class A, 22 in B and 18 in C. For goodness sake, at least pretend to crunch the numbers and divide ’em evenly.

Bad enough that Class A is overstuffed with a Mike Tyson-to-George Foreman disparity between the smallest schools and weightiest. Worse that the football committee has allowed 16 to put up stakes in Western Maine and 11 in the East. It leaves the West with nothing remotely resembling a round-robin schedule. The East is stuck with a wasteful bye week and a restrictive, four-team playoff field.

The MPA’s company line, to date, is that it will consider reclassification when participation exceeds a benchmark of 80 schools. News flash: Football’s popular, but it’ll be a toasty January day at Lambeau Field before Maine adds a baker’s dozen teams to the current roster.

And while the principals twiddle their thumbs, waiting for Greater Portland Christian and Shead to start football programs, the state’s population center will keep sliding southward. People like Parlin, who know their game best, will keep suggesting ways to repair the problem intelligently, and people clutching master’s degrees and wearing suits will keep affording them all the consideration of a telemarketer’s offer at dinner time.

Parlin deserves better. The kids deserve better. But hey, what do they know?

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].