The first thing I did after returning from another PTC drubbing at the hands of the SMAA Saturday was dig through my files for a chart.

It is a hand-written chart that Gary Parlin, the Mt. Blue football coach, drew up and sent to me about 10 months ago.

Parlin’s table breaks Maine high school football into four classes, with schools who have 1,000 or more enrolled students allocated to Class A, schools with 700-9999 students to Class B, and so on.

For several years, Parlin has been one of the most outspoken advocates in the state for realigning high school football, and the chart he sent me and other members of the media is his and some of his colleagues vision of what it should look like.

Parlin’s belief is that because the population is shifting to southern Maine, the gap between north and south (or East and West, if you prefer) is widening, most noticeably in football.

He’s not alone in his stance, and as the evidence to support it mounts, so does the support for change.

Bonny Eagles’ 41-13 win over Parlin’s Cougars Saturday improved Western Maine’s record to 18-1 since the current alignment was adopted in 1987. The Cougars hung tough for a half and didn’t quit. They had a very talented and very resilient team this year. They were fun to watch and were, as a group of young men who represented their school well, easy to root for. But the Scots’ overall depth quickly made the score as lopsided as their 1,217 to 909 enrollment advantage.

Parlin, classy guy that he is, was reluctant to make yesterday’s result a forum for what has been his pet project the last few years.

“I don’t look at that as the reason we lost,” he said. “Bonny Eagle has some unbelievable play-makers. I tip my hat to them.”

Parlin is quick to point out that his Cougars beat a lot of bigger schools this year en route to their first Pine Tree Conference title in 18 years, including Lewiston and Bangor, which have 100 or 200 more students than Bonny Eagle.

But the SMAA has a dozen Bangors and Lewistons. Those numbers add up over the course of a season. Or 19 seasons.

They say football is the convergence of 11 one-on-one battles. If that’s true, then it seems reasonable to assume that you stand a better chance of competing against a good player every week when you’re lining up opposite the best linebacker or tackle or cornerback or whatever out of a student body of 1,200 than if you’re lining up against the best a school of 900 has to offer.

Really, what else could it be? Coaching? Is that the reason that in the last decade, seven different schools have represented the West and all seven have won. Is that why only Bangor, whose enrollment most closely matches those of the southern Maine schools, managed to break the stranglehold in 2001? Is that why Bangor (2000 and 2004) and Lawrence (1996) are the only Eastern A schools in the last 10 years to stay within 10 points of a victorious Western A representative?

The Class A state championship has become to the Pine Tree Conference what the Super Bowl was to the AFL, prior to Joe Namath. You might have noticed the PTC champions clinging to their trophies a little bit longer in the last few years, and Mt. Blue was no exception.

“(Winning the PTC) last week was such a pinnacle for us. We were really shooting to become Eastern Maine champs,” he said. “All of the other coaches (who have won the PTC) told me that’s the biggest battle, overcoming that.”

That “all of the other coaches” part is most telling. The East’s futility against the West has become so ingrained, so expected, that its teams now go into the state game with the mentality of an Olympic hockey team before it faced the USSR or an Olympic basketball teams before it faced the USA in the gold medal game. The semifinals were always their gold medal game, and the regional championship has become the proud Pine Tree Conference’s equivalent.

Of course, the Soviets are no longer around to dominate international hockey, and we no longer dominate hoops, so why can’t the MPA just let things evolve in Class A?

Well, that might be feasible if Standish seceded from Bonny Eagle or athletes in Portland started abandoning the football program in droves to play soccer. But that’s not happening, and Farmington isn’t getting hit with a housing boom any time soon, either.

“We’re going to be in the high 700s in three years,” Parlin said. “To compete against schools that are 1,300 and above is going to be tough.”

The MPA has either been wishing the issue away or waiting for some other chips to fall before making a move. It will have to act soon. Edward Little has been losing students for the last five years and is projecting enrollment to slip below 950 in the next six years. Messalonskee, Lawrence and Skowhegan are currently hanging onto the 900s by their fingertips and are in danger of following their neighbors, Gardiner and Waterville, to Class B.

One gets the same sense of peril watching the state championship these days. Practically every year, the PTC teams are holding on for dear life just to stay in the game.

That doesn’t make for a very Super Saturday.

Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]