What a delicious, marvelous mess Western Class C football has become. For now.

Seven teams have much greater than a Hail Mary’s chance to qualify for the playoffs with four games remaining. Three of them will turn over their uniforms to the coach for cold storage before Halloween.

Winthrop stands as the only unbeaten team after administering a beatdown at Boothbay on Saturday afternoon.

That came only eight days after the Ramblers were spooked by Madison, a team that didn’t beat a single conference opponent last season. After its two-touchdown loss in Winthrop last weekend – and it was miles closer than that – the Bulldogs hung 51 points on varsity football rookie Yarmouth on Friday night.

Traip, barely over the stigma of a legendary losing streak and winless in four previous tries this September, celebrated its shortest bus trip of every season Friday by stomping once-beaten Old Orchard Beach.

Dirigo, winless to date against anyone not named Traip, entertained a Livermore Falls outfit riding a three-game victory parade and merely beat the Andies for the first time since resurrecting its football program.

And so it goes.

No other league in a top-heavy football state boasts a story line even remotely this compelling. While it lasts.

When Lawrence takes the field against Brewer or when Morse crashes through the paper hula hoop to sink its teeth into Old Town, there is precisely zero doubt about the carnage to follow.

But when the dwindling remnants of the Mountain Valley Conference and Southern York League get together for one of their round-robin rumbles, this year and for the foreseeable future, your guess is as good as each sleep-deprived coach’s speculation of what might unfold.

What’s making the Campbell Conference a bona fide Black and Blue Division is the same phenomenon that has selected politicians and a few daredevil administrators clamoring for school district consolidation.

The continual southern migration of Maine’s population has wreaked havoc on student enrollments in small-town high schools in the tri-county area.

“Everybody’s kind of in the same boat,” said Livermore Falls coach Brad Bishop.

Boothbay has long proudly proclaimed itself the smallest high school still playing football in the state. Well, rest assured that Jay, Livermore Falls and Madison are well on their way to ranking one-two-three in that category, if they aren’t there already.

At any of those schools – not counting the freshmen whose bodies aren’t ready for the rigors of varsity football – the 11 players on the field outnumber the available reinforcements on the sideline. It’s a scary thought when one physically taxing game (think Jay-Dirigo or Livermore Falls-Winthrop) could leave any three of your starters in the whirlpool, or worse.

Eastern Maine’s straits are far less foreboding. With Bangor well established as a professional and educational hub, Class C schools on the northern half of the Maine Principals’ Association dividing line are well equipped for the sport in which attrition strikes hardest.

“Those schools up there, like Bucksport, Foxcroft and Orono, they’re big,” said Jay coach Mark Bonnevie.

Lisbon is one of the few Western programs perched on the high end of the population map, teetering on the Class B to C cutoff line in every sport except football. With the imminent closing of the nearby Brunswick Naval Air Station, however, those days are probably over soon.

The Greyhounds are always strong on the shoulders of tradition and coaching continuity, but they’ve never dizzied the competition with depth.

Having squelched member-generated appeals for a fourth football classification last fall, the MPA will stick with the status quo through at least the 2008 season.

With the exception of Winthrop and Dirigo, whose current get-out-the-warm-bodies effort has resulted in rosters that would make several Class A coaches stammer with envy, the rest of Western C is fortunate to field a team this fall. And you think I’m kidding.

It makes for great theater in the here and now, but what about the future?