Dead, solid perfect.

Only one high school program in the state can claim pigskin infallibility this fall, and it inhabits those football-crazy communities of Rumford, Mexico, Byron and Roxbury.

Mountain Valley wasn’t merely the best Class B team in 2008. The Falcons were a historically great team, no alphabet soup necessary.

It was funny listening to – and yes, admittedly participating in – the lovefest directed at the Morse and Winthrop defenses during championship week. All those shutouts were nice, but has there ever been a more deceiving statistic in high school football?

No offense to either of those deserving state finalists, but you could count the number of meaningful, regular-season touchdowns allowed by Mountain Valley on a $15 foam middle finger purchased at a WWE show.

Believe me, I saw it with my own four eyes. Eleven weeks ago, Gray-New Gloucester lined up in the shotgun, dispatched a senior split end on a button hook and smiled sheepishly as he shook off a Mountain Valley freshman and pedaled to paydirt.

Final score: Falcons 68, Patriots 8. Honestly, it could have been 130-0.

At least one other Mountain Valley opponent stuck with its starters and used its full arsenal of timeouts to successfully avoid a 58-0 whitewashing on the final play of the game.

That team never lost again, ended the season with a winning record and missed the playoffs by a point, by the way.

There’s a science to coaching a high school team obscenely better than all its competition. You juggle your own self-interest and desire to avoid injury with the whimsy of the sportsmanship police.

Many coaches compromise by letting the freshmen and sophomores take the snaps but keeping the front-liners in on defense, as if the golden goose egg on the scoreboard is a Divine right.

Coach Jim Aylward and his staff never worry about warm fuzzies in September and October. If the other team scores a cosmetic six, life shall go on. From Fitzpatrick Trophy finalist Justin Staires to the smallest, littlest known freshman, the Falcons exist to get better every time they take the field.

And we wonder why they’re perennially dressed for battle on the third or fourth Saturday of November.

From the first time a newspaper published a poll or a set of power rankings praising Class A and B schools in the same breath, it has invited the rhetorical question of how to compare teams from those different worlds.

Football is a game of size, strength and depth, say the traditionalists. Well, guess what? Mountain Valley boasts all three.

Its running backs are bigger than many Class A guards. Its defense forces turnovers with timing and attention to detail that translate to any level of schoolboy competition. The Falcons flaunt a pair of 300-pound, two-way linemen. And with all the garbage time Mountain Valley creates for itself every autumn, depth is inevitable.

There’s nothing left for Mountain Valley to prove after manhandling its third ‘B’ Gold Ball since 2004. But we live in a world of what-ifs and what-wouldas and just-imagines, so allow me to dream aloud for a moment.

Hear this and accept it if you can: Mountain Valley might have won the Class A division of the Pine Tree Conference this season.

I don’t care how many extra bodies are roaming the hallways of the larger schools. Most of those bodies are better suited for the math team, anyway. Never mind that most Class A teams play the same 20 kids no matter how many uniforms are occupied.

The Falcons ripped Lewiston in the preseason, leading 20-0 before both teams scaled back their starters. Mountain Valley could beat Edward Little, Skowhegan and Lawrence in a best-of-three series, too.

If Class A champion Bonny Eagle fought off the Falcons, it would not happen without a Deering-like challenge.

Since the current championship format was instituted in 1987, you won’t find another Class B team in Mountain Valley’s neighborhood, to paraphrase maniacal Miami Dolphins alumnus Mercury Morris.

Winslow (1993) and Leavitt (1995) might be two or three stoplights away. Beyond them, it’s a ghost town.

You can’t prove me wrong. Mountain Valley can’t prove me correct. But the Falcons forever will own a bragging right that nobody else in Maine enjoyed in this Year of the Falcon.

A zero in the loss column.

It’s the digit that defuses all arguments.

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