Ten thousand spectators flocked to Portland’s Fitzpatrick Stadium two Saturdays ago to see the best that Maine high school football had to offer this autumn.

And it was good.

The Maine Principals’ Asssociation football committee met in Augusta three mornings ago to set the sport’s agenda for the next two years.

As a result, the future arguably will be better.

Better being a relative term, anyhow, as constrained by the status quo.

Eight years worth of politicking and eight months of tireless effort fell victim to a minority, dissenting opinion.

Option No. 1 — a carefully crafted plan to expand the playing field from three enrollment classifications to four — was sidelined by the hue and cry of those looking out for No. 1.

Too bad, because in the midst of this unprecedented growth cycle in the sport, four classes would have been best.

The MPA’s original plan would have reduced the number of teams competing for each state title and tightened up the extremes at each end of the enrollment spectrum.

Class A, notable for years of championship games in which Central Maine schools sometimes competed against southern rivals twice their size, would have been divided into A and AA.

Class B would have become a true intermediate division, no longer home to heavy hitters that compete at the Class A level in almost every other sport.

Class C was poised to be a true little-guy class, correcting an imbalance created by a proliferation of new programs richer in numbers than their established country cousins.

It wasn’t a perfect system by any stretch of the imagination. As we’ve seen in other sports such as hockey and lacrosse, the hard cap of a raw number with no accounting for tradition puts the new kids on the block at risk.

There were concerns — legitimate ones — that reclassification would set up some younger or weaker programs for two years of merciless beatings. There was talk of potential injuries, or of a loss of interest in the student body that could suffocate those developing programs.

I get that. But I also know there were ways around it. And I also strongly believe that the loudest pleas of protest weren’t coming from, or even on behalf of, those underdogs.

They were emerging from the hallways and locker rooms of established programs that were comfortable in their current surroundings. Those schools knew the restructuring would make it tougher for them to win every year.

Looking out for No. 1. Not wanting to be No. 5 or 6 in a new league. It’s all the same, really.

Nobody has a more thankless job than the MPA, whose task is to solve this happy problem of new gridiron activity breaking out in every corner of the state.

The sanctioning body did all the right things. It sent out a questionnaire. It drafted a fair proposal. It allowed ample time for serious discussion.

In the end, the committee did the only thing it could with no clear consensus and not enough time to build one. It kept the three-class system, raising the two ceilings in that giant, rickety skyscraper in an effort to foster fairness.

For the schools that did the most squawking about the perceived inequities of the four-class proposal, this alternative falls into the category of be careful what you wish for; you might get it.

It’s the equivalent of a revision in the tax law that doesn’t really lower the taxes and merely shifts the burden.

New cutoff numbers, up for vote at the MPA spring conference, would shuffle Mt. Blue, Marshwood, Brewer and Westbrook into Class B.

When it was a four-class grid, those schools looked like a perfect fit for the second division. In a three-ring circus, at least a couple of them have the potential to steal the show on a regular basis.

The band-aid solution could be even more damaging to Class C. In the four-class arrangement, only schools under 395 students were eligible for the ground floor.

Five hundred students becomes the new upper limit. This year’s two Western Class B finalists, Mountain Valley and Wells, will be headed to Class C unless they petition to play in their old division.

This, in a time of shifting population that has dropped enrollment at many traditional Campbell Conference Class C schools into the low 200s.

How are Winthrop and Boothbay supposed to compete with Mountain Valley and Wells, or even current state champion Yarmouth, in the proposed 2011 and 2012 football economy?

Never mind prospective new teams Telstar and Monmouth. They’d better pray the Falcons and Warriors send their JVs, if it comes to that.

If we were waiting for a perfect system, we’d be waiting forever. This is high school football, after all. It’s a hobby for these kids, most of whom won’t play the organized game after they graduate. The coaches do it for the love of the game, not for the pittance of a stipend.

By rejecting a four-class system and sticking with a remodeled three, though, all the membership did was take the same issues they supposedly didn’t like and inflict them upon a few different, even more defenseless schools.

Oh, high school football will be good. It always is. For some teams, the end result might feel better. But for all, it falls far short of absolute best.

The squeaky wheels win again. Self-interest defeats the greater good by technical knockout.

What else is new?

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