Class is a common theme in high school football.

You team moved up a class. Their team moved down a class.

Our state needs a fourth enrollment class. The opponent’s top running back won’t play this week because he’s failing a class.

This coach embodies class. That coach’s class is missing a couple of letters.

In the game’s ever-changing landscape, I’m a witness to class envy and class warfare almost every weekend.

So sit back, grab a pencil, pay attention and get ready for a class about class. I’ll even provide the outline.

I. There are two teams in the Class B division of the Pine Tree Conference that would win the Class A title in that league this year.

A. Mt. Blue — The Cougars pushed Bangor to the brink in the Eastern A semifinals in 2010, then welcomed back almost everyone on the roster. They brandish a litany of weapons that none of the larger schools in the PTC can match. One week ago, they dealt Gardiner a physically and emotionally demoralizing loss that probably made this a two-team race for the duration.

B. Leavitt — The Hornets are blessed with depth that makes most Class A programs envious. Leavitt isn’t lighting up opponents to the tune of 68 points out of vengeance or masochism. It’s putting up those numbers almost by accident, because its sophomores are better than most people’s seniors.

II. Merged programs should be allowed two years in a lower enrollment class to get their house in order before moving up to where the raw numbers say they belong.

A. Spruce Mountain — More than a pooling of resources, the consolidation of Jay and Livermore Falls is a social experiment. There is only Mountain Valley, and Spruce Mountain was never destined to be the sequel. Just because the Tigers and Andies were Class C giants in the 1970s and ’80s and sporadically since didn’t mean the Phoenix were going to become a Class B power overnight. Be patient, people of the Androscoggin.

B. Oceanside — Rockland was a struggling Class C program for eons. It merged with Georges Valley this school year, gaining a half-dozen guys who had never played high school football … and was forced to confront Mt. Blue, Leavitt and Waterville in Class B. Good luck and good grief.

C. Madison/Carrabec — Same deal. The Maine Principals’ Association gave the Bulldogs and Cobras special dispensation for a year or two before requiring a jump from Class C to B for the current two-year cycle. So for a program that has struggled mightily for a decade, the price of gaining a few bodies from a rival school that never had its own program is getting blistered 68-12 and 59-0.

III. Hockey and lacrosse supporters have sung this tune for years, and now football has evolved into the same game: Tradition is every bit as valuable as enrollment when determining where a team should be classified.

A. Nokomis is a big school. Gray-New Gloucester is a medium-sized school. Telstar is a small school. But they would gain infinitely more by playing each other in Class D or Class X than absorbing regular beatings from most of the schools in their current grouping.

IV. Class C football is too big.

A. Until its imminent merger with Monmouth, Winthrop (approximately 250 students) is matched with four opponents — Oak Hill, Maranacook, Poland and Winslow — from schools with nearly double its student body.

B. In the southern division of the same Campbell Conference, it is no accident that Yarmouth, Lisbon and Freeport — three schools that are either presently playing or have recently competed in Class B in nearly every other sport — are established as this season’s frontrunners.

V. The ball is in the schools’ court. Well, make that red zone, just so we don’t mix our metaphors.

A. Twenty percent of the MPA’s member schools, a vocal minority, shot down the four-class proposal in the most recent offseason.

B. There’s no blaming the sanctioning body here. If the MPA were a government agency, you could say they gave the power back to the states. Special interests won out, in the form of a few schools who couldn’t see past how changes immediately impacted them and vote for the greater good.

VI. There will be another regularly scheduled reclassification in 2013.

A. That means everyone has 18 months to pull together a plan that works for everyone and keep this growing game moving forward.

B. Show some class. Don’t drop the ball this time.

— Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist, a part-time teacher and a student of sports and life.