Get your Crabtree crying towels ready. It’s that time of year again.

This being the final week of the regular season (except in Eastern A, of course), it is time for fans take to the streets and decry that great injustice, the Crabtree Index. They call it “Occupy the MPA.”

Never mind that a lot them hadn’t heard of the Crabtrees six days ago. Never mind that few of them can grasp the simple formula behind it (your team’s winning percentage + combined winning percentage of its opponents, multiplied by 100) or that even fewer understand why conferences that don’t play a round-robin schedule use it to seed their teams and determine who gets to play on and who doesn’t.

Oh, and never mind that the MPA has nothing to do with the Crabtrees.

Ask a crabby Crabtree complainer why they don’t like the system and they’re less aware of what they’re actually complaining about than an Occupy Wall Street protester after his third hash brownie.

The confusion is somewhat understandable. The typical complaints about the Crabtree system center around win totals and head-to-head matchups.

Sports, particularly professional sports, have taught us if Team A has more wins than Team B, Team A gets the goodies, such as a better seeding and home field advantage. So any standings that put Team B ahead of Team A are going to leave a lot of folks scratching their head.

Add in the fact that Team A beat Team B on the field, and heads start to explode.

Heads may be exploding in Wells this weekend. If the Warriors lose to York Friday night (unlikely, but play along for a moment please), they could still not have home field advantage if they reach the Campbell Conference championship. If  Mountain Valley, which Wells beat rather soundly two weeks ago, wins at Cape Elizabeth, and Wells loses, the Falcons would have the right to host the title game at Chet Bulger Field.

Some folks on the Eastern B side may be a little ticked off this weekend, too.

If Leavitt loses to Gardiner Friday night and Mt. Blue beats Waterville Saturday, both Leavitt and Mt. Blue would be 7-1. The Cougars would host the Pine Tree Conference title game at Kemp Field, the site of Leavitt’s 22-17 victory over the Cougars two weeks ago. Leavitt would be tied with Gardiner in the Crabtrees, but drop to No. 3 because it lost the head-to-head tiebreaker.

The beauty of the Crabtrees, or hideous defect, depending upon your alma mater, I guess, is it values every team’s entire regular season resume over a signature win or two. In these scenarios, Mountain Valley and Mt. Blue would get the nod because they played tougher schedules.

Aside from going head-to-head, Mountain Valley and Wells shared six common opponents this season. That left one game on each schedule, crossovers in the Campbell’s tiered system. The Falcons drew Greely, which is headed to the playoffs. The Warriors drew Lake Region, which is still looking for its first win.

Leavitt and Mt. Blue had two uncommon opponents. What would put the Cougars over the top is it played Brewer, which also goes into this Friday night with one loss but isn’t in the hunt for the top spot because it has a much weaker schedule than the other three one-loss teams.

Yep, the Crabtrees aren’t fair. Got a better idea?

Don’t give me Heal Points, unless you plan on doubling the length of the season. With an eight-game schedule, you would have just as many suspect outcomes, if not more.

Win-loss record? The whole idea of Crabtrees is to avoid coin flip tiebreakers, not promote them.

Use the Crabtrees as the tiebreaker? I wasn’t around when the Crabtrees were invented, but I’m assuming they were born out of frustration with unbalanced schedules and incessant bellyaching about unbalanced schedules.

There must be less bellyaching now, because I’ve yet to see a conference with unbalanced schedules permanently renounce the Crabtrees.