The final vote won’t be until next spring, so that gives Maine’s high school football community plenty of time to debate and discuss the proposed four class system.

Going from three classes to four isn’t a new idea. A proposal was batted around a couple years ago, but never gained enough traction and was put on hold in December 2010. Now, the Maine Principals’ Association football committee has a new four class proposal, and this one has serious legs.

What’s essentially a first draft recently went out to all the schools. Everybody has a couple months to talk about it at the local level, then each school needs let the MPA know if it would like to play up a class from where it was slotted. A final draft will be released, and a vote will be held in the spring of 2013. If the four class proposal fails, the current three class system will remain in place.

My guess is the four class system will pass this time. The football committee doesn’t work in a vacuum. The four class proposal came up again because committee members heard from athletic directors, coaches and fans that it’s time for the move. If the need for four classes was a minority-held opinion, the idea never would have come up, much less been worked on so much.

Fans need to wrap their heads around this fact: High school football in Maine is changing. You can hop on board and try to make it work, or you can shake your fist and rant. Either way, change is coming.

We’ll spend the next few months debating the merits of four classes vs. three, but here are a few things I expect to see.

• Very few teams will opt to play up in a class with bigger schools.

Cheverus will, because that’s what Cheverus does. The two-time defending Class A state champion has just 500 students, but the Portland-based Catholic school has a standing request to compete in Class A in all sports. That will not change.

I can see Biddeford, which would be the largest school in Class B under the current proposal, giving it a try in Class A, where it was once a juggernaut. Wells and Mountain Valley, the last two Class B state champs, would fall to Class D in the four class system, but both likely will play in Class C.

Gardiner and Leavitt would be two of the bigger schools in Class C, and although both have had success in Class B in recent years, I think they’d stay put.

Lawrence interests me, because I think the Bulldogs’ fans would love to stay in Class A and compete against the biggest schools. There’s no denying the run Lawrence has been on since 2006, one regular season loss in the last six seasons, but a chance to play in the same league with old rivals like Mt. Blue, Messalonskee and Skowhegan probably overrule the chance to play Bangor.

• More teams will play games against out of region, or even out of class, opponents.

Playing a schedule heavy with opponents in one region, then heading to the other region for the playoffs is common in the other sports. Schools in the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference, like Maranacook, Leavitt and Oak Hill, have been doing it for years.

Perhaps the Cony-Gardiner game would be in the regular season again, even if the teams continue to play in different classes.

A decade ago, teams in Class B and C East routinely played each other. Teams in Class B East played two or three crossover games against Western B schools. It could happen again.

Playing crossover games could relieve travel concerns. If Cheverus, Portland and Deering move to the East as proposed, they’ll still have some longer trips, but a few crossover games against SMAA foes would keep travel budgets in check.

Complaints about travel time tend to be a southern Maine thing, where the larger population makes short road trips a luxury. In the Eastern C Little Ten Conference, long drives are the norm. The drive from Dexter to East Machias, the home of Washington Academy, is not a trip around the block. The same can be said of the Pine Tree Conference, which stretches from Brunswick to Bangor in Class A, and from Mt. Blue in Farmington to Mt. Desert Island in Class B. In Western C, the run from Traip in Kittery to Dirigo in Dixfield is 116 miles one way.

In August, the committee will meet again. It will be interesting to see what kind of input they receive in the coming weeks. Change is coming. How many will help make it work, and how many will drag their feet?

Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242

[email protected]