Oakes: Look down below! It’s our Top 10 list. I don’t know if it’s inspired by David Letterman or not, but we have been putting ours out there every week of football season since the early 1990s. (Yes, I say we because I was here then, which has both its advantages and depression-inducing qualities).
It has been reinvented once or twice, from having every member of the sports staff vote (back when that was a relatively big number) each week, to being the general consensus of the guys who cover football for us, to the current incarnation, when it is essentially one man’s opinion and not a poll. That man being yours truly, because like an NFL blocking fullback, I am a sucker for punishment.
Next to the weekly predictions, it is the element of our weekly high school preview section that is magnet for the most attention and abuse. It’s kind of a thankless job to rank the top 10 teams, pound-for-pound, in a state that now has roughly 80 of them. Why, just this past week in one of our social media forums, a reader asked me why I never put Class D champion Oak Hill in our rankings.
Well, first of all I would point out that they are in good company. Other than reigning Class C champion Winslow, which I included the first two weeks before thinking better of it, there has been no team outside Class A or B in the rankings this season. And it isn’t because I “discriminate against the little guy” or anything of the sort.
If you put together a list of the top field hockey teams in the state, I bet you’d sneak a Class C team or two in there. And certainly we can think of some Class D soccer (Bangor Christian) and basketball (Valley) programs that have belonged in the overall top 10 over the years. But football is different. It just is.
The sheer number of players needed, their size and strength, and the depth required make it so. You just don’t see 140-pound guys playing nose tackle for Thornton and Windham, as you do for Oak Hill and Lisbon. Few Class A players are on the field for every offensive, defensive and special teams play, as is the case with the best Class C and D teams, because those coaches have the luxury of more bodies and therefore more specialists.
Even the most average Class A teams would generally wear down the best teams in Class D, and we haven’t even mentioned the issue of them having two to three times as many athletes from which to choose. Those numbers matter. That’s why the Maine Principals’ Association weighs the numbers and makes changes every two years.
Sometimes I even kick myself for putting so many Class B teams in the rankings, although the expansion from three to four classes blurred those lines a bit. Most of the powers in the Pine Tree Conference and upper level of the Campbell Conference were considered Class A at one time.
So, are we going to agree on this, or are you going to get out the violin and play a tune in support of those hard-working, tough, unsung sons-of-a-gun in Classes C and D?
Pelletier: I am not going to make a hard and fast rule that we have to have a team from Class C or D in the rankings (not that you’d follow it for long, anyway, you rebel), but I can make a case that in some instances, it’s warranted.
Leavitt has had some teams in the past decade or so that have been as good as any Class A team, mid-pack or otherwise. Heck, some of those players went on to Division I teams and played well.
So to categorically dismiss teams because of the class into which they are assigned, that, sir, is just not fair.
But I will agree with you that most teams from the lower classes wouldn’t keep up with the true top 10. I feel for you in this situation, because Oak Hill has a solid team. One of the best (if not THE best) in the class. Again. But could they compete with Thornton Academy? South Portland? Cheverus? Um, no.
So what about this, then, senior scribe? What if we were to begin a second “top 10,” create a Class A/Class B list, and then a Class C/Class D list? Would that placate our followers? Or is that too closely akin to the heinous theory that “everyone deserves a trophy?”
Oakes: It makes me queasy on the surface, but it isn’t the worst idea in the world. I watched Lisbon and Winthrop (before Monmouth) hang with Winslow a few years back when all were members of Class C West, so I know it can be done. And it would create double the debate, which you know I don’t hate.
Certainly I agree that there are exceptions, and I know them when I see them. Leavitt (2013), Winthrop (2000) and some Marshwood teams of yesteryear all were Class C champions who would have held their own with Class A teams those years. But it’s a two-or-three-times a generation thing, and not a common event.
If your team isn’t ranked in our top 10, it isn’t meant to belittle their accomplishments. It just means they don’t belong on the field with Thornton. No shame in that, because not many Class A teams do, either.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
