They put the numbers through the grinder and measured how everybody stacked up against one another.

They brought out the slide rules, abacuses and scientific calculators.

And when they were all done someone, someones, somebodies was-were going to be mad.

Because one of three schools – Morse High School of Bath, Leavitt of Turner or Winslow – was not going to be in the LTC Class B football playoffs.

So the committee in charge of the Little Ten Conference met in Pittsfield on Monday at Maine Central Institute and went through the protocol established to handle such situations.

They used Crabtree, Heal and Mealey point systems to break it all down. And when the last decimal had been placed, it was Winslow that was on the outside looking in.

I had spoken to Winslow coach Mike Siviski Friday night after his team had walloped Brewer. He was in a much better mood then compared to when I spoke to him the next Monday afternoon.

Friday night, he was a happy man. He talked about all of the injuries his team had to overcome. He talked about his team’s character, how they were taken to the woodshed by a couple of teams early in the year and how they came back.

Although he didn’t talk about it because coaches don’t generally talk about such things, his team also had to play without some key players because they were suspended for one reason or another.

He talked Friday night about being in the playoffs.

But Monday afternoon, he wasn’t in the playoffs. Leavitt had accomplished the unthinkable. Leavitt had knocked off previously unbeaten Mountain Valley and in doing so threw a monkey wrench into the mix. Rally monkey is a good thing. Monkey wrench is not.

“We overcame our injuries, but we couldn’t overcome things we had no control over,” Siviski said.

He said the inevitable – too bad it couldn’t be settled on the field. He made the most sense when he pointed out that Morse and Leavitt should be Western Maine teams and with those two teams in the playoffs, six of the eight teams would be, in reality, from Western Maine.

Siviski also said something that fired up the Wayback Machine.

“What we hoped to do was have them flip a coin rather than this type of thing,” Siviski said.

Close your eyes for just a second and go back. The year is 1989. Bangor football coach Bruce Morse learned of his football team’s playoff fate in a conference call in which a coin toss determined Lawrence the winner.

“They went through three tie-breaker situations and we tied. We hadn’t played each other,” Morse remembers.

How can something be settled that way? Teams have played eight, nine games. They have gone through the mind-numbing practices. Through the heat of August and the freezing wet and cold of November to have their fate determined by a coin toss.

Siviski maybe has it right when he talks about realignment. But a coin toss isn’t the answer.

Morse doesn’t want to talk about 1989. He doesn’t want to talk about a coin toss.

“Whenever there’s not head-to-head competition it gets shaky. I don’t know what you do. The BCS is great. Isn’t it,” Morse said with a chuckle.

Don Perryman can be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or dperryman@bangordailynews.net.