By Michael Letendre

In 1988, the Bristol Eastern football program won the Class MM Championship, defeating South Windsor by a 22-19 final to win the only Bristol public school gridiron state championship.

That season, Connecticut had six divisions for state tournament qualification.

In 1994, the CIAC eliminated two of the six divisions – going back to a four-tier model.

Eventually, those two missing tiers were brought back, then disbanded again and by 2010, the state was back to its regular Class LL, L, M, and S state tournament format.

However, that’s all changed once again.

For the 2022 campaign, six divisions will be instituted – meaning two additional state champions will be crowned – and additional programs will qualify for postseason play.

“The CIAC Board of Control approved on November 16, 2021 the CHSCA proposal which calls for a six (6) division tournament format for the CIAC Football State Tournament beginning with the 2022 season. The divisions will be based on school enrollment,” according to a statement from the CIAC.

A complaint has always come in from the football programs about the number of squads that earn state tournament qualification.

And it’s a justifiable argument.

Simply put, between 40-percent state tournament qualification for some sports like baseball, fill-the-bracket situations for girls hoops, and even one boys basketball division that allows all of its teams to enter the postseason fray, regardless of record, football was getting the short end of the stick.

A squad that went 8-2 in regular season play can easily get shutout out of the playoffs despite a tremendous campaign.

Winning 80-percent of your schedule in any sport is a remarkable achievement and playoff qualification should be a no-brainer.

Now for football, the CIAC hopes to include 16 additional teams – 48 overall – that will qualify for the states based on a model that includes Class LL, L, MM, M, S, and SS divisions with eight teams qualifying from each.

This is an overdue addition but even when the CIAC had six divisions in the 1980s and 1990, minimal teams qualified for tournament play.

In 1981, the CIAC went to a Large, Small, and Medium division format with two tiers each but only the top two teams qualified.

For instance in 1986 – when the CIAC broke things down into LL, L, MM, M, S, and SS divisions – Middletown went a sterling 9-2 but was the third place team, failing to qualify for one of the two top spots in postseason play.

The model, involving 12 teams and resulting in six champions, still failed to get enough programs into the playoffs.

Bristol Central was in the top-two of Class MM play in 1987 while the next season, Bristol Eastern was in the mix, winning it all with a sterling 10-1 ledger.

In 1995, the CIAC scaled things back to four divisions but the top four teams were in.

The CIAC did indeed reinstitute the six-tier program in 2002 but, once again, it was just good enough for the top-four teams to qualify in each division.

In 2010, the MM and SS divisions went away but the fray was expanded to eight teams over the four tiers.

That meant 32 teams, just like now, qualify for postseason play.

And in 2021, if the playoffs were to take place right now, all the teams except three would carry – at the most – just two losses.

That’s a tremendous standard but an absurd one considering what happens in all the other scholastic sports in Connecticut.

The Qualifiers

This season, Central is looking to qualify for state tournament play for only the third time in program history.

The Rams made it to the postseason in 1979, losing to Class L Darien (27-16) and then in 1987, Central fell to Class MM champ Middletown in a 27-0 romp.

In the two-tier system, Eastern defeated South Windsor in 1988 and would have been a qualifier the following year at 8-2 in an expanded four-team set-up.

The year Eastern went undefeated in 2007, the top-ranked Lancers were stopped in the Class M semifinals by Berlin, 35-28.

Again, postseason opprotunites shouldn’t be that difficult to qualify for.