In recent weeks, a lot of attention was paid to the efforts of the state's high school football coaches to establish a new format for playoffs and championship games.

It was somewhat controversial because, although this certainly wasn't the intent, it pitted coaches against coaches in a battle for a small patch of time each year, the second week of December.

The football coaches wanted it for their playoffs. The winter sports coaches wanted it for their practices and opening games. And in the end, the MIAA's Tournament Management Committee sided with the winter coaches, voting down the expanded football playoff format by a 10-6 count.

In my role as a columnist with nearly 40 years of experience in covering high school sports, I also opposed the expanded football playoffs - not in an "us-against-them" alliance with winter coaches, but as a case of simply objecting to one sport trying to impose its will over others without being fully aware (or caring enough) of the hardships that a longer football season would cause to all winter sports, male and female alike.

Besides, the proposal for a revamping of the Eastern Mass. playoffs - eight divisions, 64 tournament qualifiers selected from among league champions and mathematical-formula qualifiers, an extra round of playoffs - did nothing to address the growing desire among football coaches to crown statewide champions. Already being vilified in some corners of the Internet for my stand against the expanded playoffs, I realized something - if I wasn't part of the solution, I was part of the problem.

I felt had to do something to try to contribute positively to the effort to solve the football question while still preserving the integrity of the winter sports seasons. So I sat down in front of my computer and, for the better part of about 18 hours, I crafted my own plan for a playoff system that would crown six enrollment-based divisional champions for all of Massachusetts that would be done by the first weekend of December.

Feeling proud of myself for being so smart, I printed out the plan and my divisional alignments, put the copies in large manila envelopes addressed to three influential members of the state's football community - Charlie Stevenson of Xaverian Brothers High in Westwood, Paul O'Boy of Bishop Feehan High and Dave Driscoll of Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High - and mailed them.

I also e-mailed a copy to a basketball coach friend, who asked how I got everything to work.

Not long after, I got a reply from him.

"It doesn't work," he said.

At that point, as I told Stevenson in a later e-mail, I felt exactly as I did after watching a called third strike zip by during my high school baseball playing days.

The plan seemed to have all the bases covered.

It created six divisions for the entire state - the first five enrollment-based, with roughly 48-52 schools in each division, and the sixth for vocational or special-circumstance schools that included 32 schools.

It started the football season a week earlier, and it created a 10-week window for the bulk of the regular-season games. It created a "rivalry weekend," usually the second week of November, in which the bulk of the current Thanksgiving Day games would be played.

It allowed teams that weren't likely to compete in the playoffs to schedule their games on the holiday, as before.

From all that, 48 schools statewide would compete in the playoffs as determined by the standings of the same mathematical formula as would have been used in the so-called "Burkhead Plan," created by Plymouth North football coach Bill Burkhead, with just one exception - that league champions, while not automatically qualifying for the playoffs, would receive up to a 10-point bonus in the "own value" column that would be their reward for winning a league title, and thus help them amass enough points to be one of the eight divisional qualifiers.

Playoff games would be played on the third and fourth weekends of November and the six state championship games would be played at Gillette Stadium on the same December date as is presently the case.

And if 48 qualifiers weren't enough, I included a provision that the playoff field could be increased to 16 teams apiece in Divisions 1-5, with two games being played four days apart in the first playoff week. I figured Division 6 was too small to turn it into a high school football version of the National Hockey League, but still, 88 teams would be active in the postseason under the revised plan.

Sure, it sounds great - if you can look past the Thanksgiving problem, which will arise in just about any reasonable plan to expand the football playoffs.

No matter what I tried to do with the holiday, it was still a deal-breaker. By allowing some schools to play on Thanksgiving, the possibility existed that league championships would not be determined by the time the playoff participants had to be established, and that killed the idea to award bonus points for league titles.

Because the results of a mathematical formula can be changed dramatically by any of the games played on the holiday, and not just those involving possible playoff participants, it just didn't work. Nor would it be fair to award points at an earlier cutoff point with championship situations unresolved.

As I said ... swing and a miss, strike three.

It's never easy to admit to an error - especially when a day's work had me thinking that I had somehow miraculously solved all of the problems that others had spent months, possibly years, trying to address.

It certainly increased my appreciation for their hard work, as well as how difficult it will be to come up with a solution that makes everyone reasonably happy.

But at least I tried, as opposed to the legion of Internet chatters who seem content to sit in front of their computer screens and tap out complaints or indictments.

I can only hope that something good will result from this noble, but failed, attempt.

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com. Read Farinella's blog, "Blogging Fearlessly," at thesunchronicle.com/farinella.