Maybe you don't remember the first day you realized it. Neither do I, really.

I just remember that on one fine afternoon of cruising the streets, avenues and boulevards of this area we call home, I noticed there were an awful lot of new stoplights.

Not only new stoplights, but new stores. More traffic, as well. And more people.

And that's basically why some of your children's high school athletic teams will be playing the Brocktons, Weymouths and Framinghams of the world in future MIAA tournaments instead of the smaller towns with which they feel more of a kinship.

The balance of power has shifted in high school sports, and nowhere is that more keenly felt than in the list of proposed MIAA tournament alignments for the next four seasons beginning in 2009-10. The proposals are in for the winter and spring sports seasons (except for Eastern Mass. football, which is a mess), and a few of our local schools are now going to have to pay the piper for growth spurts in their towns' populations that made them more competitive, and arguably more successful, over the last decade or so.

Two local towns that have really "grown up," so to speak, are Mansfield and North Attleboro. In both boys' basketball and girls' basketball beginning with the 2009-10 season, both schools will be ranked in Division 1 and will have to do battle with the largest schools in the Commonwealth in order to compete for a state championship in those sports.

Problem is, there's a huge discrepancy between the largest (and generally most successful) of those schools and the newcomers from the Hockomock League.

Mansfield's placement is based upon an enrollment of 755 boys and 665 girls in grades 9-12; North Attleboro's from its enrollment of 649 boys and 612 girls.

Elsewhere in the South section, Brockton has 2,375 boys and 2,250 girls. New Bedford has 1,569 and 1,561; Durfee of Fall River 1,217 and 1,294; Attleboro 892 and 902; Barnstable 866 and 893; Brookline 909 and 902, Framingham 961 and 1,071; Taunton 944 and 891; Weymouth 1,103 and 975; and so on. Let's also not forget in the case of boys' basketball, the enrollments of 1,313 at Boston College High and 974 at Xaverian Brothers High in Westwood.

No doubt, Mansfield and North Attleboro will be at the bottom of the pack in terms of the number of available students from which they can draw upon to field competitive teams, which certainly raises questions about the fairness of these alignments.

It's nothing new for North Attleboro, however.

Over the course of the last two or three realignments, the Rocketeer boys and girls have bounced back and forth between Divisions 1 and 2. No one has been shying away from the competition, but both basketball teams have always been more at home, competitively speaking, in Division 2. North Attleboro can also proudly boast of two Division 2 state girls' basketball championships (1987 and 1991), which is a distinction shared locally by no other school.

For Mansfield, it's been a long road up from the days when it was the runt of the litter in the Hockomock League, for decades its smallest school by a wide margin. The school is now the second largest behind Franklin, with North Attleboro and King Philip pulling in at third and fourth respectively. All are now "Division 1 schools" as defined by the enrollment cutoffs.

There are a couple of other changes in the boys' basketball ranks. Dighton-Rehoboth gets a boost up from Division 3 to Division 2, and Bishop Feehan drops from D2 to D3 (while the Shamrock girls remain in D2, incidentally). Everyone else remains where they are now, as is also the case for the area's hockey teams - although hockey schools are still placed according to perceived competitive balance, as witnessed by Attleboro's ongoing presence in Division 3. Truth of the matter is, big numbers don't always ensure success.

New Bedford and Durfee are among the largest schools in the state, but the football culture just isn't in place there, and neither can punch its way out of a wet paper bag in the Big Three. That's why Brockton always seems to have a free pass into the playoffs.

But when you're talking about instances where you need to find nine to 12 athletes out of a field of 1,000 students, you've got a much better chance to find better athletes among them with those numbers than if you've got only 600 students.

Football remains a sticking point for the future, however.

With the defeat some time back of the so-called "Burkhead Plan" to realign football in eastern Massachusetts, the realignment process has fallen well behind. Schools are still scrambling to find new league affiliations and more Super Bowl berths as large leagues split into divisions.

The latest is the Tri-Valley League, of which Norton is a member. Dedham school officials recently expressed interest in bolting the Bay State Conference (of which Dedham High is a charter member) for the TVL. Rumor has it that neighboring Canton, a long-time member of the Hockomock League and currently its smallest member, will follow suit.

Both schools have seen their total enrollments drop like a stone in recent years, which makes the move to a league like the TVL sensible. The Hockomock made a similar appeal to smaller schools to balance out its numbers, but has reportedly backed off its plans for expansion.

But there are no assurances that the MIAA will approve more berths in the football playoffs as they are configured now.

Under the current agreement with the Kraft family, they can't play more than six of the Super Bowls at Gillette Stadium. The Burkhead Plan would have created eight divisions for football in the region instead of the current seven, which many believe to be an excessive number as it is. Asked on an online forum recently how he saw the TVL's expansion plans, Boston Herald high school sports editor Dan Ventura half-jokingly said, "I can't wait to cover the Division 11 playoffs."

If you want to talk inequities, how about this? Statewide, there are 326 schools that play football, and 355 that play boys' basketball. Yet in Eastern Mass., there are seven football divisions and four basketball divisions. There are six football divisions in the central and western sections, and only three for basketball. What gives?

Unfortunately, no one is willing to stand up and say that less is more - that it's time to condense the football playoffs into fewer divisions based on enrollment, and to consider more creative means of increasing the number of participants (including the possible elimination of Thanksgiving as a playing date) than by trying to extend the football season at the expense of winter sports.

Hard choices, yes. But times change. We're learning that around here every day as local schools are being forced to shed their small-town identities because of realignment and growing enrollments. Maybe it's time to consider more divisions for other sports and fewer for football as a means of restoring balance and equitable competition to the high school landscape.

And it's definitely time for people to start taking these issues seriously.

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.