There are times when you scratch your head and wonder why the Hawai'i High School Athletic Association ever walked away from what had been a successful eight-team football playoff for Division I.

Times like this week, for instance.

A lot of what the Interscholastic League of Honolulu is going through with its ponderous two-tiered playoff beginning tomorrow could have been avoided had the HHSAA kept its eight-team format instead of dropping to six. With defending state champion Kamehameha plus Punahou and Saint Louis all tied, the ILH will play off to determine its champion and sole state tournament entrant.

The winner — and perhaps "survivor" would be a better word — will play two games within six days and, possibly, as many as three in 11 days. You rarely see that in the NFL, much less at the end of a high school season.

You could point fingers at the HHSAA football tournament committee for giving the O'ahu Interscholastic Association and Maui Interscholastic League opening-round byes. But MIL champion Baldwin, at 11-0, is the state's only unbeaten team and deserving of a bye.

The larger issue is the playoff format itself. With eight teams there would be no byes. There would be no wrangling over who gets them. And, the Bears wouldn't have 20 days between their final regular-season game and first tournament game while an ILH team could be playing three times in less than two weeks.

For five years — through 2003 — the HHSAA had an eight-team system that, especially for an initial venture into playoffs, had worked well and showed even more promise for the future. With an at-large berth after the Kaua'i Interscholastic Federation went D-II, it could have been even better.

But when six-team Division II playoffs were added, the HHSAA, for some curious reasoning, dropped D-I to six entries also.

Ostensibly, we were told, it was equality with D-II, though D-I pays most of the bills, and avoiding first-round blowouts, though a wild-card entry would have helped. But you suspect it was more about firing another salvo in the behind-the-scenes feuding that still exists between entrenched holdouts in the public vs. private cold war.

With the KIF lining up in Division II an eight-team format would have left D-I with an at-large berth for situations such as the ILH this week. This year, with Kamehameha, Punahou and Saint Louis all ranked in the top four of The Advertiser's poll, one of them surely would have made it. Instead, two of them definitely won't.

If you're going to have a genuine state championship, it makes sense to have more of the best teams there. Certainly more sense than having one team play once in 20 days and another, potentially three times in 11 days.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.