Maine high school football, explained
Short answers to the questions people actually ask. The longer version is on the About page.
How do Maine high school football playoffs work?
Maine plays an 8- or 9-game regular season from early September to late October. Each of the 11 divisions (Class A North and South, B North and South, C statewide, D North and South, and 8-Man Large and Small in North and South) sends its top teams — 4, 6 or 8 depending on the division — into a regional playoff. Regional champions meet for the state title: 8-Man finals on November 14 and Class A–D finals on November 21, 2026. Seeding uses the Crabtree Index, not win-loss record alone.
What is the Crabtree Index?
The Crabtree Index is the number the Maine Principals' Association uses to rank football teams for the playoffs. It adds your own winning percentage to your opponents' combined winning percentage and multiplies by 100. A team that wins every game against strong opponents scores highest; a team that wins every game against winless opponents scores exactly 100. Class and margin of victory don't matter.
How is the Crabtree Index calculated?
Crabtree = (wins ÷ games played + sum of opponents' wins ÷ sum of opponents' games played) × 100. Only completed games count. Opponents' records are pooled — all their wins over all their games — not averaged team by team, and an opponent you play twice counts twice. Out-of-state and non-classified opponents (New Hampshire schools, Fort Kent, Madawaska) count in your own record but as 0-0 in the opponents' pool. Every team page on this site shows the calculation step by step.
What are Heal points in Maine football?
For football, Heal points are only a tiebreaker. Most other Maine sports seed their tournaments by Heal points, but football uses the Crabtree Index and turns to Heal points fourth, after head-to-head, division record and overall record. The football values are 70 points per win over a Class A team, 60 for B, 50 for C, 40 for D, 30 for 8-Man Large and 20 for 8-Man Small.
What is 8-man football in Maine?
Since 2019 Maine's smallest schools play 8-man football (eight players a side, on a narrower field). The MPA splits it into Large School (enrollment 375 and up) and Small School (under 375), each with a North and South region, and crowns two 8-man state champions. Games between 8-man and 11-man teams don't happen; games between 8-Man Large and Small teams count normally in the Crabtree Index.
Which Maine high school football teams are undefeated?
See the Standings page — the record column is live. Undefeated teams are also listed in each week's recap.
Where do the scores on this site come from?
Results are public facts published by the Maine Principals' Association and Maine newspapers. We enter them by hand from those public pages, log every entry, and recompute the standings each time. We do not run automated collectors against any site.
Are these the official standings?
No. The MPA maintains the official standings on mpa.cc. Ours are recomputed from the same results with the same method and checked against the MPA's numbers every week; on September 14, 2026 all 37 team lines we checked matched to the third decimal. Each division page links to the MPA's page for that division.
What is the niftiIQ power rating?
A statistical estimate of how many points better or worse than an average Maine team each program has played, from this season's results, with an uncertainty band. It is not part of the official standings, does not affect the playoffs, and is not advice of any kind.