MONTEREY >> The attempt to create a balanced playing field in high school football is not without thought. There is a reason it has taken this long to resolve, where numerous proposals were made.

Yet, each year we put a football team — or perhaps in this case, teams — that do not necessary belong in the Gabilan Division, the highest level of competition in the Pacific Coast Athletic League — at least not yet.

I don’t believe there is vindication in these decisions. I’ve seen all the proposals that were shot down. Some weren’t bad.

However, assuming there are sudden changes, the decision to move Alisal, Carmel and North Salinas into the Gabilan Division, to me, seems more playoff-driven rather than equity.

With a nine-team Gabilan Division this coming fall, four automatic playoff spots are assured, which seems to be more important than chasing a league title for a lot of programs.

And that’s fine if that has become the goal. But are the three teams being thrown in the Gabilan really ready for a significant jump? History tells us no.

Need proof? Alisal faced two Gabilan Division opponents in the preseason last season and lost by a combined score of 67-21.

North Salinas, which was winless just three years ago, fell 49-14 to Salinas in its only Gabilan Division encounter. Over the past four years, it’s 0-5 against Gabilan opponents.

“I was hoping for one more year in the Mission to solidify things,” North Salinas coach Ben Ceralde said. “But I guess it was bound to happen with our recent history.”

That being two straight playoff appearances and three altogether out of the past four years. However, the one year North Salinas was absent from the postseason was in 2022, the season it went winless.

In fact, the Vikings have had two winless seasons in the past five years, which makes the job that Ceralde and his staff have done the past two years even more remarkable.

“I would have liked to have won a league title before being bumped up,” Ceralde said. “But I’ll take the challenge.”

There are some young players on his roster to get excited about. Yet, the depth to compete in this division might be a year off. This program hasn’t won a league title since 2015. So what are we doing?

Alisal has made it no secret under its new regime that it wants to get to a point where it believes it belongs in the Gabilan Division.

Last year the Trojans clearly weren’t ready for that step. In its last appearance in the Gabilan, they won one game — beating Alvarez, which was bumped down to the Mission Division South.

“We believe the sky is the limit here,” Alisal coach Francisco Estrada said. “We’re not looking at this as a learning year. We won’t shy away from the challenge. We’re making it about us.”

What else is a coach supposed to say? Estrada admitted one more year in the Mission Division might have been beneficial to ramp up for a move of this magnitude. It just means he’s spending more time watching film in the off-season.

But the second-year coach made it no secret when he took the job last year that his goal was to put Alisal among the elite in the PCAL.

I believe Alisal is on that trajectory. But Estrada is right. One more season in the Mission Division would have solidified the program’s growth. There will be unforeseen obstacles ahead.

Coaches should have a bigger input on these decisions. No one knows their program more than them. When you have a coach telling you this his goal, give him time to achieve it.

North County was under consideration for a move to the Gabilan Division after having its first winning season in a decade, winning its first title since 2004.

“The reality is there are not nine A league teams in the PCAL,” Cuevas said, referencing the fact that A leagues are the most competitive in the Central Coast Section. “As a coach, we should have an opinion, not just fill out a form.”

The decision on Carmel isn’t surprising. Yet, if there was a year the PCAL Board of Managers should have put them in the Gabilan, it was last season, after going 10-0 in 2023.

Where’s the logic in putting the State Division 5AA champions up in 2025? Certainly, its JV record was not taken into consideration at 4-6.

While the 15-0 record was one for the ages, Carmel’s record-setting tailback is graduating, along with the quarterback, its three top receivers and defensive backs and a University of Alabama-bound two-way lineman.

Now, can they compete? Sure. That’s assuming we don’t see what occurred in 2019 when the PCAL moved them to the Gabilan Division and Carmel’s roster numbers shrunk, to the point where it didn’t field a JV team.

“We’re not saying we don’t belong in the Gabilan,” Carmel coach Golden Anderson said. “We feel we are one of the top programs in the PCAL. I’m worried about my JV program.”

In part, because Carmel does not have a tackle youth football league to draw from. Most of the players who show up as freshmen have never played tackle football. The Gabilan Division can be a brutal awakening for a 14-year-old at the JV level.

Because of its enrollment of just over 700 kids, Anderson doesn’t have a year-round program, as athletes play multiple sports, making football a sport most Carmel kids don’t train specifically for year-round.

If you go back to Carmel’s one season in the Gabilan, it went 3-4 and made the playoffs, but did not sniff the postseason again until 2023. Some of that was pandemic-driven.

Moving Alvarez down should have been done years ago. As good of a job as Ben Newman did in his first season, it was the only Gabilan Division team not to make the playoffs.

Not every program has crumbled when thrust into the Gabilan Division. Just look at Soquel and Monterey. But those teams wanted to move up and embraced the challenge.

I get the argument that the seven, or nine best teams in the PCAL are all in the Gabilan Division. So why should they be penalized for being in the league when it comes to the playoffs?

It’s a valid point. Yet, history has proven that teams that get moved into the Gabilan struggle. Interest wanes and numbers shrink. Monterey and Soquel have been the exceptions.

The last time North Salinas was in the Gabilan, it went 0-7. When Gilroy was pushed into the Gabilan, it went 0-14 over two years before leaving the league entirely a year later. Monte Vista was 0-8 in its last season in 2022. Santa Cruz was winless and still hasn’t recovered three years later.

This isn’t the first time the Gabilan was made a nine-league team, as it occurred in 2021, where the three teams thrown to the wolves went a combined 4-19.

There are six teams that have made it no secret — regardless of how their season went — that want to be in the Gabilan.

So make it a six-team league. All six of those teams went to the playoffs last year. Have them play cross-over games with the other leagues to fill their preseason schedule, securing enough points to make the playoffs.

There are five-team leagues, such as in the North Coast Section, where Acalanes, which Carmel beat in the NorCal title game — won the Diablo Valley Foothill League with a 3-1 record. All five teams made the playoffs.

What I see each year when a school is pushed to the Gabilan Division is kids’ confidence shaken, loss of interest in programs and ultimately coaching changes. That’s not a high school memory worth savoring.