The athletic directors in the Mississippi Valley Conference acted with compassion this year when they voted to let Dubuque Wahlert remove its football team from the conference and still remain a member of the MVC in all other sports.

But the athletic directors may live to regret that decision, because it appears to have sounded the death knell for Mississippi Valley Conference football as we know it and paved the way for Class 4A district football in our area.

Wahlert, which has struggled at times to compete at the Class 4A level in football, prefers to compete at the Class 3A level against schools of comparable enrollments. An official announcement from the Golden Eagles is expected this week.

Once the athletic directors voted to release Wahlert from its football obligation, they also opened the door for the Xavier Saints to leave as well. Xavier has competed at the highest level of Class 4A football with three trips to the state finals in the last eight years and a state title in 2006, but the Saints prefer 3A as well.

You can't have different rules for different schools. If Wahlert is allowed to leave for Class 3A, the Saints are free to follow suit now that the rules have changed.

The Mississippi Valley Conference has 14 schools, so you might think the league could survive as a football conference with only 12 teams once Wahlert and Xavier are gone. Unfortunately, it's unlikely to happen.

The Mississippi Athletic Conference has 10 members, but Davenport Assumption is flirting with removing its football team from the MAC and heading to a lower classification as well. That would leave only 21 teams in Eastern Iowa at the Class 4A level - 12 from the MVC, 9 from the MAC - and that's why conference football is in serious jeopardy.

School officials are concerned they might have to cede a playoff berth to the Class 4A schools in the West, because the West would have 24 teams and the East would have only 21. Instead of a 16-16 split of the playoff berths, it could become 17 for the West and 15 for the East.

School officials think switching to a district format for the MVC and MAC schools would be the smart way to preserve their 16 playoffs berths. They could split into four districts, with each district getting four playoff berths.

With 21 teams in the East, one district would have six teams and the other three districts would have five teams apiece. Or it's possible the IHSAA would shift a school like Marshalltown, Ottumwa or Mason City from 4A West to 4A East, which means there would be two districts with six teams apiece and two districts with five teams apiece.

All of this will shake out soon. Wahlert, Xavier and Assumption have until Dec. 20 to inform the IHSAA of their intentions for next season, so everything else is on hold until that happens by this Friday.

The Mississippi Valley Conference traces its history to 1927 when Cedar Rapids Washington, Davenport, Iowa City, Clinton and Dubuque formed a five-team league. There's been a rich tradition in the grand old league, but it seems inevitable that football will cease to exist as a conference sport.

That means no more conference football records, no more all-conference football teams, no more conference sophomore games, no more conference football champions. It's all going down the drain.

The next piece of business will be forming the Class 4A districts. The IHSAA will try to make the districts as balanced as possible, based on 10-year records for each school, but it's not a simple process. Much more than geography is involved.

If you want to have some fun, make a list of the 21 surviving members of the MVC and the MAC and divide them into four districts. Then try it with 22 teams by adding Marshalltown, Ottumwa or Mason City into the mix.

Remember, the IHSAA ignored the map when it divided the 24 Class 4A schools in the West into four districts. Schools from Des Moines, Council Bluffs and Sioux City were mixed together, so the same is likely to happen in the East.

Here are the 21 schools that are probably headed for the Class 4A district football in the east: Bettendorf, Burlington, Cedar Falls, Cedar Rapids Jefferson, Cedar Rapids Kennedy, Cedar Rapids Prairie, Cedar Rapids Washington, Clinton, Davenport Central, Davenport North, Davenport West, Dubuque Hempstead, Dubuque Senior, Iowa City High, Iowa City West, Linn-Mar, Muscatine, North Scott, Pleasant Valley, Waterloo East and Waterloo West.

Only district games will count toward making the playoffs. So if a school finds itself assigned to a district with five teams, only four games will count toward the playoffs. The other games will have no bearing on the playoffs.

Jefferson, Kennedy and Washington could be placed in different districts, but each school would be allowed to maintain traditional rivalries in non-district games.

The IHSAA is toying with the idea of reducing the regular season from nine games to eight games and starting the playoffs with Week 9. Teams that do not make the playoffs would be given a ninth game to fill their schedules once the playoffs are determined.

The athletic directors in the Mississippi Valley Conference had their hearts in the right place when they changed the rules and gave Wahlert (and Xavier) the option of removing their football teams from the league, but they sure created a whole new set of problems to solve.