The ongoing tug-of-war in the private school/public school issue might take on a new twist -- and as soon as next year.

The New Mexico Activities Association Commission meeting on Wednesday brought a new item to the table that will be an action item for the Feb. 29 Board of Directors meeting.

The board will consider giving private schools the option of moving up in classification in a particular sport. The current NMAA bylaws allows a school to play up a class in all sports only except for football. The item presented to the commission indicated it is a potential solution to the issue regarding private schools dominating certain sports.

Robert Zayas, the NMAA associate athletic director, said if the item is approved, it would go into effect for the 2012-13 school year and last until 2013-14. Schools would petition the board, through executive director Gary Tripp, to play up in a particular sport.

So, for example, "If [Albuquerque] Hope Christian wants to move up to 4-A or 5-A [in boys basketball], they can," Zayas said.

That could mean that district alignments, which already had been set for the next two years, will undergo more changes, and perhaps a makeover. And considering many schools have almost completed fall schedules and are in the process of working on spring schedules for next year, it could leave schools scrambling to change them.

St. Michael's athletic director Tom Manning said he already is adjusting fall schedules because of Pojoaque Valley's move to District 2AAA from 5AAA and Santa Fe Indian School's opting to go the independent route in football.

"That would be pretty hard to do with scheduling and the athletic directors being in so many different districts," Manning said. "I think they got a lot to talk about, yet."

Manning said the school has not discussed what programs -- if any -- would play up in AAAA or above. Tom Shields, the AD for SFIS, said he would have to talk about the matter with individual coaches and administrators. Shields cautioned that such a change might have unintended consequences.

"Does it create collateral damage and affect other sports in terms of fairness and philosophy?" Shields said. "It's a very complex puzzle, and there is not always an easy solution."

Another topic that came from the commission meeting is looking at possibly reducing the number of teams in the Class AAA football playoffs from 12 to eight teams and the AA bracket growing to 12.

With AAA dropping to 18 teams and AA expanding to 24, the coaches in each class thought the corresponding changes would be appropriate. Those changes could come as soon as 2012.

Contact James Barron at 986-3045 or jbarron@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at thereadbarron.com.