It’s really simple, actually, even for a league that is so bottom heavy (so many small schools and not as many big ones). The Berks IC (which Pottsville and Blue Mountain are already members of for football) already does it this way, and does it right in my opinion.
Four divisions.
Division I – Pottsville (AAAA), Blue Mountain (AAA), North Schuylkill (AAA), Jim Thorpe (AAA), Tamaqua (AAA)
Division II – Minersville (AA), Schuylkill Haven (AA), Williams Valley (AA), Pine Grove (AA)
Division III – Panther Valley (AA), Marian (A), Mahanoy Area (A), Weatherly (A)
Division IV – Shenandoah Valley (A), Tri Valley (A), Nativity (A), Lourdes (A)
Panther Valley goes into a division with Marian, Mahanoy Area and Weatherly because one AA team had to play down, and geographically that division makes the most sense.
Division I teams would play 12 league games – each other team in their division twice, plus one crossover game each with the D-II teams. Division II teams would play 11, under the same format. Division III and Division IV teams would play 14 league games each, playing two each against both the other 3 teams in their division as well as two games against the four teams in the other division.
No wild card teams. The four division winners make the playoffs, that’s it.
If you’re going to force the bigger schools to play four games a year against AA schools, you might as well at least divide it up this way so that there’s no wild-card to worry about. It also gives the bigger schools a chance to play a wider variety of competition. Pottsville may have been better served this year with one game against Minersville (18-4), rather than having to play two against Panther Valley (9-13).
In an ideal world, you’d just have the divisional games and that’s it – but I’m not sure if there’s a requirement on how many league games a team has to play in a year. I suppose you could just have each team play the other teams in its division three or four times, but I’m not sure there’s any league out there that does that either.
Four divisions is the most fair and equitable way to do it. It’s that simple.