There is a common theme, hardly ever realized this late in the season, coursing through the WPIAL Class AAAA Great Southern Conference.

When the three footballs are placed on kicking tees sometime around 7:30 tomorrow night, five of the six teams in the conference will step out on the field with a chance -- some better than others, obviously -- of making it into the WPIAL postseason.

The other team, McKeesport, has already sewn up a playoff berth.

The following is the most succinct way to sum up the ultra-convoluted playoff race in the Great Southern:

McKeesport (7-1, 4-0) has clinched the conference championship.

Upper St. Clair (5-3, 2-2), Bethel Park (5-3, 2-2) and Canon-McMillan (4-4, 2-2) can all clinch playoff spots with wins tomorrow night.

Mt. Lebanon (4-4, 1-3) and Baldwin (3-5, 1-3) have to win tomorrow night to have even a chance to earn a playoff spot.

That's the simple, easy way. But truth be told, there are myriad possibilities -- too many to get into given a limited amount of space to write this story.

Even for veteran coaches such as Upper St. Clair's Jim Render, the logjam is difficult to get a firm grasp on.

"I don't think I have seen it this bunched up before, no," Render said. "I said early in the season that our league was so balanced that there was going to be a pretty good doggoned football team that would find itself out of the playoffs and it looks like that very well might be the case."

Canon-McMillan coach Guy Montecalvo agreed, saying, "I kind of thought teams would slug it out right until the last week and it really says a lot about the strength of all our teams."

Bethel Park coach Jeff Metheny was able to cite a few factors as to the jockeying that is still happening and, naturally, he feels it comes down, to a large degree, to leadership.

"I think it is because the coaching in this league and also that, this year, there are good football teams from the very top, to the bottom," Metheny said. "If you look at it, every team in our league has a good quarterback and every team in our league has a solid [running] back."

Render felt as if the balance of the conference came as a result of the following theorem: The bad teams simply aren't that bad.

"Usually in every league, there is a doormat," Render said. "In this league, you don't have any of those teams.

"That is why everyone other than McKeesport is where they are right now. I think it is a testament to the conference that there is such a balance."

So what does a coach do tomorrow night when he knows something going on at a field a few miles away can have just as much -- or maybe more -- of an impact on his team's chances than the game his team is playing in?

"You just have to forget all about that stuff and go out onto the field and do what you are supposed to," Metheny said.

"We've been down this road before from both the outside looking in and in a position that we were in control of things. But sometimes, yes, you hear those other scores over the loudspeaker and can't help but listen to what is going on in the other games."

Render likened the traffic jam at the top of the standings to something that he notices happening in the college game on a regular basis.

"It is like the Big Ten Conference," he said. "In the Big Ten Conference, you always have that team that finishes in the middle of the road in the standings, around 50/50 in conference play, but you know they can go out and beat some teams with seven or eight wins.

"But, when your league is competitive, it kind of just comes down to being at the mercy of the beast and, in this case, the nature of the beast is just simple mathematics."