The PIAA is at it again.

The controlling body of high school sports in Pennsylvania forced Butler to go to court two seasons ago just to be permitted to play its earned District 10 football playoff game against McDowell.

Last summer, the PIAA ruled former Butler coach Jonna Burke ineligible to coach Shady Side Academy girls basketball this season because of an alleged attempt to recruit. Burke got a permanent injunction through the courts and is coaching her team.

Now the PIAA has upheld a previous ruling that Aliquippa must bump up to WPIAL Class 5A next football season, even though the Quips’ student numbers barely qualify as a Class 2A school.

Apparently, the reason for this ruling is the five transfers on Aliquippa’s roster. None of the five transferred to Aliquippa for athletic intent and each played a very minor role in the team’s success on the field.

Aliquippa is a transient community, families leaving and coming back there often, usually for financial reasons. It is a town extremely proud and supportive of its football program, which has reached legendary status in Western Pennsylvania.

A few years go, Aliquippa voluntarily bumped up to Class 3A.The WPIAL moved the Quips to 4A from there, where they won the state championship in 2023 and were state runner-up in 2022.

But being forced to move to 5A?

Ridiculous.

Aliquippa’s football roster had 44 kids last season. Most of the football programs in WPIAL 5A have at least 80 players. Aliquippa has 156 boys in grades 9-11. Class 5A schools have between 424 and 619 boys enrolled.

Is this supposed to be fair competition?

No 5A schools are located anywhere near Aliquippa, which means this footall team, already on a tight budget, will have to travel many miles to play road games.

While Aliquippa clearly plays a high-quality brand of football, it does so with many kids starting on both sides of the ball. The bigger schools the Quips will be facing almost have separate offensive and defensive units.

In situations like that, the chance of injury late in games increases as players on one side of the field get fatigued.

Butler recently went through this in WPIAL 6A, taking 25 to 35-player rosters and going up against rosters of 90 or more. The lack of competitive play — and risk of injury — are what forced the Golden Tornado to go to District 10 in the first place.

Now Butler is playing an independent schedule rather than return to WPIAL 6A.

Yes, Aliquippa’s football program is on the opposite spectrum in terms of success. The Quips are determined to win Class 5A. The numbers game may catch up to them in that regard.

Basically, the PIAA is punishing a legendary program for winning too much.

As was written earlier ... ridiculous.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle