Steve Dembowski understands he’s looking at fourth down and needs to go 99 yards to see his football playoff proposal come to fruition.

That doesn’t mean the Milton coach is ready to take a knee.

At Wednesday’s MIAA Football Committee meeting, Dembowski said it’s time to take the next step and bring his plan to the Board of Directors for further discussion. He pulled no punches in going after the Tournament Management Committee, which overwhelmingly shot down his plan.

“There were a lot of inappropriate comments made that put the work of this committee in a dim light,” Dembowski said, alluding to the TMC. “(TMC members) Shaun Hart and John Brown made comments about the plan. There were negative comments made that my own school was against when the truth is our school is in favor of it and 80 percent of the Bay State Conference coaches were in favor of our proposal.

“We need to make it clear to the board that our sport is in trouble, we’ve lost 35 programs in the last 12 years. If they decide against it, then I’ll zip my lip, but people on this committee have worked too hard and our story needs to be told.”

Not all committee members were convinced that going to the board with the same proposal was going to move the chains. Committee chairman Jay Costa echoed the sentiment of some members that it might be prudent to tweak some of the ideas which have ruffled the feathers of the TMC to make it somewhat more amenable.

The committee voted 6-4 in favor of taking another look at things before the March 1 deadline to approve a format for the fall season. That meeting will take place on Feb. 12 at 9 a.m.

Since the committee opted not to approve the current format as is, many of the points discussed in the meeting were tabled. While most of the bulletin points were cut and dried, there was an addition to the format which addressed the issue of schools scheduled to play a consolation game and pull the plug after the fact.

Last season, a school was supposed to play its second consolation game and found out on Monday the opposition would not play, citing a numbers issue. As a result, the other team was left without a game until Thanksgiving.

The suggestion was that any school which failed to fulfill its responsibility to play a scheduled non-playoff game would not be eligible for the postseason the following year.