The Hawaii High School Athletic Association’s approval Monday of a pilot three-tier state football championship doesn’t deliver the long-overdue OIA-ILH alliance, but you can almost see it from here.

By adding an Open division to November’s state championships lineup, the HHSAA Board has opened a window to the ultimate prize, a season-long public-private school alliance for the future.

After months of intransigence on the revolutionary season-wide, three-tier proposal, this one-year experiment is a huge, hopeful step in the right direction. One that could pave the way for the adoption of an alliance as soon as, dare we cross our fingers, 2017?

In the 47 years since the fractious OIA-ILH split and the cold war that resulted, this is the most promising sign yet of the possibility of a meaningful rapprochement.

What Monday’s action by the five leagues does is lay out for the first time three tiers — Open, Division I and Division II — of championships. It is a plan that better addresses the imbalances that a four-island, 45-school postseason system has long labored under.

For example, instead of Maui’s Baldwin High having to go up against Oahu powerhouses Kahuku, Punahou, Saint Louis or Kamehameha, the Bears face a more equitable draw for the Division I playoffs. Meanwhile, ‘Iolani no longer punches below its weight in Division II nor above it competing with the ILH’s elite for a state berth.

And the BIIF, which has yet to win a playoff game in the 17-year history of the playoffs, faces more reasonable prospects.

Those are good reasons for a three-tier system. But they are, potentially, only the start of the benefits that could accrue.

The marquee Open division, which is to be composed of four representatives from the public school OIA and two from the private school ILH, according to the blueprint, should boost the box office.

Imagine this year what semifinal scenarios such as Saint Louis vs. Kapolei, in an all-Tagovailoa shootout, on one side and Kahuku vs. Punahou or Kamehameha vs. Waianae on the other would mean for interest in the high schools and in their funding.

With but one berth allotted to the ILH, too many times in the past the second-best team in that league, but the third- or fourth-best team in the state, was left out.

The Open division championship, which will be played Nov. 19, gives the HHSAA two promising paydays with the D-I and D-II title games on Nov. 18.

The HHSAA board’s decision Monday was apparently the payoff on former HHSAA director Keith Amemiya’s summer of island-hopping, John Kerry-like diplomacy.

People involved in the process said Amemiya touched bases with MIL members last week and has spoken with all five leagues this summer in an effort to gain support for passage of the plan.

That Amemiya left the HHSAA nearly seven years ago suggests how long and uphill the crusade for meaningful classification has been.

Now, it is close enough that you can almost glimpse it.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.