Behind the All-American team

We posted our 2010 preseason All-America team this morning.

This is the 11th preseason team we’ve compiled and it’s hard to say the process ever gets easier, but I thought I would describe the philosophy and the process.

Four years ago I posted a fairly detailed blog entry about the fraudulence of some preseason All-American teams, which was a specific reaction to one annual All-America team. While that team isn’t selected anymore, our concept still exists: We do not water down our All-America teams.

Every year there are a couple of All-Americans from the previous fall who don’t make the preseason team the next year. That’s because we name four teams to the All-American team and cut it back to two for the next preseason. Sometimes there are more underclassmen returning than would fit in two teams.

This past December we went to an extra step in creating our All-American teams. For the first time, we had the ability to easily and quickly contact all Division III football coaches (thanks, Scoutware!) and solicit their opinions on offensive linemen. Like all All-America selection committees, we have struggled to rate offensive linemen, since they don’t generate easily measurable statistics. And while last year, we asked for coaches’ opinions too late in the game to make the best use of them, we were able to use them for the 2010 preseason team.

And so, the countdown to kickoff continues.