Now, unlike the D3football.com Top 25, everyone in Division III can and will be in the Top 234. That’s the exclusive top-to-bottom ranking of every team D3football.com tracks, from . . . let’s just guess No. 1 will be Mount Union . . . down to the worst team. The ranking is available only to Kickoff subscribers.

Keith McMillan and I started working on this ranking last night. Last year it probably took us about eight hours of deliberations to rank the 231 teams. This time we spent about two hours on it and got the bottom 55 teams ranked, and believe me, the bottom teams are easier to rank than the teams in the middle. We’ll tackle the rest in the coming days.

Even the brand-new teams get into this ranking. We spent a fair amount of time debating the various merits of LaGrange, Morrisville State and SUNY-Maritime. And when teams aren’t connected by head-to-head action or common opponents, it’s certainly a matter of projection. Would Heidelberg beat Juniata? Great question.

Those are the kind of questions we need to answer.

As we get ready to deliver the D3football.com preseason Top 25 next week, I’m reminded of something that comes up every poll season: Not all records are created equal.

A 6-0 for one team isn’t necessarily as good as a 4-2 for someone else. With 234 teams in Division III, you could go years without playing a schedule worthy of getting into the Top 25. While in Division I-A there are less than five teams for every spot in the Top 25, there are more than nine teams for every Top 25 spot in Division III.

In fact, it’s almost twice as hard in Division III. There are 117 Division I-A teams, 234 Division III teams (though provisionals are not eligible for our Top 25). So when your favorite Centennial Conference or Midwest Conference or USA South or MIAA team doesn’t make the Top 25, it isn’t because we’re biased against your team, it’s because you haven’t earned the spot yet.

See last year’s playoff results for confirmation.

We’ve watched enough football to know the basics about how the game is played. There seems to be 11 players on a side. Usually a penalty is called if there are more.

To that end, our All-America teams have always included 11 players on offense and 11 on defense. We also name three specialists.

Oddly enough, the American Football Coaches Association does the same. Seems like that’s a pretty good model to go by.

Except, not everyone who publishes an All-American team has the team’s legitimacy in mind. Not when in this past week, a “team” comes out with 35 first-teamers, a similar number of second- and third-teamers, plus, to my best count, one hundred and eighty-seven “honorable” mention players.

It ceases to become an All-American team when it mentions all of America!

Here’s a hint: There should never be more All-Americans than there are teams in America. There shouldn’t be 21 quarterbacks on an All-American team (oh, and by the way, if you’re naming 21 quarterbacks, surely one should be Capital’s Rocky Pentello).

There is nothing honorable about the mention these players have received. It is false hope, a blatant grab at attention from someone at the bottom of the heap. If you were named to this team, especially if you’re below the second team, I’m sorry — it just isn’t worth the PDF file it’s listed on. They’re just trying to get you to buy their products.

It’s sad. Until last year there were three legitimate All-American teams in Division III. Now there are just two: AFCA and D3football.com.