12:42 PM EST on Sunday, February 13, 2005

The headline was in our paper. I was here last Sunday night, in fact, and I approved it:

"HISTORY IN THE MAKING / Pats get the win that legitimizes their dynasty"

But today, a week later, I wonder. Did it?

The Patriots' victory last Sunday night certainly established them as the dominant team of this era, and one of the most dominant teams of any era. The only other NFL franchise to win three Super Bowls in four years was the 1992-95 Dallas Cowboys. And if they should somehow manage to win one more Super Bowl in the next two seasons, the Pats would put themselves in 1970s Steelers territory (four championships in six years).

After a day or two, though, I got to thinking: dominance doesn't necessarily mean dynastic. When this very topic arose Tuesday morning on the radio -- The Providence Journal Sports Report on The Score AM/FM -- I really got to thinking.

And I reached some conclusions:

* A sports dynasty, by its definition, means multiple championships.

* It also means success over a sustained period of time.

The Pats qualify on the multiple-championship count. But has their period of success -- four seasons, from 2001 to 2004 -- been long enough to make them a dynasty?

My opinion is no.

To me, a dynasty has to go beyond the number of championships won by one core group of players. It has to extend at least through two generations of talent, and maybe even different coaches, to reach Webster's defintion of a dynasty:

1. A succession of rulers from the same family or line.

2. A family or group that maintains power for several generations.

3. A sequence of powerful leaders in the same family.

It's not so much that the Pats don't qualify; it's that they can't qualify, not yet. This team -- for the sake of clarity, let's call it the Tom Brady/Willie McGinest/Tedy Bruschi team -- has yet to go through several generations. The powerful leaders today are the same as they were in 2001.

There've been individual changes, sure. Lawyer Milloy is gone, replaced by Rodney Harrison. Antowain Smith has given way to Corey Dillon. Damien Woody left. Ty Law may be next.

The core talent, though -- Brady and McGinest and Bruschi and Adam Vinatieri, and the wide receivers, and Ted Johnson and Roman Phifer -- that's the same. As long as it is, we're talking dominance. Not dynasty.

Things change constantly in sports, and in the NFL in particular. As Tom Curran writes elsewhere in these pages, the Pats are going through some changes this offseason that could possibly pull them into the next generation, at least as far as coaching and front-office personnel are concerned. Maybe next year at this time, the word "dynasty" might apply. Today, though, it doesn't.

Nor does it apply, under this definition, to a lot of NFL teams we think of as dynasties. The '70s Steelers won all their championships with the same basic group of players. So did the 1960s Green Bay Packers. And the 1990s Dallas Cowboys. If these Pats aren't dynasties, neither are they.

Of all the teams that generally get mentioned in this discussion, the San Francisco 49ers are the only one that make the grade. They won their first Super Bowl in 1981 with Bill Walsh as coach and Joe Montana at quarterback, and their last in 1994 with George Seifert as coach and Steve Young at quarterback. Their talent changed, their coaching changed, but they still won -- and they won in consecutive generations. Seifert and Young -- not to mention many others on the team -- were direct successors to the group that won four titles between 1981 and '89.

So the 49ers are one. Who else is there?

The graphic on the cover tells you who we've chosen as the top dynasties in each of the four major professional sports. On Page D3, we explain why.

The Patriots aren't there. Yet.

But stay tuned.

Art Martone is the sports editor of The Providence Journal. He can be reached via e-mail at amartone [at] projo.com