America is too quick to give out some of its most precious plaudits these days.

How about standing ovations? When I was a kid, a standing ovation meant something. It was reserved only for the most deserving. In some ways, it was the ultimate sign of respect and admiration. It was reserved for people who had shown great courage or had done something to make the world a better place, and it was dispensed sparingly.

As a youngster, I remember the Iranian hostages getting a standing ovation on some talk show, maybe Donahue. It sent chills up my spine. These days, the studio audience on “The View” will give you a standing O if you’ve slapped Tommy Lee with a restraining order.

What really needs a restraining order is everybody who’s throwing the term “dynasty” around so loosely. It’s come up a lot lately now that the New England Patriots are on the doorstep of their third Super Bowl in four years.

The Patriots are not a dynasty now, nor will they be if they win today and two weeks from today. They won’t be a dynasty if they win again next year, either. One of the greatest teams of all time, for certain, but not a dynasty.

There have only been three dynasties in North American professional sports — the New York Yankees, the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Celtics.

I’d like to claim this was an original thought, but it’s not. I heard Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan espouse it several years ago. I was lukewarm to it at first, but the more I thought about it, the clearer his essential point became. We should reserve the term “dynasty” for only the elite of the elite. It’s the only way to distinguish the greatest teams from the rest.

When we think of dynasties outside the sports realm, most of us think of the ancient Egyptian and Chinese dynasties. Power was handed down from generation to generation within these dynasties and families ruled for centuries.

While sports franchises don’t have to dominate for centuries to be dynasties, they should share other characteristics with their ancient predecessors. Their dominance should span generations of players. There should be enough roster turnover that one can sub-divide them into distinct, identifiable eras, with one great player or group of players acting as a centerpiece before giving way to the next centerpiece. And you should be able to link them. Maybe not like “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, but how about “Four Degrees of Larry Bird”?

One other thing, just so I don’t get any letters from Dodgers and Cardinals fans — they should win 40 percent of the titles over the given period of time.

The Yankees won 20 world championships from 1923 to 1962. That’s a title every other year. One can link the Yankee dynasty from Ruth to Gehrig to DiMaggio to Berra to Mantle.

The Canadiens won 15 Stanley Cups from 1956-1979. It’s a little bit shorter span, and hockey players play forever. You can link Jean Believeau to Guy Lafleur and cover all four decades.

The Celtics won 16 championships from 1959 to 1986, from Russell to Havlicek to Cowens to Bird. It should have been from Bird to Bias, too, but let’s just not think about that, okay?

The NFL has yet to produce a dynasty, even though the standards should be lowered a little just because football players have short careers. The best candidates are: the 1950-1957 Cleveland Browns, who appeared in six straight NFL championships and seven in eight years, winning three; the 1960-67 Green Bay Packers, who won three NFL championships before the Super Bowl was born, then won the first two Super Bowls; and the 1980-1994 San Francisco 49ers, who won five Super Bowls and played in nine conference championship games.

Even with such brief playing careers in the NFL, there’s too much carryover from the first championship those three teams won to the last to consider them dynasties. We can proclaim the 1950’s the “Cleveland Browns Era” or the 60s the “Green Bay Packers Era.” We can call the Steelers of the 70s or the Cowboys of the 90s “Team of the Decade,” but they are not dynasties.Neither are the Patriots.

Look, I’ll cut the Pats a little slack in this era of free agency and salary caps. If, 10 years from now, they’ve picked up another four or five Lombardi trophies, I’ll use the “D” word to describe them. But we’re a long way from that.

In the mean time, if you want to argue that they’re among the greatest football teams ever, be my guest. Heck, give em a standing ovation if you like.