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GA Nominee on hold

I am reviewing Notre Dame Fighting Irish football under Tyrone Willingham for Good Article status. I placed it on hold for a few minor changes. The nominator has been away from Wikipedia for the last nine days, so I am hoping that somebody from this project can help address my concerns. Any help would be appreciated. Best wishes, GaryColemanFan (talk) 16:20, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

As a quick update, this article will be failed if progress is not made by Wednesday. I fixed as many as I could by myself, and there isn't much more to do. GaryColemanFan (talk) 19:00, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
I've made a few fixes. If someone else wants to pitch in, they're more than welcome to. I haven't addressed any of the citation issues. JKBrooks85 (talk) 21:12, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Update: only two fairly small concerns remain (one clarification of a term and one fact needing a reference). I have addressed many of the points myself, but I need someone to help finish the list. If progress is not made within two days, I will fail the article. GaryColemanFan (talk) 17:34, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

NEED HELP PLEASE

A user by the name of SportsMaster (formally called SportsMasterESPN) keeps moving LSU athletics related articles to articles with "Louisiana State" in their name. For example, he has moved this article from LSU Tigers football (which is the consensus reached naming standard for this article) to Louisiana State Tigers football (which is not the accepted standard). He has done this multiple times over the past 6 to 8 months and every time its been corrected. I have asked the user to stop this but he continues to do it. Louisiana is the only state in the union that begins with the letter L. Therefore, LSU is not ambiguous whereas as MSU or OSU would be ambiguous. (i.e. Ohio State, Oregon State, Oklahoma State). No one refers to the LSU athletics program as Louisiana State and even the official website is LSUSports.net. I am tired of having to correct these article name changes. Is there anything that can be done to stop this user? He is becoming a nuisance. Thank you. Seancp (talk) 12:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Just to add, he doesn't only do this to the football article, he has also done it to LSU Tigers softball, LSU Tigers baseball, LSU Lady Tigers basketball and LSU Tigers basketball. Seancp (talk) 12:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Have you talked to any admins or the arbitration committee? JKBrooks85 (talk) 21:04, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I had a problem with them (when they were SportsMasterESPN) in reducing fair use images they uploaded. They (I suspected) had2 other sock puppet accounts. Eventually, I gave up caring and they forgot about it and then I went back and fixed it all like a month later. All the images (or most) are deleted now for being orphaned. Their complaint? "It's my image and I want it 600x600." Even though in the article it was no larger than 200px wide. I fully support the naming convention we've adopted with LSU (and other schools). I would be fine with having a redirect from "Louisiana State Tigers football" to the LSU titled article. Perhaps offer that as a compromise? Having the redirect there would make it harder to move the article there in the future as well. MECU≈talk 12:44, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

WP Signpost on FAC and FAR/C reviewing - REVIEWERS NEEDED

The Featured Article and Reatured Article Review processes have put out a call for reviewers. Any editor can review an article and contribute to consensus on whether that article is of FA status. A lot of college-football related articles are nominated for FA status, and sometimes these nominations are closed because there are not enough reviewers. This week's Signpost Dispatch, located at

Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-04-07/Dispatches

, explains the advantages of being a reviewer and details the aspects of reviewing that are critical to maintaining WP's high standards. Hope to see some new faces at FAC or FAR soon! Karanacs (talk) 14:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Requesting Review of FSU Seminoles

work is being done, would love some assessment on the article and any suggestions.--Nolephin (talk) 20:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


College Football Hall of Fame Heads Up

The new inductees were announced today. Check this article for info: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g7DNF1BFb3081Rj_6EnfU7pT8Z6gD90CV3A80 Seancp (talk) 17:07, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject College football May 2008 Newsletter

The College football WikiProject Newsletter
Issue VI - May 2008
Project news
From JKBrooks85

Welcome to the latest issue of the College football WikiProject newsletter! I hope that you're enjoying regular updates about the goings on of college football on Wikipedia, but if not, feel free to add your name to the "no delivery" section on the newsletter signup page.

I encourage everyone to make regular visits to the College Football Portal and perhaps make it your Wikipedia entry page instead of using the Main Page as your gateway. Nominations for selected articles and pictures are always welcome, and can serve as a great way to show off that new article you just shepherded to Good Article status or the great picture you took the last time you were at a game.

Comments and suggestions on improving the newsletter are always welcome, and help me improve it on a monthly basis. Keep contributing and editing, and don't hesitate to contact me or post on the College Football Wikiproject talk page if you need help or just want someone to look over your article.

New high-rank articles

To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please list yourself in the appropriate section here.

This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 22:48, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

A bit of help please

I'm working on a page for Gwinn Henry, a football coach from wayback... I'm finding that this guy coached at least at five schools! I have information on some but not all... specifically, Howard Payne University. Anyone got any information to chip in on this page?--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:06, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Just looked through a few of my reliable sources -- reliable except for this, it appears. Sorry. JKBrooks85 (talk) 03:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
On second thought, you might try the college football bibliography (http://www.amazon.com/College-Football-Bibliography-Bibliographies-Indexes/dp/0313290261/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210846808&sr=8-16) at your local library. There's an off chance that it might be able to direct you to a source that has the information you need. I know that book has helped me out immensely. Just wish I could afford a copy of my own. I'd also suggest contacting the schools directly to see if they have any self-published histories that you could cite. JKBrooks85 (talk) 10:27, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Mainpage cleanup

I think the mainpage is in need of cleanup. This is what I think needs to happen:

  • Structure - needs to be expanded with template help, single game structure, among other things.
  • Other subpages - should move to structure.
  • Lists - semi thrown together. Needs something else to it.
  • New College football articles - This list it getting too long. I believe their should be a week or month limit on the showcasing of new articles.
  • College football articles needing help - needs general cleanup.
  • Notable football schools that do not have separate athletics pages and Notable schools with athletics pages, but no football page - needs updating and expansion.

I would like other peoples opinions since this is a collaboration page. Thanks, PGPirate 18:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

FL help

Following the excellent work that CrdHwk began with Iowa Hawkeyes football seasons, I started working on Appalachian State Mountaineers football seasons last December. I recently nominated it as a featured list candidate, but I need some help getting it passed and working through the recommendations that The Rambling Man has suggested. I've pretty much followed the conventions that the Iowa and East Carolina Pirates football seasons have used, but he's bending me over with his lengthy list of suggestions. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm on the verge of shrugging my shoulders and delisting the page. Geologik (talk) 17:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

The review for this list has been extended. I've gotten a couple supports so far, and I'd ask if anyone has the time to please take a look. Edit, make suggestions, oppose, support, etc. - provide some input. Thanks! Geologik (talk) 21:17, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

HELP! Emergency Action Required!

User User:Stifle has been deleting head coach pages without providing an opportunity for discussion. In a matter of a few minutes, the user wiped out all work I had completed on coaches for Prairie View A&M University, including coach Ronald Beard, the worst performing coach in NCAA history (4 years as a head coach without a single victory).--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:17, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

All Project Members: please go to the deletion discussion and comment (here's how). I recommend Overturn (undelete) and give reasons as you see fit.

Sample reasons: please make up your own, too!

  • Article has sufficient sourcing already to prove notability
  • Notable coach
  • Division I FBS School head coaches are notable
  • Reliable sources cited
  • Similar to discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mike Gottsch with consensus Keep
  • Useful for peer-to-peer review of coaching histories
  • WP:CFB has already defined collegiate football coaches as notable by default
  • There are hundreds of other college football head coach articles on Wikipedia-to delete these in particular is irrational
  • Prairie View A&M University is notable infamously because of its historically poor record

The admin speedy-deleted 22 articles in 6 minutes.

These are just some samples, please enter your own words! And also, please enter on each coach that you can. Specifically, Ronald Beard had a record of 0-44 in 4 years to post the worst lifetime record as a head coach, and the school has the longest losing streak in college football.--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:51, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Take all of them to WP:DRV then, looks on the surface like a gaffe on stifle's part. Wizardman 21:03, 16 May 2008 (UTC) (Nevermind, you already did. it'll e taken care of then)
I left a message on here just a minute ago. Olease check the revision history of this page and read, it's very vital! <#1 Metallica Fan Your Hancock 21:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
The discussion appears to have been closed by Stifle? What's the next step to get this decision reversed? JKBrooks85 (talk) 22:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

What's next Now the admin (he?) is doing individual AFDs for each article. We have to go to each article page and insert comments on the pages as he makes them. Fortunately, we can wait just a bit because it will take him some time. And also fortunately, there's a cool NAVBOX at the bottom of each coach's page so we can enter our comments that way.

All the admin is really doing is creating a lot more work for an issue that could have been easily resolved.

I believe that the administrator is being totally unreasonable, and several others have made similar comments. I will be researching on how to get assistance from a different administrator on this matter and will keep you posted.--Paul McDonald (talk) 22:10, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Please do. This admin needs to have his priveledges revoked. It's just absolutely ridiculous what he's doing. Isn't there an "incident reporting" place? Can he be reported to that? Seancp (talk) 22:39, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Hey Paul - One of the coaches William J. Nicks is in the College Football Hall of Fame. That should be notable enough to keep him from being deleted. I've been searching for a media guide and digging around on the SWAC page as well looking for information. I read his replies to you on his talk page, and he is one smug dude. And to top it off he admits to not even following college football. As Sean suggested, I think there is a page somewhere where you can report administrators. He's definitely being heavy-handed. Geologik (talk) 22:45, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Yup, it's Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. I'm giving it to you because I have every confidence that nothing will come out of this. Unfortunately you're quite wrong in saying that I am being totally unreasonable and need to have my privileges revoked. I reversed the speedy deletion after the review, and that's it as far as administrative actions have gone. Nothing else is a use of my administrative rights, just normal editorial actions. I've bundled the articles into just five AFD nominations, and they're listed on today's page at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. If you can show me a couple of media references for any of these guys which comply with the reliable sources requirements and tell me how they're notable, I'll gladly withdraw that deletion request. I'm just about to head off for the night (I'm on the far side of the Atlantic to most of you folks, I suspect) so I wish you all a good evening :) Stifle (talk) 23:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

As an admin myself, I encourage nobody to bother bringing this up at WP:ANI, as like Stifle says, nothing will come out of it. The initial deletions were done improperly, but that's already been reversed at DRV, and AfDing them is entirely appropriate if he thinks they should be deleted in good faith. If you want to voice your opinion, you can do so at the AfDs, this doesn't really need to go to ANI. VegaDark (talk) 23:30, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Paul, can you instead come up with some other sources? I think defending these articles from deletion should come first. JKBrooks85 (talk) 01:06, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Been working on that, too! Check out several of the articles!--Paul McDonald (talk) 06:25, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
I did see that. Good work! Hopefully that'll be enough to save them. You're really on the ball with this. JKBrooks85 (talk) 07:26, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

A new wikipedia sub project

Hi, I started a new project in a sub page but I asked a user if it was good enough to be a project, he said I should ask y'all. I would just like to say that it's well known that the Razorbacks are good historically in sports and this would make it so much more easier to keep up with all the article's. So what do you think? <#1 Metallica Fan Your Hancock 21:54, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

A+ on enthusiasm, that's for sure! However, I don't think that an extra project is a good move because that would end up creating lots and lots of projects within college football, and that would be difficult for us to build a more uniform look and feel to college football articles. Here's some reasons:
  1. The issue we're going through right now (see above) with an administrator speedy-deleting articles is a problem and harmful to our project. If we separated projects by team, we would not have as much influence
  2. Coaches tend to travel from one team to another (the Hogs own Houston Nutt for example). It is very helpful to track and maintain edits under the umbrella of college football.
  3. Having one project per team runs the risk of Wikipedia "point-of-view" violations, and that would be harmful to your team pages and the project in general--Paul McDonald (talk) 22:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, O.k I see your point, and I think this wold be a project I would like to get envolved with! <#1 Metallica Fan Your Hancock 23:06, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
I can understand Paul's concern, but if you can find others who think as you do, go for it! As long as we're creating more CFB articles, I don't really care how it's done, personally. JKBrooks85 (talk) 08:08, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Third Time, Deletion Proposed

For the third time, Oscar Dahlene‎ has been proposed for deletion. What gives?--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:38, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Paul, if they're not kept, I'd suggest merging them into a "Coaches of XX school" article so we don't lose the information. Once you or someone else comes up with more sources, we can split out the different coaches' tenures. A similar reason is behind why we have articles like Notre Dame Fighting Irish football under Tyrone Willingham — at the time, there wasn't enough information to justify year-by-year articles. I know you've put a lot of work in creating these individual coaches' articles, and I'd love to save them, but if they're not, it's an alternative. JKBrooks85 (talk) 03:50, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
That might be what the consensus ends up doing. The problem is that would be a very clumsy page. Washburn University, for example, has a history of I think 40 coaches. That makes for a real busy page.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:57, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, you're right -- but I don't think we have much of a choice for now. Better to have the information at least on Wikipedia somewhere, even if it's not the way we'd ultimately like to have it presented. As more sources are uncovered (if someone writes a nice history of pre-1950s NAIA football coaches, forex) we can start to think about spinning them out. I just hate to say that after all the work you've done, though. Rest assured, regardless of what happens, that work is appreciated. JKBrooks85 (talk) 08:07, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm sure the work is appreciated and it's not just an ego thing for me (okay, a little) but ultimately I want what's best for Wikipedia. If we did combine the "single-season coaches" into the schools "football coach page" and then had stand-alone articles for the coaches with more information, how would that look--appear--function? That's gonna be a heckuva lotta re-writes!--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:46, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough, but the whole point of Wikipedia is to be flexible and easy to re-write. It's a matter of a few clicks and keystrokes to get your information out into another page. JKBrooks85 (talk) 20:08, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Some things to consider:

  • Oscar Dahlene was not a NAIA coach since it was founded 1937
  • Sub dividing of NCAA did not happen around late 1930’s meaning he was coaching at the highest level of College Football at the time.
  • In the late 1890’s and early 1900’s teams we considered major powers were playing and losing to other schools that we now considered small college. For example Ohio State played and lost to Oberlin, Wittenberg and Ohio Wesleyan. West Virginia played and lost to West Virginia Wesleyan. Kentucky played and lost to Transylvania and Centre. If you look at the article Ottawa University played Kansas the year Dahlene coached them.
  • Why is Oscar Dahlene less significant than Arthur Smith (an article I wrote)? Smith only won one game and that was against a club team. Was it because the administration many years latter decided to play football at the highest level? Is it because 50 or so years later Maimi was able to hire several coaches that ended up in the College Football Hall of Fame so it became know as the Cradle of Coaches? I would guess that 99.999% of Miami University fans would not even know Smith coached at the school.
  • Why is Harry Jacoby a significant coach? He coached Boise State when they were a junior college and had a career losing record.
  • If Ottawa University decided to move up to Division 1A? Is Oscar Dahlene now a significant coach because some administration 100 years later made a decision to emphases football?

My point is that this project has been dancing around what is a significant coach for as long as I can remember. It is kind of like pornography, you know it when you see it. What is pornography to one person is art to another. All I know is what listed on the Notability page is not very useful. something needs to be done. 09er (talk) 15:58, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

These are all very good points, ones that I hadn't considered. Would you mind posting them on the discussion page? (Will I be accused of "canvassing" for asking for that?)--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
An even bigger question is that if we can create notability guidelines, will we be able to make them stick if someone nominates an article for AfD? JKBrooks85 (talk) 20:11, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
I woudl be very much in favor of creating strong notability guidelines for coaches, programs, etc. Right now, we don't include NJCAA programs or other schools outside NCAA and NAIA... but why? And why do we include NAIA? I believe we have valid reason for that, but we don't have a page really we can link to and say "here's why" ... as you say, getting them to stick would be more work and effort, but a well-defined guideline page would help--especially if we set up pre-emptive arguments and commonly asked questions.--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:36, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Paul, if you're serious about this, head over to Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Style Guide and write out in the notability section what you think the notability guidelines should be for coaches. We can work on it there without cluttering up this talk page too much. JKBrooks85 (talk) 22:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Just took a stab at it, let me know what you think...
Good stuff, but I don't think you need to have all those justifications. As long as we have a codified style guide and notability guidelines that were approved by consensus, justifications should be irrelevant. JKBrooks85 (talk) 23:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
Kneejerk reaction! It's a lot easier to remove stuff than it is to think it up in the first place!--Paul McDonald (talk) 23:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I'm not saying to delete it! It's valuable information; I'll just move it to a "justifications" page linked to from that page. Would that work? That way, we've got a page we can show to folks while still keeping the style guide page as clean as possible. JKBrooks85 (talk) 01:32, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
I had been working on Wikipedia:WikiProject College Football/Notability, maybe that would be a good place too...--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:53, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Good point. JKBrooks85 (talk) 03:09, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
I just worked the two together, trimming the "style guide" and referencing to the "notability" discussion, where I copied all the coach notability work just done.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:37, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Project Notability Page

I've just put the final touches on the first draft of Wikipedia:WikiProject College Football/Notability. It's ready for review and discussion. Please use the notability talk page for discussion.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:05, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

hmmm... there's also another page Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Notability (Notice the uppercase/lowercase "Football/football").--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:07, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Looking pretty good... but we need more input. Come on, folks! I don't think you want just me and Paul drafting guidelines, here. JKBrooks85 (talk) 09:41, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

hmmm... only the teams that I like are notable... yeah... that's it! Everyone please at least review the notability page and put a comment or two on its talk page.--Paul McDonald (talk) 04:36, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
Paul, I'd suggest being WP:BOLD on this one and moving the current proposed Notability thing to an archive and replacing it with yours. That'll get some attention, and yours is a bit more polished, I think. JKBrooks85 (talk) 06:13, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Sprint Football

I don't want to take it on... but what do you guys think about Sprint Football as being a part of our project?--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:13, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

If there's interest in it, I'd say to go for it. Right now, however, we don't have enough editors to get all the CFB articles that should be written done. JKBrooks85 (talk) 08:39, 26 May 2008 (UTC)


Use of bolding in stadium templates

Currently, the templates at Category:American college football venue navigational boxes (both the "by state" and "by conference" sets) use the following formatting: Bold for the stadium name followed by the common name of the university non-bolded in parenthesis.

Here is an example:

An issue has been raised at {{Michigan college football venues}} (see the edit history) that this formatting interferes with the auto-bolding of the current article and it has been suggested that it be changed to this:

I, personally, have no preference, but do feel that all 77 (48 in the "by state" subcat and 29 in the "by conference" subcat) of the templates should match and not have just the Michigan one be formatted differently. So, I bring the topic here for discussion. Thoughts would be appreciated. --Gwguffey (talk) 04:59, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

(follow-up comment) The bolding format is currently the standard used in the college basketball templates in Category:College basketball venue templates and the three college baseball facility templates in Category:American college sports venue navigational boxes. --Gwguffey (talk) 05:13, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

In it interest of full-disclosure, it was I who suggested/made the change to remove the bolding. Like Gwguffey said, the bolding interferes with the auto-bolding that occurs when viewing the template via one of the articles in the template. I also feel that it isn't necessary to have each of the templates have the exact same format. I'm of the belief that consistency is important within an article, but is not as important across articles. Enforcing strict consistency reduces the ability for Wikipedia articles to improve if when one article is updated, not all articles are updated. But I suppose this discussion is more of a Wikipedia-wide discussion than to college football templates. – X96lee15 (talk) 17:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Interesting idea, and there is a somewhat larger issue: That being, do we want to have one page or group (in this case, Michigan fans) to dictate protocol for all of the college football project. Hmmm... Can't say I'm super-excited about the precedent. That said, I'm glad that this conversation is taking place! Suggestions are always welcome!
Back to the issue at hand, personally I like the bolding in the template. Reason? I like it.--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:46, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
That's not an issue at all. It's not a "group of fans", it's one person trying to improve a single template. Also, it should have absolutely zero bearing on a discussion who I am a "fan" of. — X96lee15 (talk) 04:27, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not saying that you are a "Michigan fan" but someone most likely is, and that someone or group of someones has put "stuff" on the "Michigan" templates/pages which appear to be interfering with this project in general. That's all.--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
I also like the templates as they are now with bolded stadium names. I think it's easier on the eyes and quicker for navigation. Although I'd be fine with either. Really nice work on all of those too Gwguffey! Geologik (talk) 03:28, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for the kind words, Geologik. It was a fun project to research. Now, let me see if I can quantify your statement about being "quicker on the eyes and easier for navigation". I am guessing that what you are drawn to is that with the bolding you are drawn to the stadium names while the school names are secondary. Thus, you can scan the stadium names and tune out the university names. Without the bolding, both of those pieces of information are given equal visual weight. So, in a perfect world, there would be a way to have neither the equal weighting nor the interference with the current article auto bold. Here's an experiment using <small> for the university names:
I'm not sure there is enough difference between the font sizes, but I'm used to the bolding, so my perception may be skewed. Anyway, it is something to discuss. (side note: this discussion would probably not be occurring if all the of stadiums had articles, as there would be no black text to get mixed up with the auto-bold) --Gwguffey (talk) 05:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


Reliable Sources

I've just started Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Reliable Sources, an essay on use of reliable sources within our project. Everyone please take a look and jump in with comments or adding to it!--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:22, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I have a problem on how you listed http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com. I really do not have a problem with it being a fan site, because he list his references. [2] My problem is it is an incomplete data base. Maybe in 5 to 10 years when the data base is finished, I would consider it a reliable source. It is usually very accurate on the record a coach had at school but it is not reliable for career record of a coach. Several very notable coaches have coached at schools that have not been entered into the data base. Several examples are:
Edwin Sweetland – no mention of his time at Hamilton or Alfred [3]
Sol Metzger– no mention of his time at Washington and Jefferson [4]
John W. Heisman – no mention of his time at Oberlin [5]
Hal Mumme - no mention of his time Iowa Wesleyan or Valdosta State [6]
Stu Holcomb - no mention of his time Findlay, Muskingum or Washington and Jefferson [7]
Andrew Kerr - no mention of his time at Washington & Jefferson and Lebanon Valley. [8]
Amos Alonzo Stagg- no mention of his time at Springfield [9]
If you are going to list on that page you should definitely state that the site is a work in progress and to verify career record with other sources. 09er (talk) 03:17, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd say you're right! I won't get to it right away, feel free to make an edit yourself, if you like!--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:42, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 1571 articles assigned to this project, or 10.2%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 18 June 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 12:18, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Do it! Can you dump it to Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/To do full list??--Paul McDonald (talk) 12:36, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
How do I remove an article from that list? I've updated 2005 Sugar Bowl, but can't get rid of it at the top of the list. JKBrooks85 (talk) 19:51, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I have a question about three featured list: Lists of Michigan Wolverines football passing leaders, Lists of Michigan Wolverines football receiving leaders, Lists of Michigan Wolverines football rushing leaders. Does anyone else think the intro is too Michigan Wolverines football centered? I believe it should be more about each list. It even says in the FLC that the user pretty much copied each intro verbatim. I hate to rag on a CFB featured content, but I am curious to everyone else thought.

Well, the topic is about Michigan, after all. It's not how I would've written it, but I understand that folks write differently. JKBrooks85 (talk) 06:48, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

FBS national championship article

NCAA Division I-A National Football Championship is obviously in need of a major rewrite and renaming. This has been discussed for months and over the winter I put together a massive list using the best resources available. I took a wikibreak following the creation of that list, and upon my return noticed that the article has gone from bad to worse to downright terrible, full of POV and patched-up sections. The "By year" list alone has been redone dozens of times, and the current list is unacceptably sparse. I originally uploaded my new list to my user page and recently took the liberty of creating a whole new quasi-article for the subject, on my user page, complete with a lot of good information and two new "Most national championships" lists. I would not expect this new article to replace the current one, but it is a great start and I hope we can get some discussion going about how to salvage one of college football's most important yet most deteriorating articles. Iowa13 (talk) 18:57, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

One more note: as, right now, it doesn't seem as if any change will come about on this issue, I would advise anyone looking for REAL and GOOD information about the national championship to skip the bullcrap and go here. Peace Iowa13 (talk) 03:25, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


Players notability expansion?

I've added a few more acceptable categories to Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Notability#Players, specifically adding the guideline "Goes on to play in the American Football League, Canadian Football League, or other comparable professional league" such as the United States Football League. Please review and give opinions. Is it too broad? Not broad enough? Worded differently?--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:21, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm kinda hinky on the USFL or WFL ... mainly because I look at WP:Athlete's notability, which says "Competitors who have competed in a fully professional league." To me, that opens the door to everybody who's ever played in the Intense Football League or arenafootball2. Many of the players in those leagues may not have even started a game for a college team, yet would be notable for playing in a professional league. I'd strongly suggest limiting it to NFL or CFL players at the present time. We can always reconsider later. JKBrooks85 (talk) 10:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
That's probably good advice. I think we might could take the stance that since the USFL was only 3 years long, any noteworthy player was picked up by an NFL team after the league closed. But then that leaves the question of historic leagues--what about the AFL players before the merger. for instance?--Paul McDonald (talk) 11:35, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Would the NFL WikiProject take a stand on the USFL, AFL, Arenafootball2, etc, player notability? Or any other WikiProject? I believe we should take direction from other WikiProjects, since it would be the end-job of a college player that would potentially make them notable. PGPirate 12:43, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Y'know, in some sense that does make sense. Here's another thought: if they are notable because they were an NFL player, they are notable--the college playing has no additional impact on notability. Hmmm...--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:45, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Correct, we need to establish if non-NFL football sports are considered notable. If so, then those players will be considered notable in college. But, I do not feel that College Football WikiProject has the authority to grant "notability" for those entities. PGPirate 14:46, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
I'll go put an invitation on the NFL, CFL, and other similar projects to join in on this discussion.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:50, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't see why not. I'm for including everyone who has ever played college football having an article, providing an article can contain more than "Player X was a Position Y for College Z". Call it the Inclusionist in me. -- MeHolla! 16:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
That would unleash hundreds of thousands of new articles. People over at WP:BIO would have a problem with it. I can understand their concern. We do not need an article for every college football player ever. I believe our current notability guideline, minus this new question, is sufficient. PGPirate 17:14, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not so much worried about thousands of new articles that I am the fact that they could be a bit crufty if everyone who ever played a snap in college decides to create an article about themselves. JKBrooks85 (talk) 22:42, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Since everything would have to be sourced, I don't see the problem in that. Not that it's best case scenario, but it shouldn't be a deal breaker. -- MeHolla! 23:01, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with this as long as the league they play in is entirely professional. After all, there are thousands of soccer players on Wikipedia. Bettia (rawr CRUSH!) 08:56, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
Well according to our wikipedia, there are currently eight professional leagues: National Football League, Arena Football League, Arenafootball2 (af2), American Professional Football League, American Indoor Football Association, United Indoor Football, Continental Indoor Football League and Intense Football League. Are all these players, minus NFL, considered notable now? How about these current semi-pro leagues: Mid Continental Football League, North American Football League, Southern States Football League, Minor League Football Association, Empire Football League, Florida Football Alliance and Central Football League. How about historical major leagues? Such as All-America Football Conference, American Football League x4, World Football League, United States Football League and XFL. Or these historical minor leagues? American Football League, Dixie League, American Association, American Football League, American Football League, Pacific Coast Professional Football League, American Football League, United Football League, Atlantic Coast Football League, Continental Football League, North American Football League, Professional Spring Football League, Professional Indoor Football League, Regional Football League, Indoor Football League, Spring Football League, Indoor Professional Football League, National Indoor Football League, Eastern Indoor Football League and World Indoor Football League. Where is the line drawn? PGPirate 12:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

All the Pro Leagues I think it's safe to say we can divide all the pro leagues into categories:

League Division Example Player Notable?
existing, recent, or historic professional league with project team National Football League
Canadian Football League 		If the project team (NFL and CFL) says the player is notable, then the player is notable. No need for us to "add a second layer of notability" If the project does not declare notability for players (AFL and AF2), then why should we?
existing, recent, or historic professional league without project team United Indoor Football If the league isn't picked up by a project (not even Wiki Sports) then the league is barely notable, so how can a player in the league be notable? Notability rules would still apply--if someone wins the Heisman then goes to play in the UIF, then they're notable.
Semi-pro or "minor leauge" league Mid Continental Football League Nope.

In short, if there is a project that says that a college player goes on to play professionally, and that project calles the player notable, I don't want to argue. If that project does not call the player notable, then that player would have to stand on its own notability achievements outside of that league. The problem is that we're left with the same problem--how do we determine if a specific college player is notable? I don't want to say that no players are notable, but I also don't think that "only players who go to the NFL" are notable either...--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:05, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

So basically, the guideline should be that we follow the notability guidelines of other projects in regard to professional careers? JKBrooks85 (talk) 05:10, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
Edit: If a player is not notable under any of the CFB guidelines, but has notability due to the guidelines of another wikiproject, he is notable. JKBrooks85 (talk) 05:12, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Notability Message Template

I've been working on Template:CFNotability, a notability message template. It's designed to go in the TALK page of a user that questions notability. However, I don't know a lot about templates, and I'd like to get some feedback anyway from others on the project. Please review.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:50, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Moved it to Template:CFBNotability to match standards. Also starting work on Template:CFBPriority for article pages--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:55, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
There's gotta be a template help page somewhere on Wikipedia. JKBrooks85 (talk) 22:43, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Throw up {{helpme}} and someone will come. PGPirate 11:56, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

  • The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
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  • A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 22:05, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Possible duplication

Are George McLaren (football coach) and George McLaren the same person? Neither have a date of birth but both coached college football teams in the same era. Crickettragic (talk) 02:09, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

  • Going to CFBDW, George McLaren was the coach of Arkansas, Cincinnati and Wyoming with no mention of ESU. But, ESU does not have a active page on that website. I feel they are the same person, but as of right now, cannot say either way. PGPirate 12:29, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes
    *From p. 36 of the “The Razorbacks: A Story of Arkansas Football” By Orville Henry, Jim Bailey: “Two years proved maximum, even for such a personally popular coach as young George McLaren, Schmidt's immediate predecessor. McLaren had been a Pittsburgh All-American in 1917 under Pop Warner.“
    *From the New York Times May 2, 1919, Section: Sports, Page 16: "George McLaren, The University of Pittsburgh’s All-American fullback and Captain of the Panther eleven last year has accepted a position as coach of football, basketball and track athletics at Kansas State Normal College, Emporia Kansas and next fall will assume his duties there. McLaren was recommended for the position by Coach Glenn S. Warner …” Note: Emporia State University used to be called Kansas State Normal College.
    *Also here is a link to his College Hall of Fame bio but no mentioned on where he coached.
    *Also here is a link from the Pitt Panthers site about his time there. 09er (talk) 19:47, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Nice work, 09er! JKBrooks85 (talk) 03:30, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I have merged the two articles into George McLaren. I also added a lot of additional info about his early life and his time at Pitt. I also removed the stub tag from the front of the article. Could someone please review and re-assess the article? Thanks 09er (talk) 20:48, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Looks great! Just read it!--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Very nice. Thanks for doing that, 09er. JKBrooks85 (talk) 19:31, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

1949 Rose Bowl

In connection with the History of Northwestern University, I created the article for the 1949 Rose Bowl based primarily off of the template for the '48 game. However, someone more experienced should probably give it the once over to make sure everything meets this Project's standards and criteria. Madcoverboy (talk) 05:26, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

FLC help requested

There are two college football Featured List candidates that are about to expire for lack of support: Virginia Tech Hokies football seasons and List of Arkansas Razorbacks in the NFL Draft. Your help is needed to get these articles to featured list status. Without your comments and support, they'll be forced to go through the process again. It only takes a minute or two to suggest some changes or give your support, and your assistance is highly valued. Thanks for your time. JKBrooks85 (talk) 19:37, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Put in a support vote for both. Nice work gentlemen! Geologik (talk) 20:11, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your support and the compliment, Geologik! JKBrooks85 (talk) 22:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

A big thank you goes to everyone who offered comments and/or support. Both articles have passed review and are now featured! JKBrooks85 (talk) 06:44, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


Mythical National Championship

Correct me if I have come to the wrong place, but I would like the opinion of some of the members of this project to take a look into the Mythical National Championship. This article cites no sources and does not seem notable. It seems to me more like taking a jab at the term National Championship. The term is also in the first line of the article for NCAA Division I FBS National Football Championship. I vote that the page should be deleted but in the very least, the term be removed from any other pages such as the NCAA pages. What are some other opinions? Thanks. Brinkley32 (talk) 20:15, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

We'll definitely take a look at it. The article does cite one source (which of course is not enough) but remember that it is speaking generally to the concept of a "mytical national championship" -- a concept that exists not only in NCAA but high schools as well, and maybe even other governing bodies of sports and competitive events (mythical national championship of pee wee darts, or mythical national championship of apple pie baking, maybe...). The article NCAA Division I FBS National Football Championship is a specific application of the more general mythical national championship.--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:38, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed renaming of coach navbox templates

I'm proposing to renaming each of the coach navbox templates to remove ambiguity from what the templates contain. Currently, the name is of the form: "<mascot>Coach" If there is are two schools with the same mascot, then it is the form: "<some non-standard school abbreviation><mascot>Coach" The ambiguity lies in the fact that the navboxes do not say what sport the coaches are for (the college basketball coach templates are the first thing that jump to mind) and the "<team mascot>Coach" can be very confusing in some cases, such as {{OrangeCoach}}, {{VolunteersCoach}} and {{UKyFbCoach}}. The new naming scheme would be "<school name minus 'university of' or 'university'> <mascot> football coach navbox". For example, {{AFFalconsCoach}} would be {{Air Force Falcons football coach navbox}}. It's a bit long, but I think it's more intuitive than the current system. It also more closely follows the naming convention for the football articles (e.g. Air Force Falcons football). — X96lee15 (talk) 22:24, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, except that the name is largely not relevant. Unlike articles, people aren't really searching for the names of them. They have the VDE links on them, so the name is not important, as someone wants to edit it, they just click it there. If you want to "fix" it, go ahead, but I think there are more pressing issues (content) to work on. MECU≈talk 00:03, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
I sometimes wonder about that myself. It would be handy to have it be in a standard format for creating articles (and thus navboxes) and it would also help give our project more of a "sense of standard" and that ain't nothing. I'd classify it as certainly a good idea but one of relatively low impact.--Paul McDonald (talk) 11:24, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Memorial Stadium Nightmare

Over my creation of college football season articles, I have encountered Memorial Stadiums young and old alike. However, there seems to be no standard format for saying which University the Stadium belongs to in the title of the article. I have encountered:

same with War Memorial Stadiums (to a lesser extent)

which leads me to guessing and hoping I don't get redlinked. Are there naming conventions (or could there be some put) in place to prevent this? Brandonrush Woo pig sooie 00:54, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Good question. I suggest the following:

Description Generic Layout Example
Easily unique name Stadium Name Jacksonville Municipal Stadium
Name with possible disambiguation Stadium Name (stadium) Rose Bowl (stadium)
More complex name with multiple locations Stadium Name (owner/operator) Memorial Stadium (Kansas State)
Demolished/renamed stadium Stadium Name (owner/operator-current/old/1920-1955/etc)

Don't forget all the Stagg Field locations across the country, too!--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:24, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

We need more images!

I just posted a first draft of Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Images -- it's an essay on image use in the project. We need more photos!--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:52, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Some of the best places to ask are on fansites. If you make a posting saying that they're for Wikipedia, you should get plenty of responses, and all you'll have to do is follow the labyrinthine permitting process. JKBrooks85 (talk) 19:58, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Last year, before the season, I implored the WikiProject members who attend football games to go out and take as many useful photos as possible (and even try and cover nearby stuff like college campuses that may not have good pictures yet). I had a lot of luck. I'll probably make a new section before the upcoming season, but here's a few techniques I found useful: if a team has a traditional march to the stadium before the game, its great for players and coaches. If they have a place they rally after the game (esp. visiting teams) to meet with family, that's another good place. Some stadiums, like Nebraska's Memorial Stadium, are set up so that people can walk only a few feet behind each bench on the same level --I was able to take photos of half the USC football team following those techniques. --Bobak (talk) 20:19, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
I was wondering how you got those for the season article ... looked as though you were on the field with the players! JKBrooks85 (talk) 22:51, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
I know, it was pretty awesome --they looked just as amazed that we were so close. One technique --if you're ever in that situation, the trick is to use as high a resolution as your camera will allow and just click fairly wide shots and see what you come up with later. A few of them were actually cropped from the same photo. Some players are willing to pose if you get them after the game (calling their name with a nice tone usually gets a smile and a wave); USC's slightly more tricky because they don't have names on their jerseys so you need to know the number. --Bobak (talk) 01:44, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Bobak, would you mind taking a crack at Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Images? I think you could put together a nice "tips" section!--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:45, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Sure, no problem. --Bobak (talk) 18:20, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I tested the idea of attending a fall practice this past Friday and it was a smashing success --I was able to get photos of almost every major USC player and coach. While its unusual for all practices to be open to the public, most programs at least have one or two open practices or scrimmages and (even if not) you can wait until the end of practice (which is usually posted publicly) and ask for photos as players and coaches leave (there are often kids who wait for autographs outside anyway). The flip side is I also witnessed a major team storyline as the starting QB dislocated his kneecap at the same practice, leaving me with photos of first instances of the previous back-ups practicing with the first-team offense. So, in summary: consider hanging around an open practice or hanging around after a practice gets out and you'll find college players and coaches are usually pretty friendly (though a bit tired) and willing to smile for a photo. --Bobak (talk) 16:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Ralphie

As part of GA Sweeps, I am reassessing the Ralphie article. The talk page indicates that the article is within the scope of this project, so I am letting the editors know that the article will be on hold for seven days to allow for the improvements I have listed on the talk page. Thanks. Nikki311 23:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I've also started the process with Sparty, which will also remain on hold for seven days. Nikki311 00:43, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Somebody want to split these with me? I'll take one, if someone else can grab the other. JKBrooks85 (talk) 08:47, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
I'll take Ralphie. Though some of the comments on the re-review seem nit-picky and preferential, and perhaps not really enough to downgrade from GA and would have taken less time to correct that initiate the review and advertise it... MECU≈talk 22:32, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
I guess I'll tackle Sparty, then. JKBrooks85 (talk) 03:24, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Coaching tree

Would a coaching tree be appropriate for Wikipedia? If so, would one generation backward and forward be enough? i.e. Here is Skip Holtz tree:

Additional Peer Review request

Hello everyone, I've been working on the 2007 USC Trojans football team season article for the past year or so (not continuously), and last February a well-meaning editor pushed it for peer review well before it was quite ready for review --in a positive result it garnered good tips from Phydend (which have been followed). Now, after some delays on my part, I think the article is ready for a good examination by peers before applying for GA status. The original peer review is still open here, please feel free to chime in there or in general. I hope to one day achieve the same level as 2005 Texas FA, which, in conjunction with 2005 USC GA (mostly by Phydend), I used as models for 2007 USC. --Bobak (talk) 16:54, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

You got it. Good work. JKBrooks85 (talk) 21:08, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the input. After making those changes (save for breaking out the smaller daughter articles), I've gone ahead with the GA nom (I'll save the daughter article question for the FA nom). Anyone else want to give suggestions? They're all welcome. --Bobak (talk) 18:28, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
You think it'd be okay if I did the GAR for it? Or would that be a conflict of interest? I'm inclined toward the latter, myself. JKBrooks85 (talk) 08:49, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't know, but I would be safe and go with the latter unless I see policy written otherwise. How long do you think it'll be in the GA nom queue? --Bobak (talk) 15:05, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Given past experience, at least a month. If you're in a hurry, try contacting someone who's done a GA review in the past. JKBrooks85 (talk) 21:03, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
If you're interested, Nikki311 and ThinkBlue have been going through the GAs ... you might try contacting them if you want to get it reviewed more quickly. JKBrooks85 (talk) 23:42, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
Update

The article was elevated to GA status today; however the WikiProject tag on the talk page still assesses it as a "Start" with an open Peer Review... Could someone more knowledgeable with the tag close the peer review and archive it? (and maybe give the article an higher assessment ;-) ). --Bobak (talk) 23:09, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

We need to close the peer review, otherwise I can't take it to FA (or start a pre-FA peer review). --Bobak (talk) 14:06, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


2007 USC FA nom

After a general peer review, I've nominated 2007 USC Trojans football team for FA. If you have time, please come by and take a look and offer any feedback --I think its to the point set by 2005 Texas Longhorn football team. --Bobak (talk) 18:47, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to second this. It's a lengthy article, and the more eyes that look it over, the better. JKBrooks85 (talk) 07:04, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

"A Football Feast to be Set Forth", looking back to a season preview: 1916

92 years and 7 days ago... The title says it all: A FOOTBALL FEAST TO BE SET FORTH. Come, fellow college football Wikipedians, and share in the ancient scribblings of our beloved game. I'm currently working on a Peer Review, and in searching for an old article I ended up stumbling upon this pretty awesome article in The New York Times, previewing the 1916 season. Remember, this was a time well before the success of the NFL, when college football dominated the news and was still considered a bit high brow. This article is available here, click on "view full article" to get the PDF scan of the original piece from August 14, 1916... See your favorite teams like Virginia Poly (before it was more commonly known as Virginia Tech) challenge the powers at Yale; Notre Dame versus the Michigan Aggies (now known as the Michigan State Spartans); Georgetown versus Louisville; the Carlisle Indian Schools is looking weaker this season; Chicago versus Minnesota; California (a powerhouse) versus the upstarts from Southern California; "South California" (sic) versus Oregon; and gate receipts that could surpass the incredible sum of $200,000! This is a fun read for college football buffs, and if anyone is working with articles from that era, there might be some fun information to mine out of this piece. --Bobak (talk) 15:52, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Nice find! I've been going to the library a lot lately in order to get more sources for the bowl game articles I've been working on -- NewsBank is a wonderful tool -- but this is a lot further back than I'd thought to look and is really neat! JKBrooks85 (talk) 20:25, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Looking less back: 1997 bowl summary

I'm also working on a 1997 season article for a team that, well, sucked. This bowl summary doesn't help me, but if you want to read up on the final season before the BCS system "solved" everything, here's CNN/SI's old-school webpage which is still on their server: [10] --Bobak (talk) 23:48, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium

I have reviewed this article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have left a small list of tasks to complete to maintain the GA status of this article. The article will remain on hold for seven days (starting today) for improvements. Nikki311 17:47, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

New cat: College football teams seasons

In order to better organize our college football season articles, I have created this category. It is pretty much the college football version of the similar NFL cat. Whenever you guys have the time, please add the team season pages to this cat (be sure to create a sub-cat for the team first). BlueAg09 (Talk) 18:45, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a good move. Someone's going to scream "But this should be on a list" -- they're usually different than the people who scream "This should be in a category" when you make a list, though... so I for one will support it!--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:51, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Should the season pages be filed in this as well? JKBrooks85 (talk) 21:23, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Oops -- I just noticed I linked to the wrong cat. I fixed the original link. But yes, the season pages belong in this cat, though there are subcategories for each team's pages. Here is an example of one of those subcategories: [11] The only pages that should be filed in the main category (College football teams seasons) are the year-by-year season result lists (e.g. Virginia Tech Hokies football seasons) BlueAg09 (Talk) 22:22, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Fun userbox

Gang, feel free to use this userbox... --Paul McDonald (talk) 16:53, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

{{User:Paulmcdonald\amfootsocbox}} User:Paulmcdonald\amfootsocbox



Happy 2008 -- The Season begins anew!

Remember, if you're going to a game --consider taking photos. Here are some great tips and suggestions. Cheers for a good season. --Bobak (talk) 21:34, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:NOTED PLAYER

See Wikipedia:NOTED PLAYER for a proposal about making Notable Player sections into official guidelines.  RGTraynor  17:22, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I know that kind of section is common in general team pages. ... What other pages use Notable Players subsections? JKBrooks85 (talk) 04:15, 30 August 2008 (UTC)


Outside opinion requested

I would like to get outside opinions on the discussion at Talk:2008_Florida_Atlantic_Owls_football_team#Game_notes. Thank you! Johntex\talk 02:14, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Why is this necessary? Can we get rid of it? I noticed it because it was added after I used the template for a CFB schedule at 2008 Louisville Cardinals football team (if I was clever I'd use Template:cfb link in this sentence, but I digress). Isn't this exactly the intended use of this template? Most of the pages in this category seem to use it for schedules in this way. Oren0 (talk) 07:34, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

If where it is linking to is the season article, then yes, you should remove it from being used and just link directly to that article. For example, on the Lousiville page, the first game is Kentucky which has a season article so you should remove it from there and just link directly to that page like the template would. You can replace all cases like this anywhere. It would be nice if we could have it somehow tell us what pages it is linking to the season article so we could go replace it. I'm not sure that's possible though (though a bot/script might be possible). However, the other few I looked at do not link to the season article (the preferred destination), so you should not replace them. That way, if eventually there ever is a season article created it will link there (and then we can change it). MECU≈talk 21:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Why wouldn't we use it this way? When I created this page, I had to go through each opponent with a season page and change the link on the schedule to now link to the new page. But when I got to 2008 Pittsburgh Panthers football team, I didn't have to change anything because the link updated automatically. If every schedule page used the template in this way, these updates would never be necessary when a new season page is created. Why shouldn't every link at 2008_NCAA_Division_I_FBS_football_season#Conference_standings use this template? Maybe I don't understand what this template was designed for, but this seems exactly like the perfect use. It's not as if changing the links from the template to the season link saves us much. The work that is required each time a new season page is created is entirely unnecessary and could be avoided if we used this template everywhere. Oren0 (talk) 22:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Because the template is designed to link to the most specific article that exists for a given team. If it is already linking to the yearly team page, which is as specific as it gets, then the cfb link is serving no purpose. If it is linking to the team's generic football page or to the university's page, then the cfb link would then automatically pick up a new page if it were created. You have to be aware that each article is allowed only so many template substitutions, so the more unnecessary uses of the template there are, the more it slows down the page load time and the more taxing it is on the Wikipedia servers.↔NMajdan•talk 02:21, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
I get that, but when making a team's schedule it's really annoying to have to check for which link to make for each opponent, then to add the new season link to each opponent. Are we really concerned about the added server strain or load times that 12 added templates add? And a limit to the number of template inclusions that can be on a page is news to be but I have a hard time believing that 12 is anywhere near that number anyway. At the very least, all of the redlinks at 2008_NCAA_Division_I_FBS_football_season#Conference_standings should be replaced with the template. Oren0 (talk) 08:13, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes, 12 isn't near the limit, and they increased the memory size (or something like that) which was the real problem we encountered before. But think of all the other templates on a page (and the templates on those templates). Navigation bars, info boxes, etc. It all adds up. You can see the stats on a page by looking at the source HTML. We got in "trouble" for this. I know it sucks having to include the template and then check to see if it's being used and swap it out. No one ever said being a Wikipedia editor would be easy. You may want to go propose a bot or script to take care of all that. Would save the hassle, and it would only need to run once a month or once every 3 or 6 months even. But it is a real problem and the load is real. MECU≈talk 22:31, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of A.C. Ransom

An article that you have been involved in editing, A.C. Ransom, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A.C. Ransom. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? Stifle (talk) 16:47, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Prepping for FAC

Hey all -- I'm currently preparing 2005 Sugar Bowl to undergo the FAC process, and if you have a moment to look it over and leave a few comments before I add it, I'd be extremely grateful. Sweat now saves blood later. I should also mention that Bobak's FAC, 2007 USC Trojans football team is still ongoing and could use your help as well. I'd like to get as many comments as possible before Saturday, since I'm sure we'll all be kinda busy after then. Thanks! JKBrooks85 (talk) 09:10, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've submitted the FAC (Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/2005 Sugar Bowl), and any additional comments/supports/opposes would be appreciated. Thanks again! JKBrooks85 (talk) 08:13, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Congrats on FA promotion! --Bobak (talk) 14:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
You too! JKBrooks85 (talk) 19:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for College football

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:05, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Deletion spamming

Project team: Please review Articles & Pages being considered for deletion immediately. There are currently 48 articles going through the AfD process. Of course, each and every one may make their own comments and contributions as they see fit. However, awareness of this issue is important as most editors are currently busy with current events of the 2008 season that is now under way.--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:25, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I posted an essay at Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Please Refrain from Spamming History AfDs during the season hoping to have the historical discussions tabled to the off-season.--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
FYI They're up to 58 now...--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:58, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Paulmcdonald, I wish I had the energy to go and defend all of the articles that have been nominated, but right now I am so frustrated with the Wikipedia experience that I have considerably cut back on editing, and have serious considered just giving it up altogether. All the AFD's make the whole effort seem worthless. I'm tired of wasting time defending articles when I could be adding articles. I don't understand why some of the people on Wikipedia are so anal retentive about getting articles deleted, especially when they have little to no understanding of the subject manner. The recent rush of CFB AFD's by User:Kittybrewster should probably be brought to the attention of someone higher up in the Wikipedia hierarchy, but whatever. Paulmcdonald, you've done an amazing job in your time in this community and I find the articles you create of much interest. I hope that, unlike me, you find the energy to keep up the good fight! Seancp (talk) 20:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
All I can say is thanks. I hope I have the energy myself.--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:39, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
It's really unfortunate to see all your hard work being torn apart, Paul. I'm appalled at the actions of the few who've nominated so many articles it's almost hopeless to mount a defense. Their actions go completely against the spirit of Wikipedia. It's a shameful display and I'm sorry to see your articles continuously have to suffer through this. Much like Seancp, I've cut my editing and time back substantially. I don't know where to begin in helping save your AFDs, but you have my full support in the matter. Keep up the good fight man. --Geologik (talk) 21:58, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm afraid I have to do the same. We just had a new baby in the household, so I'm sitting here having to choose how I spend my time... with my new son or with wikipedia? Guess who loses...--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:40, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
I certainly hope that's "what" loses. :) JKBrooks85 (talk) 03:04, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Update I've put a notice on the AfD pages asking any closing editor to move any closed pages to User:Paulmcdonald/Articlename and place a notice at User:Paulmcdonald/deletedcoach so that we can continue efforts. Two editors have teamed up to specifically target coach articles, which can be found at User talk:Kittybrewster#Please slow down. It's difficult to keep up with the AfDs and I fear that I may miss notifications.--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:12, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem I have is that they are trying to use this to delete every college coach stub. The funny thing is that the article that started this whole thing, Walter J. West was notable per WP:ATHLETE since he was the leading rusher for the Cleveland Rams in 1944. [12][13][14] Sorry, I did not find this out until he was deleted. 09er (talk) 02:35, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll put it into the user page at User:Paulmcdonald/Walter J. West unless you beat me to it. I'll be re-building the deletions we don't save right away over time to re-present with more information.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:41, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
To Seancp: The deletion discussions have come to the notice of various administrators, including myself. No action will be taken against Kittybrewster or any other editor for nominating articles for deletion with a valid reason. Stifle (talk) 11:28, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I'm not asking for action to be taken against any editor that makes a good faith nomination for AfD, and I don't think that Seancp was asking for that either--simply that we be allowed to work on this massive block with more time.--Paul McDonald (talk) 11:32, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
I've asked Kittybrewster to hold off nominating any more CFB articles for deletion until the current block has been closed. I don't think it's useful to have that many discussions on at once.
However (didn't you know there was one of those coming?), there are two major matters arising from this issue.
  1. I don't think admins will accede to the request to userfy 50+ pages. Userfication is generally used in the following circumstances:
    • Where a user has spent a great deal of time working on a topic, so that they can retain their work for use elsewhere
    • Where the subject of an article may well meet notability standards, but the current version of the article is so bad that having no article would be better — in this case, the user has the chance to improve the article
    The situation with these articles is different.
    • The articles were, from what I can see, created mostly automatically or with very little original content and work input (apologies and please correct me if I am wrong)
    • The issue that the community at the AFDs is generally coming back with is that large classes of people are not notable enough to be included; or, in the alternative, that the notability criteria of this WikiProject are considered too low and too easy to meet.
  2. There are a heck of a lot of pages in Category:WikiProject College football articles that are going to be deletion targets in the future for similar reasons, mostly derived from WP:IINFO. You may save yourselves a lot of time by soliciting outside-project opinions on your notability criteria. You may also need to consider whether CFDW is a reliable source within Wikipedia's definition.
Just some things to think about — I realise you folks are busy, but you've got dozens of members and hopefully they'll be able to put some time into this and improve things. Stifle (talk) 12:35, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
Question Just read WP:IINFO and I'm confused... all the articles meet the standard of that policy. Specifically, the "statistics" section (the only one that would apply), the articles are not "Long and sprawling lists of statistics" -- the articles "contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader" and the articles are "using infoboxes or tables to enhance the readability of lengthy data lists." ... what gives?--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:47, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm thinking articles about certain seasons of a football team. Stifle (talk) 15:32, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
We appreciate that. I am sure that our common goal is to make wikipedia better. As for the amount of time put in, my goodness! probably hundreds of hours of time. I request that any page on the "hit list" have a notability tag placed on it so that editors can work ahead of the wave rather than behind it. And as for the notability guidelines, we've been asking for input for some time now and have had no input that I can find from outside the project. Can you suggest a method that might yield better results and input from outside the project?--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
My "weekend" begins tomorrow, and I'll be going to the local university library to try to dig up some sources for these articles. If anyone else has access to a university library or the NewsBank database, I'd suggest trying those to dig up some offline sources that would be useful. JKBrooks85 (talk) 21:23, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2002 Mountain West Football Season

Hello,

User:Stifle is attempting to set the precedent that college football conference season articles should be deleted as unencyclopedic. Your comments would be appreciated at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2002 Mountain West Football Season.

Thank you. SashaNein (talk) 15:45, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

No precedent-setting in progress; WP:CANVASSing is though... Stifle (talk) 10:01, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
This is not canvassing. Please read the policies that you quote to know that a post to encourage further discussion is allowed. As far as I know, the post to this WikiProject has brought about KEEP votes AND DELETE votes. The AFD had little discussion, so I asked the proper WikiProjects if they had an opinion. They do not have proper deletion sorting, unlike WP:BASEBALL and WP:VG. I don't expect every regular user to understand this site's policies, but I damn well expect every administrator to know what they're doing. SashaNein (talk) 03:48, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Taking a break

I've grown weary of being harassed, ridiculed, and personally attacked by a few editors outside of this project and have become over-stressed with all the AfDs I'm expected to respond to (including 18 more that I just discovered this morning). I'll be taking a break for a while, not sure how long. I do plan to return--maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks, maybe longer. Please will everyone continue to "watch the store" around here for a while?--Paul McDonald (talk) 16:17, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Please come back soon! Hopefully once you've had a bit of a break, you can come back with guns blazing. I know it can be frustrating at times, but you can't let them get the best of you. Remember, when they've got you outgunned on the defensive line, you can always try an end-around. :) JKBrooks85 (talk) 21:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
I think I'm ready to return in a limited capacity--basically editing existing articles. I still want to avoid AfDs for a while, though. I'll be working almost exclusively on content.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:30, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Good luck! JKBrooks85 (talk) 22:32, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Colt McCoy under GA review

Hello there, the article Colt McCoy, which falls under the auspices of this Wikiproject, has come under review as part of GA Sweeps and a number of problems have been identified and listed on the talk page. If these problems have not begun to be addressed by seven days from this notice, the article will be delisted from GA and will have to go through the GAN process all over again to regain its status once improvements have been made. If you have any questions, please drop me a line.--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:43, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


I noticed you guys have quite a few shortcut redirects beginning with CFB:. These cross-namespace redirects have been deprecated and I would suggest moving them to WP: shortcuts (e.g. moving CFB:N to WP:CFB/N and so on). If I hear no objections I will begin moving them in the next week or so, although any redirects that are excessive or inappropriate are liable to be sent to WP:RFD instead. Stifle (talk) 10:30, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I've moved all CFB:foo to WP:CFBfoo today, having heard no objection. The CFB: links still exist but point out to the user that the WP: link is now the correct one to use. I will delete the CFB: links in a week or two. Stifle (talk) 12:21, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
I am shortly deleting these CFB: links. Stifle (talk) 14:39, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

2007 SEC standings

Myself and an anonymous user have become involved in a dispute. I claim that, due to SECsports.com and ESPN.com standings, Alabama finished 5th in the SEC West standings. The anonymous user says that, according to the Alabama media guide, Alabama finished 3rd in the West. However, I feel that the SECsports.com record and even our own 2007 article should be regarded as the official standings, as opposed to that of just the University of Alabama athletic department. Please help to get this situation resolved. (Please reference my talk page and the IP user's talk page to look at the external links.) – Latics (talk) 00:05, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Here is a link to Secsports.com Media Guide. If you will notice, on page 23 it lists Alabama as finishing 4-4 tied for 3rd in the west. http://www.secsports.com/doc_lib/fbc_2008_mediaguide_sec1.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.113.65.140 (talk) 00:36, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Latics left a note on my user page and asked me to take a look at this. I checked out the media guide and it does say that Alabama was tied for third place with a 4-4 conference record. This is correct and is the way we normally give conference standings. As a tiebreaker for sorting for display prposes teams that have the same record, sometimes we use overall record and other times, we just sort them alphabetically, but it is correct to say that all three teams were tied for third place. It is NOT correct to say that they were in 5th place. They may be LISTED as the fifth team anywhere you see just a list without numbers, but I am sure anywhere that uses numbers will list them as 1. LSU, 2. Auburn, 3-t. Arkansas, 3-t. MSU, 3-t. Alabama, 6. Mississippi. SECSports.com did not list them with numbers - they just listed them in a list [15]. So the short version is, the IP user is correct - Alabama finished tied for third place. --B (talk) 03:48, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006-2008 Southern Oregon Raiders football teams

Hello,

2006-2008 Southern Oregon Raiders football teams has been nominated for deletion. Reviewing the article and its 2008 season section, your comments would be appreciated at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006-2008 Southern Oregon Raiders football teams. SashaNein (talk) 20:15, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Assistance Needed

Please help me with this page. The bottom half is centered, when it shouldn't be. I have an idea it might have something to do with this page. Thanks for your help.Topgun530 (talk) 17:15, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Ryan2845 (talk) 18:00, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Walter J. West restored

The article Walter J. West has been restored by the deleting admin, stating that the article now meets WP:ATHLETE.--Paul McDonald (talk) 22:56, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations! JKBrooks85 (talk) 03:31, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Alured Ransom restored

The article Alured Ransom has been restored by the deleting admin, stating "significantly improved since AfD"--Paul McDonald (talk) 04:55, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

"West Precedence" essay

I've put up an essay at Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/West precedent that I'd like some input on. Let me know what you think...--Paul McDonald (talk) 05:13, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

You've got a point there, but it's going to be difficult to convince others outside this project of that fact. In addition, by fighting just one element of the AfDs, you leave the other, harder aspects -- that the articles were short and only had one source: that of the school itself. If you bring this up, I'd strongly suggest having a plan in place to remedy the other problems with the articles as well. JKBrooks85 (talk) 10:37, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
True. I'm also not ready to "release" the idea just yet as some of the articles do indeed still need some work.--Paul McDonald (talk) 11:23, 21 October 2008 (UTC)


Name spelling

I created a page for Ian Cambell, but I spelled the name of the page wrong. His last name is spelled "Campbell". Can someone fix it for me please?Topgun530 (talk) 18:23, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I attempted to move it to Ian Campbell, but that is a disambiguation page, so I moved it to Ian Campbell (American football) instead. — X96lee15 (talk) 18:51, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks so much.Topgun530 (talk) 20:07, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Deletion Review

AfD discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Don Lee (college football) for articles Don Lee (college football), Norman Joseph, and Scott Highsmith was closed as "no consensus" which normally calls for keeping the article. Subsequently, the articles have been erased and replaced by a redirect. You can participate in the deletion review at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 October 22.--Paul McDonald (talk) 17:52, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

DRV is now closed and has been replaced by a proposed merger. Join the discussion at Talk:Belhaven College#Athletics.--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:32, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

2000 Sugar Bowl

The college football article 2000 Sugar Bowl is currently a featured article candidate. Any comments, concerns, or support would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! JKBrooks85 (talk) 03:56, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Ross Fiscus

Check this out! Ross Fiscus has been restored, the guy was one of the first professonal players ever! Played with William Heffelfinger at Allegheny!--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:35, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

All Dickinson College coach articles restored

The last remaining coach article for Dickinson College, J. William Williams has been restored after a deletion review.--Paul McDonald (talk) 11:18, 28 October 2008 (UTC)


Matthew_Stafford_(American_football)#College_career

Is it appropriate/necessary to have game-by-game statistical narratives for a college player? --ZimZalaBim talk 02:45, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Not in the format that you removed, but if in prose it would certainly be fine, especially with a refs. MECU≈talk 02:57, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Major successs

I'd like to report some major success in the West-related deletions. As of the restoration of Wally Bullington after deletion review, just over 25% of those articles deleted have subsequently been restored or merged into existing articles! Many of the coaches have been found to have professional careers and even at least one member of the hall of fame.

Other coach articles have been slightly improved and anyone who would like to assist can navigate to userfied articles here. It's been loads of fun and I've really learned an awful lot about football coaching around the early 1900s!--Paul McDonald (talk) 12:53, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I just got a hold of a copy of “The History of Football at Dickinson College”. It's a really good read. I was going to help you with the Dickinson College coaches that were deleted but you already restored them. I have added additional information to B. Russell Murphy. Over the next month or two I plan to add to the rest of the Dickinson’s coaches. 09er (talk) 01:48, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
That's great! It was fifty bucks for me to order a copy of it! I'm sure there are lots of coaches that could stand additional information!--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:54, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

some help

can people help me with the Javon Ringer article? I need help on expanding the lead, more suggestions on what to do to help can be found here and the [Wikipedia:Peer review/Automated/November 2008#Javon Ringer|automated peer review page]]. With some help, i think i could get this up to GA standards. - -' The Spook (TALK) (Share the Love with Barnstars) 19:11, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Category

Robert Park, a college football player for Syracuse, later moved to Pennsylvania, where he coached football and was a professor at Geneva College. This edit adds American football players from Pennsylvania: is this considered appropriate? After all, he didn't play football and live in Pennsylvania at the same time. Nyttend (talk) 13:23, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm... I'm going with 1) Yeah, it's okay but 2) might start be overusing categories. Good comment, though--and I might be dead wrong on #1!--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:36, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

New Templates

Hello! I recently created template:FloridaGatorsFootball, and I was wondering what everyone thought of having a template like this for all the teams. It combines the seasons and head coaches templates and adds a bit more links to related pages. In some cases, such as Florida-Florida State rivalry, it could be used in place of template:University of Florida, because it is more specific to the topic. I would like to create one for every team, but would like to ask the Wikiproject first! Richmond96 (talk) 00:08, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I like it, but I'd recommend having it collapsed by default. JKBrooks85 (talk) 01:56, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
Good idea. Done. Richmond96 (talk) 02:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
I kind of had the same idea with Template:Arkansas Razorbacks Football (also Template:Texas A&M Aggies football). They focuses more on the seasons, though. I like the white Florida box, as opposed to bright blue and orange. A big problem with doing one for each team would be that many schools don't have all of their historical season pages. I am working on pages for many schools, but they are time consuming and I don't have the time... Brandonrush Woo pig sooie 15:56, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it's a valid replacement for the University of Florida template, but for all football related needs I think it's great. Maybe it should be put on the MasterTeamTable page and we have a concentrated effort to replace/update all teams to that style. MECU≈talk 02:59, 8 November 2008

(UTC)

What is the MasterTeamTable page? --Richmond96 (talk) 14:55, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
Nice work on the Gators infobox. However, I put the link to {{Florida Gators football coach navbox}} back on the Master Team Table index as coach boxes are pretty much standardized now. I also think that the coach navboxes should be used in the coaching articles and that the massive all-encompassing football navbox should only be used in the football (team) related articles (I saw that Urban Meyer's article now has the new box and it looks out of place, IMO). Thoughts? Opinions? --Geologik (talk) 01:30, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
I think an advantage of using {{FloridaGatorsFootball}} on articles like Urban Meyer is that it links to other articles that are not necessarily other coaches, but relevant topics. Say you have just read about Urban's 2006 championship season. With the template, you can go right to that article. Another note is that on Steve Spurrier, instead of having a template for Gators head coaches and Gators starting quarterbacks, there is one that combines the two. This was the purpose of the template, to combine all templates relating to Florida gators Football. --Richmond96 (talk) 01:54, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Geologik that this navboxes should not be placed on the coach’s articles. We finally have a standardized navboxes for coaches that are consistent throughout the project. That being said, a compromise could be on how this situation is handled on the articles about Michigan coaches. Michigan also has similar all football program navbox but they use both navboxes on the article about coaches. They also seam to only put the overall navbox on the important coaches. Bo Schembechler gets both, while George Little who coached at Michigan one year, only gets the coaches template. 09er (talk) 16:58, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Not a bad infobox, really. I'd like to see more of these, to be honest. I created one several weeks ago for Alabama... {{Alabama Crimson Tide football}}. I agree, however, that you really shouldn't add them to coaches' articles. I did, however, add this one to Bear Bryant's ... just since he's a major figure for the team. –  LATICS  talk  00:11, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

What about Quarterbacks? Should this be used or the QB navbox? ~Richmond96 t • c 13:44, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Another Main Pager!

A fact from Francis Dunn appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on November 21, 2008.--Paul McDonald (talk) 00:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Please Help

Alright, Rich Rodriguez did an interview with Michigan Today which is an online magazine for alumni of the University of Michigan. It was part of a big feature article by John Bacon, a lecturer at Michigan who has written for Time, ESPN, Sports Illustrated and a best selling book about Bo Schebemchler. The article can be found here: [16]. In it, Bacon makes the out of left field assertion that Rodriguez was born in Chicago. Rodriguez then discusses moving to West Virginia in the second grade. Now, I updated his article with this as this is a reputable source and the words are coming from his own mouth, but it's contantly (poorly) changed whenever I do, always by new accounts who provide no rationale. Can anyone here offer help/advice. --MichiganCharms (talk) 12:12, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Edit war brewing on Egg Bowl

Hi everyone, I have been having a problem with an anon on the Egg Bowl article. He is insisting that the article only cover games from 1927 to present (from the year the game was officially called the "Egg Bowl"), however, that is unusual to say the least, considering the Apple Cup, Battle for the Iron Skillet, Iron Bowl, Crab Bowl, etc, all cover the entire series.

I have been trying to open a line of dialogue on the discussion page with him, but he has not done so. I've also tried opening on a dialogue on his talk page, but he blanks it every time I write something there. No other editors have interjected, and now it's turning into an edit war, and I'd appreciate others' opinions. Thanks! CH52584 (talk) 04:07, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

  • I say it depends on the series. I'll pimp out one of my own articles: Battle for the Old Mountain Jug. The series started in 1932, the Jug came along in 1976. The infobox shows the winner since 1976, however, I've included the entire series in the games results section with a break when the Jug was introduced. If the "Golden Egg" is an actual trophy I see nothing wrong with adopting the same style. And looking at the edit history, you're both close to getting blocked for 3RR. --Geologik (talk) 04:18, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Figures on the size of NCAA football versus other Professional leagues

I've noticed that we often find AFDs started by well-meaning editors from outside the US who assume that a college sports league (and its key players) must not be all that notable because its not a professional league. The confusion is magnified by the existence of the NFL. What they don't realize is, unlike CFL or Arena, college football is often the other major league other than the NFL. In order to create some factual ammunition for disputes over D-I FBS (top-level) college football, I found the following data from credible sources that I'd like to share so that others can use it to educate user when needed:

I hope these figures will help, and if anyone can find more numbers to throw in --please do! --Bobak (talk) 16:25, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Nielson TV ratings are another interesting comparison:
  • 14.4 - 2008 NCAA Football Championship game[1]
  • 17.4 - 2007 NCAA Football Championship game
  • 8.4 - 2008 MLB World Series avg rating [2]
  • 10.4 - 2008 NBA Finals Game One [3]
Ryan2845 (talk) 16:45, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment I'd say that these are prime candidates to incorporate into WP:CFBAMATEUR

Major Notability Discussion

ATTENTION WP:ATHLETE is being re-written. There is a very big discussion here. The re-writing is focusing mainly on amateur athletes. You may well wish to participate.--Paul McDonald (talk) 16:46, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Dave Meggyesy

The Dave Meggyesy article that I started needs some help. I can find lots about his book and the related controversy, but almost nothing about his college and NFL careers. The pro football databases do not have defensive statistics for the 1960s, except for the number of games played. There are a couple of Google News hits that say he was an All-American at Syracuse, but I'd have to pay for an article in order to see the details--such as whose list he was on. If anybody has access to sources of Meggyesy's performance at St. Louis or at Syracuse, please add it to the infobox or start a new section. The article still seems stubbish for the NFL and college football projects, although I classified it as at Start for WP:BIO.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hjal (talk • contribs) 12:30, November 12, 2008


Should we have a standard on linking Specific (weekly) rankings?

Alright, as most of you know it has pretty much been a unwritten standard that you don't link a specific rank from one week (just talking about the number itself) to the main NCAA rankings article for that entire particular year. I have came across a non-registered user who is insisting that the numbers under rankings in info boxes and coaches career templates be linked, he is only doing it on Ole Miss related pages though (2008 Ole Miss Rebels football team and Houston Nutt) which leads me to believe he or she is just a fan of a particular team and doesn't really have an interest in what works for this project. He isn't linking the poll (coaches or AP) he is linking the actual numbers. (ex 20, 14 etc) This seems very silly to me and would create more confusion to a regular viewer than it would help them. It is like linking a specific game to a general season article. Just not very logical in my opinion. Just wanted to get some other opinions on this. Thanks. Rtr10 (talk) 18:55, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

IMHO, that falls into the same category as linking dates (as in January 10, 1955)and should be avoided. JKBrooks85 (talk) 23:05, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. - Billma (talk) 12:06, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I looked under MOS and thought there was something in the Manual of Style on linking numbers (ie 22) but to my surprise, I didn't see a single thing on it. Rtr10 (talk) 05:34, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't think there is really any problem with doing it, but since none of the other pages are doing it at this time, it should probably be avoided unless an agreement is made to do it on all pages. I do see that the Ole Miss page doesn't have the usual "See Also" section with the rankings page listed like most of the other pages have. Maybe adding that would resolve the issue for now. I can definitely understand the other editor wanting to add it though, as it does kind of make it easier to find that seasons rankings, especially on a coaches page like Houston Nutt, where no other links to the rankings for a particular season exist. Ryan2845 (talk) 06:51, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
That anonymous editor was a problem for me last week on the Egg Bowl article. My personal belief is that the individual is Allstarecho editing as an anon. I agree with Ryan2845 above in that the rankings that he has linked right now should be added under a "see also" page, and that making rankings a wikilink is a bit too much. Many articles already have too many wikilinks in them as it is. CH52584 (talk) 12:24, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
You totally ignored my suggest of adding a rankings chart to the season article, which would reference the entire season and THAT would be acceptable to wikilink via a "see also" to the 2008 NCAA Division I FBS football rankings article, which shows the ENTIRE season. Not just one particular ranking which is what you are currently linking incorrectly. Rtr10 (talk) 19:07, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
"Incorrectly" to whom? You? You can't call something "incorrectly" when there is no guideline/MOS covering the damn thing. Stop being a jerk and open your mind a little and realize that rankings should be linked/sourced somewhere, whether internal via a wikilink or external via a ref tag.. and until someone comes up with something better, I used the only internal option available. Asshole. 75.64.248.238 (talk) 22:35, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
No need for name calling here buddy. This is a community of editors, not a dictatorship. You have had a tone ever since I've encountered you as "it's either going to be my way or else" and that does nothing in helping. The only thing myself and others are trying to do is to make sure we find the best way to do this and then set a standard and make all college football pages great. No need to get hostile with someone who is only trying to help. That is one of the best parts of this project is that we work together to make all pages better, not just one good article for our own team(s). The reason we have never wikilinked a specific rank, from a specific week to the NCAA rankings page you have been linking these to, is because you are linking one specific link to a page with nearly 2,000 different rankings. I don't think it is that hard to see why that would be confusing to someone reading this page who doesn't know what they are reading when they click that link. I have suggested multiple times, only for you to ignore each time, a rankings chart that are found on most college football team season pages as I have tried to show you, would be a quality addition to the 2008 Ole Miss Rebels football team article and would settle your concern of showing people how Ole Miss moved through the rankings. It would actually do an even better job because you are showing readers specificly how Ole Miss has done in the ranking rather than sending them to a page with 10 different charts with thousands of different rankings and a lot of different teams. If you want to source a ranking then provide a reference. I have no problem with it, even though I think a very large majority of the editors in this project will tell you it really isn't necessary, but I wouldn't object to that if you think something is incorrect. I will put together a rankings chart in case you don't know how to do that. Hopefully that will satisfy your want for readers to see the progression of Ole Miss through the entire season in the rankings. Rtr10 (talk) 07:21, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Policy for Which Rankings to Use

Does a policy currently exist for which rankings to use when citing what a team was ranked at a given point in the season? If not, I believe one should be created so it is documented and standardized across the board for all football articles. I propose that for weeks where the BCS rankings are available that the BCS rankings be used and that when these are not available that the AP poll be used, followed by the Coaches poll. Comments? ----Rodzilla (talk) 22:39, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

We have always used the Coaches poll for the whole season. The reason was because the BCS poll is only out for half the season and it was preferred to use a poll that existed from the beginning until the end. The Coaches was decided over the AP since the Coaches is used in the BCS formula and has at least some effect in the CFB world. Although, this policy was decided when the project was first created. Don't know if it is still uniformly followed. Unfortunately, with the AP dropping itself from the BCS formula, I don't see a reason to use it.↔NMajdan•talk 22:57, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
I would agree with not using the BCS rankings, as they are only out for half the season. I could go either way on the Coaches/AP, just as long as one is used for the standard. Ndenison talk 03:19, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Agree with using coaches based on the dropping of the AP from the BCS formula Ryan2845 (talk) 03:32, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I believe it would be better to use a poll rather than changing back and forth through out a season. The BCS doesn't come out until after the half way point of the season and doesn't publish rankings after the Bowl games, so then they would have to be switched back to a poll after the season. So I would definitely suggest using one of the two major polls. As for which one, I would have to throw my support behind the AP Poll. It has been the poll of record in College Football since the mid 1930's and when we are talking about using this information for a historical use, I believe it would be better to use what we have been using for over 70 years. I don't really see the poll not currently being included in the BCS as a reason to not use it. The AP still awards their own National Championship as they have for more than 70 years. It is still also used by the large majority of the media. I just think the AP is better for our purposes, but of course that is just my opinion. Rtr10 (talk) 05:31, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I put the AP poll ahead of the coaches poll for the reason that it draws from a larger body of people and the poll ballots are publicly released throughout the season (transparency). It may not be used in the BCS anymore but it is historically reputable and significant. The coaches poll is a smaller sample size (arguably more open to error) and only releases the final ballots of the season (lack of transparency). While I do think it makes sense to stick with one source for the entire season, I think it could be a bit confusing if we're not using the BCS rankings when the BCS rankings are the ones used for determining the two teams who play for a national title and for determining tie-breakers in some situations (e.g. the current OU/Texas debate). I think if we document it in an actual policy page and note it where appropriate that it would make a lot of sense. ----Rodzilla (talk) 06:34, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I think we should still use the Coaches Poll for all rankings. One, it still matters, since it's part of the BCS formula. I would vote against using the BCS formula standings for anything, since the BCS's sole purpose is to place teams in the BCS bowls, and shouldn't be used as a ranking on any of the wikiproject's pages like the Coaches or AP polls. I've already noticed that some overzealous editors have tried to convert all of the templates to use the BCS standings instead of the Coaches Poll rankings, which makes zero sense to me for the reasons that Nmajdan has already stated above. I think the original decision to use the Coaches Poll is still a sound one. - Billma (talk) 12:04, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
That argument really contradicts itself. The AP is irrelevant because it isn't used in the BCS, but the BCS should be used because it is only relevant to bowl selection? That makes no sense at all. If we are going to make the argument the BCS shouldn't be used because it is only relevant to bowl selection, I'd say the AP would be the better choice because it is the more recognized poll across the country by both media, schools and fans and it has been THE poll of record for over 70 years. Rtr10 (talk) 19:12, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I must have been tired when I wrote that. I wasn't arguing that the BCS should be used as a ranking, I was actually trying to argue the opposite. I was just pointing out that there are already editors out there trying to replace Coaches rankings in the various CFB templates with the BCS rankings, which makes zero sense to me. I got tired of trying to revert them all. In fact, I totally agree with what Nmajdan says in the next post. - Billma (talk) 12:26, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm saying the BCS should not be used because it isn't released until mid-October and then only runs through the conference championships. There is no BCS poll for the first 6 or so weeks of the season and no final BCS poll after the bowl games are complete. It is too confusing to have to point out that for the first 6 weeks, we are using one poll, then for the next 8 weeks we are using a different poll, and then for the final results, we are using the first poll again. Again, I put more weight in the Coaches Poll since it is used in the formula for the BCS and the Coaches does have just as much of a reputation as the AP. Yes, the AP has been out longer (about 15 years), but its not as if the Coaches Poll was created in the last decade. In fact, it has been around for nearly six decades.↔NMajdan•talk 20:02, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
While the Coaches Poll has been around since the 1950's it is laughable to say it has carried the same weight as the AP. The AP is the poll of record in College Football. If you believe otherwise try to look up old Coaches Poll rankings. You can't find them. You can easily find a ranking from the AP poll from any year and any week in that year. While they are on a comparable level today, the AP poll has really been THE poll for a long, long time. I agree that we should use the same poll and stated that in my first post on this topic, however I believe the AP poll being the poll that has always been used in a historical reference for College Football should be what we continue to use. I don't see the Coaches Poll being used in the BCS as that big of a factor trumping it over the AP. The AP is still the predominantly used poll among media and SID's. I don't see us listing the Harris Poll more because they are included in the BCS. That argument just doesn't make that much sense to me. If the BCS is THAT important, then why not use the BCS when available. If it isn't that important lets not use it as the ultimate factor in why the Coaches Poll should be used instead of the AP. Rtr10 (talk) 21:33, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Agree - The AP poll is far more significant, partly due to the reasons I've already listed above. If we're not going to use the BCS, then we should ignore it for this discussion. I think we all agree to one extent or another that it's a consensus to stick with a single source throughout the season, so the BCS is out. We're down to Coaches, Harris, and AP, and also the computer rankings. I think we should stick with a reputable poll instead of the computer rankings. In my opinion the AP poll is the best of the three polls from a standpoint of reputation, historical usage, transparency/accountability, etc. The only strike against it that I'm hearing is it isn't used in the BCS, and that's because they told the BCS they weren't allowed to use it. I think we should go with the AP. ----Rodzilla (talk) 22:59, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I'd support using the Coaches' Poll -- it's as good as any of the rest -- but what if we're talking about a team/season/event that happened before 1950? JKBrooks85 (talk) 12:07, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with using the AP Poll prior to the 2005 season, when the AP Poll withdrew from the BCS formula. It's hard enough as it is to find historical Coaches Poll data, but the AP Poll data is readily available. - Billma (talk) 13:29, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I believe we should definitely not use the BCS, because it is only out for part of the year.
Between the AP and Coaches, I prefer the AP poll. Reasons;
  1. Most media refer to the AP poll, so our rankings would have the benefit of agreeing with most references we are citing.
  2. The coaches poll is part of the BCS, but it is only part of the BCS. Just because a team is ranked x in the coaches poll does not mean they will be ranked x in the BCS.
  3. The coaches poll has no transparency during the regular season. Coaches do not reveal how they voted their ballots, and many of them have vested interests in the outcomes of the rankings (bonuses, choice of opponents they will face, perceived strength of team and conference...) It has been widely publicized that some coaches are not even casting all their ballots, but are delegating them to graduate assistants or sports information directors.
  4. The coaches poll has sold out to the BCS to the extent that they have set a rule that says the coaches *must* vote the winner of the BCS National Championship Game as #1 in the final poll.
  5. The AP poll is the longest running extant poll, so we would be most consistent throughout the history of the sport.
  6. The AP poll is still relevant even after withdrawing from the BCS. In fact, they are free to select their own champion. The NCAA does not proscribe that schools must count only BCS titles. AP titles may still very much be claimed by the schools. It is only a matter of time before the AP and BCS selections for #1 differ.
Johntex\talk 06:30, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Alabama's 12 national titles

"Im An Asian" made an edit on the Alabama Crimson Tide football page to the number of national titles, changing the number from 12 (the number the school recognizes, as well as most media outlets), to 7 (the number of "wire" titles...AP + UPI titles), and threatens anybody who changes it back with a vandalism warning.

It seems to me that there is nothing that dictates the source of the number of national titles, simply that it be the number that is "generally accepted," not from a specific organization, and it seems to be beyond the scope of this project to dictate which number should be used.

And, I might add that the BCS champion is only guaranteed the USA Today/Coaches national title, not the AP title (see LSU in 2003, who won the Coaches/USA Today Poll, but USC won the AP), so, in that case, LSU did not win what "Im An Asian" would consider a wire title.

So, that being as it is, I am going to change it back, and I would appreciate others opinion on this. CH52584 (talk) 01:08, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

He did the same thing to the Minnesota article, changing 6 to 4 and making the same vandalism threat. Is this a case of a unilateral policy change, or is there some kind of consensus for making these changes? MarcusMaximus (talk) 03:40, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
He's done the same on the Notre Dame and Ohio State pages as well. He's been identified as a vandal by several other editors, so I think the best course of action is to alert an admin and make sure he doesn't vandalize/threaten any other editors.CH52584 (talk) 03:52, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
I put a reference for the Minnesota national championships. I'm fairly certain most of these football pages state national championships claimed by the respective universities. On a side note, I checked Rivals.com ... he's doesn't seem to be listed as a recruit. :P Latics (talk) 03:58, 19 October 2008 (UTC)


Actually, we've been going off of wire titles for a long time now. THere have been discussions on changing back to non-wire, or rather "claimed titles" (especially since the wires only started naming champions in the 1930s) but no consensus was ever reached. Alabama is notorious for its 12 claim. --Bobak (talk) 20:04, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

National titles, again(infobox)

Okay, as we can see from the above conversation, we're getting people who want the school's claimed national titles versus the wire national titles --this time with citations. We really need to figure out a uniform position because some articles are following the CFB policy of using wire and others are not --this is problematic because people are, in good faith, giving and receiving vandalism warnings to people who may not know of one policy or the other. How should we move forward? I have not been happy with the current policy, but regardless we need to have consensus and uniform implementation (and, if necessary, enforcement). --Bobak (talk) 16:07, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Why can't we give both? "Wire Titles = 12, School claims 123"? As long as it's referenced, who cares? This satisfies both camps. MECU≈talk 02:52, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not entirely certain, but it seems the number of people who supported the "wire only" NC line haven't chimed in here for quite some time. I'm for "claimed", but it would be nice to get at least a few more regular contributors --Bobak (talk) 21:06, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm thinking that the number of national titles should not be decreased as long as the number is properly cited. Wikipedia has the responsibility to present information as it would commonly be discussed. For example, ESPN et al are more likely to discuss Bama's 12 titles, not their 7 wire titles. I think wikipedia should state the number as what is most commonly accepted.CH52584 (talk) 03:15, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I forgot to mention that this is centered on the infobox. That's where previous issues arose, not in the article text as the differences could be better described and cited. As such: I do not disagree with the above, however the previous concern was is there a common, uniform source that everyone can agree to for "total titles" in the infobox? An ESPN/SI/etc writer may not be as reliable because they sometimes can disagree (and the editor might miss the discrepancy). Is there a page we can hook all of these title counts to? Once we have that nailed down, then we can go with "commonly held" on all the infoboxes. It's actually a bit comical, since the people who get into edit wars over the infoboxes apparently never read the actual articles (at least from their edit summary comments), take that as you may... --Bobak (talk) 21:57, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm still for claimed national championships. ESPN generally says Alabama has 11, Alabama claims 12, but the NCAA record book has 17... 12 is generally most accepted, even as much as some might not like it. :P Anyway, I think it'd be a safe bet to just go by claimed. But then, the NCAA Division I FBS National Football Championship article is ... I don't know. That's where it would seem to get messy. –  LATICS  talk  00:16, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
I have always been and always will be with a claimed guy. There is simply no debating how many titles a school claims. It is in just about every case, very easy to reference and like I said, there is no debating to it. As long as there is a "wire" or "unbeaten UPI" or what ever else someone can think of you will hear an endless argument from two different sides in a lot of different cases. Every school has a number of set national titles and I think we should just stick with that. Rtr10 (talk) 07:30, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to Use AP Poll Across The Board

I propose the use of the AP poll across the board for all locations throughout wikipedia where football team rankings are listed. This proposal stems from the discussion above and I believe that Johntex did an excellent job of summarizing the pros of the AP poll (the very last post above). Please post agree, disagree, or comment (neutral). ----Rodzilla (talk) 02:11, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree per reasons posted by Johntex. Ndenison talk 02:46, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
Agree per reasons listed in the discussion above by myself, Rodzilla and Johntex. Rtr10 (talk) 03:36, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
Agree ~Richmond96 t • c 20:12, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
Comment I honestly couldn't care less. I have little desire to go back through all the articles I've worked on to change them all so I'll leave that to others. Make sure the templates are capable of indicating whether a poll is Coaches or AP (I believe they can do this already, but double check).↔NMajdan•talk 00:47, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
Fair to say consensus has been reached? (At least between those who care) Ndenison talk 00:47, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
I was hoping for more people to respond, but it looks like consensus alright. We need some way to make sure that we know which pages are using the AP poll and which are using other polls, however. We should probably draft the fact that we're using the AP poll and why in an official Wikipedia policy at some point as well. ----Rodzilla (talk) 06:08, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Seasons category mess

There's a problem developing in the Category:College football seasons area. User Maple Leaf is creating new FBS categories for seasons already covered by I-A. I've noticed that Ohio State season articles are being put into these new categories. A few days ago I nominated two of the categories for deletion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 December 10#Category:1997 NCAA Division I FBS football season. Can someone help out here and leave the guy a note and get the incorrect categories deleted? --Geologik (talk)

Update: I got in touch with MapleLeaf and let him know the situation. I've moved the season articles back into their respective categories. If an admin or someone with deletion power happens to drop by or someone wants to nominate these, the incorrect categories are: Category:1967 NCAA Division I FBS football season, Category:1968 NCAA Division I FBS football season, Category:1969 NCAA Division I FBS football season, Category:1970 NCAA Division I FBS football season, Category:1975 NCAA Division I FBS football season, Category:1978 NCAA Division I FBS football season, Category:1979 NCAA Division I FBS football season, Category:1994 NCAA Division I FBS football season, Category:1995 NCAA Division I FBS football season, and Category:1997 NCAA Division I FBS football season. --Geologik (talk) 18:08, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 Done. Pages deleted, CfD's closed. Oren0 (talk) 18:36, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

New FAC

Hey all. There's a new college football featured article candidate up for review right now. I posted 2006 Gator Bowl for comments, criticism, and support, and anything you'd care to add would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. JKBrooks85 (talk) 07:41, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

NCAATeamFootballSeason infobox being changed for logo "overuse"

Without any warning, a handful of editors had a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Non-free content today and decided for everyone in the Project that there is a so-called "severe overuse problem" with college football logos. This is hardly the first time its come up, and its been heavily discussed and we've come to the current system with one logo per season page. While they're acting in good faith, they've gone and made changes across the CFB spectrum, even changing the Template:NCAATeamFootballSeason. I'm trying to keep the sudden changes to a minimum and encouraging them to come discuss the matter here. --Bobak (talk) 22:33, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. JKBrooks85 (talk) 23:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
Definitely. I was wondering what the hell was happening to the logos when I was looking at season pages earlier. Why does it always seem that the people who appear to be least knowledgable on college football/athlete matters, always cause the most trouble. --Geologik (talk) 00:19, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
I was wondering the same thing. Seems like they might be a little less anal about this stuff if they just set back, drank a cold one and enjoyed a nice college football game. ;-) I totally understand non-free and fair use content (as I believe most the editors in this project do). This particular Hammersoft editor has taken one unique case of a Ohio State logo being overused and tried to use it to get every single team logo thrown off just about every single page. When the logos were placed there legitimately under fair use. I'm sure the person was doing it with good intentions, but it really messes up the hard work of a lot of editors and is simply a pain in the you know what. What irritated me the most, was he cited in his edit summary '"Use not permitted. See Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Severe_overuse_problem" as if there was a consensus, standard or policy made there. When I read the discussion it was quite an argument and in no way a consensus on anything, in fact it stated in the discussion that policy sided against him. Just blew me away. This particular user does not contribute any actual information to Wikipedia. Just does little nagging crap like this. It is totally ridiculous. Rtr10 (talk) 07:50, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for keeping an eye-out, guys. These types of editors can definitely be irritating to deal with. You would think they would have, you know, a vote or a comprehensive conversation that resulted in a clear-cut consensus or something on the matter before taking it upon themselves to mass remove content. If I happen to see any instances of it, I will definitely revert it. Cardsplayer4life (talk) 10:45, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
There was no revert war. You prematurely took out images acting as if a consensus, standard or policy had been set in the discussion you were linking in the edit summaries which definitely was not the case. Rtr10 (talk) 21:13, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
As Rtr10 states, certainly not a "revert war", just a reversion of anyone taking matters into their own hand to mass remove something before it has been decided to change policy. (a reversion to keep to current policy, if you will) Cardsplayer4life (talk) 05:35, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I find it interesting that Rtr10 seems to acknowledge that the Ohio State logo was overused (it was used in over 100 articles), mainly due to its inclusion in season pages...but then seems to think the overuse of other logos on season articles isn't a problem. As I noted at the centralized discussion, whether there's one use or a thousand uses, the problem is the same. It's not the number, its the type of use. Ohio State just happened to be one that had a lot of such uses. There's no reason many other college teams can't have the same amount of overuse (assuming we allowed it). The point is how something is used, not how much. Anyway, if you feel like contributing to the centralized discussion, feel free.
You know good and well they are not the same case. You think they are being overused, but there is rationale provided for every single use in these cases and they do fall under fair use. Rtr10 (talk) 21:13, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Excuse me? It's a fair use image. Of course it falls under fair use. Plus, just because it has a rationale doesn't make it acceptable. That only passes #10c of WP:NFCC. There's lots more hurdles to be passed.
  • As to the desire that people should contact your project first before messing with these articles, please understand that WP:OWN is policy. This project is not the arbiter of what is and is not acceptable in articles this project has an interest in. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:38, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
If you wanted to present yourself in good faith, which you have not at all, you should have at the least come here and notify the actual contributors of this project that you have a problem with our way of doing things. You simple took a very hostile approach to all of us and blind sided the entire project as you can see above. That was simply unacceptable. Whether you were doing it in good faith or not. Rtr10 (talk) 21:13, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
  • As I mentioned at the centralized discussion, you're best off assuming bad faith when you read what I have to say. Once you're done doing that, and are willing to comment on what I say rather than me, perhaps you'll feel better about everything. With that out of the way...
  • As I noted, the projects are not the final arbiters of what is and is not acceptable. I have zero...zero...intention of informing projects about any ongoing discussion I am involved in that affects articles they are interested in. If you wish to call that hostile and unacceptable behavior, so be it. I'm not interested in appeasing projects. I am interested in upholding policy and guidelines, and projects don't have any more say in that than anyone else. The very notion that projects must be informed goes against WP:OWN and I find it dramatically offensive to the average editor who doesn't happen to be a member of your project but must get your approval to even comment about articles you're interested in. If this is the approach this project seeks to take, it's time for an MfD on the project as you are in clear violation of WP:OWN and that is blatantly unacceptable. Cheers, --Hammersoft (talk) 21:21, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
You have to be the most ignorant and disrespectful editor I have ever come across on wikipedia. This project is not possessive over anything and is in no way in violation of WP:OWN policy. This project however is full of users who actually contribute content to Wikipedia. I skimmed over your Contribution history and didn't see a single case in which you were actually contributing useful content to Wikipedia. Just little piss ant stuff like what you are trying to do here. This totally goes against the spirit of Wikipedia, which I am pretty sure you already know. I'd also like to refer you to Wikipedia:Assume good faith which includes many staples of editing on wikipedia. " Civility, Maturity, Responsibility ... When disagreement occurs, explain yourself using talk pages, and give others the opportunity to do the same. Consider whether a dispute stems from different perspectives and look for ways to reach consensus." You totally ignored editors of these articles and members of this project by failing to bring your reason to remove images to either the talk pages of each article or this project. This is why you were met by staunch opposition. It is very hard to believe with your behavior that you are doing things in good faith. Your edits from my view are more harmful and troublesome, than they are good. Just something you should think about in the future. Rtr10 (talk) 23:15, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Rtr10, allow me to be more clear. I read your above post only so far as "You have to be the most ignorant and disrespectful editor I have ever come across on wikipedia" I don't need to read anymore. Several times now you have taken it upon yourself to directly insult me. With this latest post, you've gone completely overboard. You are in blatant violation of WP:NPA. If you can't post without insulting someone, then don't post at all. Further insults by you WILL be reported. I'm not going to put up with your attitude forever. --Hammersoft (talk) 01:57, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
I think you should learn the definition of insult. I said you were disrespectful. That was not an insult it was meant to tell you, you should reevaluate the way you treat other editors and your behavior in editing yourself. If threatening me makes you feel nice and powerful go right ahead. You insulted myself and every other editor in this project by saying we are all breaking Wikipedia policy when we clearly are not. If you want to continue to be a dick to myself and other editors who actually contribute real content to wikipedia, go right ahead, but you are not going to get me to concede to you by trying to scare me. Simply isn't going to work. Nice try though. I will continue to contribute real content to wikipedia and continue to follow wikipedia policy, standards and guidlines while editing in the real spirit of wikipedia. Working with a community of editors to produce the best free encyclopedia on the world wide web. Thanks for stopping by a project that contributes to wikipedia. Feel free to come back anytime if you want to start contributing actual content to wikipedia. We would love to welcome you in to our community of contributing editors! Rtr10 (talk) 05:09, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
HAhahahahaahahahah! Ok, so the pro-inclusionists are "normal" people. Thanks for the insult! I'm abnormal now, and obsessed with free content. Actually, I'll take that as a compliment, since this is A FREE CONTENT ENCYCLOPEDIA it is hardly surprising that there would be people here who are (gosh gee willikers) interested in free content. I mean, the horror! Someone on a free content project interested in free content??? Say it ain't so!!!! We can't let those abnormal pervy types in here! BAN! I SAY! BAN THE FREE CONTENT LOVERS NOW! by Hammersoft

What a fackin' toolbag. I hope he's not older than 16. Jesus Christ. How do you expect anyone to take your arguments seriously when all you've done is express your views in a condescending and immature manner? How about working to improve pages instead of crusading against the use of logos? *facepalm here* --Geologik (talk) 21:38, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Just going to throw it out there... Remember to be civil and keep a cool head when arguments get heated. Reading some of the comments ... it appears to be getting borderline. –  LATICS  talk  23:23, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
No kidding. Chill out, folks. Spend the time you'd take ranting on developing an article, instead. JKBrooks85 (talk) 00:28, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Can someone take a look at The Game (Harvard-Yale)? I added logos like every other rivalry mentioned in that article, added good fair use rationales, and Hammersoft came by and deleted it, claiming that there was "no consensus" for adding logos. I understand she is trying to change the consensus, that is her right, but to say that there is no consensus for that type of edit belies her whole argument against the existing consensus. Can someone here take a look at her recent edits?--2008Olympianchitchat 01:52, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

  • From the discussion you've been involved in, it's blatantly apparent that there is no consensus. You claim there's no consensus to remove them from articles. If that is the case, then the same can be said for articles where they do not exist at this time. Since the article has existed for quite some time with a free license image that conveys significant information, I fail to see there is an adequate rationale to supplant the existing free license content with fair use content. If you think there is a reason, please feel free to bring it up at WT:NFC. Thank you, --Hammersoft (talk) 02:00, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Couple to keep an eye on that have been changed recently, just fyi for everyone: Big Game (football), Carolina-Duke rivalry, and of course the already mentioned The Game (Harvard-Yale). Cardsplayer4life (talk) 06:50, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:ATHLETE

This project would probably be interested in the debate on Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(people)#WP:ATHLETE reform: the other side, concerning the wording of WP:ATHLETE. You may also be interested in the debate on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Devon Kennard, an AfD seeking to delete numerous articles on college football players. - auburnpilot's sock 08:00, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Discussion on logo usage on this page

There is a discussion occurring about whether certain college-football related pages should include a logo. You are invited to participate in the discussion if you wish. permalink to discussion as of this point in time. Johntex\talk 20:40, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Note - Hammersoft and friends have now moved into a RFC with the intention of doing away with the ability of this project to use athletic logos on individual season pages. The discussion can be found here.
Ugh. One of the reasons I'm not nearly as active on WP as I used to be. This place is a bureaucratic mess. There really needs to be a more concrete stance on NFCs from the Board.↔NMajdan•talk 19:47, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand it either. I'm at a loss everytime I see a group of people arguing a point that actually detracts from Wikipedia. Could you imagine if these folks actually put their efforts into creating articles? Wikipedia would be the better for it. --Geologik (talk) 19:54, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
I try to avoid the bureaucracy and simply focus on what interests me. Still, every now and again you find yourself in these messes --that's where the ability of people in these WikiProjects to work together is beneficial. Once things like this are over, I go back to improving and creating articles. If you can look at it that way, its a good collaboration where we can all look out for one another. Whatever you do, try not to feel like Al Pacino in Godfather III: "Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in!" :-) I think this specific WikiProject has done a good job of working together, and there are some strong contributors here. Don't let some people who are a bit too in love with bureaucracy-over-contribution pull you down ;-) They usually leave out of frustration when they realize all of their work is unimportant (versus articles that the public actually read). --Bobak (talk) 20:59, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Non I-A programs

Any thought to articles on non Division I-A programs? The Ivy League, to take the most prominent example, has a long and storied football history, and currently there aren't even specific articles for Ivy League school athletic programs as a whole, much less football teams individually. Compare coverage of I-AA football with, for instance, single A minor league baseball or lower ranks of the English football system (e.g. Conference National teams), and it seems like these programs get very short shrift. Princeton played in the first game of American football ever played, and has a program going back 140 years, but all we have about it is a single paragraph. The same is more or less true for all the other Ivies' football teams. And beyond the Ivies, I-AA teams regularly provide players to the NFL, are occasionally televised, and draw thousands of fans - oughtn't coverage be better? john k (talk) 15:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

You ought to have no problem starting an article on any major college program, even those in FCS (former D-IAA) or even lower, so long as you can write a solid article with good sources. Needless to say, the Ivy League would be easy to do --I mean, Princeton helped start the darned thing. I would also toss out major D-IAA programs such as Appalachian State (which already has one) or even the notable teams of D-III Mount Union --frankly, it surprises me no one has made an article for them. --Bobak (talk) 16:20, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Hurrahhh More help! For smaller schools like NAIA and Div III, Div II we've started making "athletics" page to go with the school page and linking to the football section. But I think ultimately that every Ivy league team needs a football team page, especially those like Princeton, Yale, and Harvard that were not only powerhouses of success but also key in the development of college football especially in the early years!--Paul McDonald (talk) 16:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


I'd love to see more people get involved with creating and editing articles for teams below I-A. I know Paul has done a lot of the Division II, III and NAIA page creations. I mostly spend my time on Division I-AA, especially the Appalachian State Mountaineers football and Southern Conference related articles. I updated the infoboxes for all the I-AA conferences awhile back but the pages themselves could use some work. Take a look at the Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/MasterTeamTable as it'll give a good idea on what's been created and what hasn't. I've spent a lot of time organizing it and trying to find as many team and season articles to link as I could. I keep tabs on and organize List of NCAA Division I FCS football programs and over the last few days I've been working a bunch on List of NCAA Division I FCS football stadiums. I also started List of NCAA Division I-AA football seasons. We've got articles for the 2006, 2007, and 2008 seasons so far. I also created the I-AA playoff templates found here: Category:NCAA Division I FCS playoffs navbox templates and the {{Division I FCS National Champions}} template. More help is always appreciated. --Geologik (talk) 19:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The problem of Steve Gatena

We've got an interesting situation: there's an article about a USC reserve of absolutely no notability, Steve Gatena, but somehow it got by an AfD without consensus (3-3, with one of the keeps being a new account and the other its PR-titled creator; the WP:CFB voters were 2 for delete and 1 for no opinion). Let me be clear, I am a firm supported of notable college athletes being worthy of inclusion --but if this precedent holds, any player on any D-IA team will be fair game for an article. I don't think the greater Wikipedia community at-large is going to go for this, I'm trying to prevent things from getting out of control. The article is a puff-piece and the photos are call CP-violations desperately trying to show some notability when, as someone who has a huge knowledge of USC football (just see the FA I made of the 2007 season), this is not a notable person. If this had slipped by with another team, I may not have caught it, but this is an article of nothing. Am I being out of line here? This ended up slipping through because of lack of attention --Would the fellows of WP:CFB be willing to chime in if this gets renominated? --Bobak (talk) 17:37, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

First, I am a fairly regular CFB contributor and I !voted keep. Second, one of the deletes was by someone who has !voted "Delete per nom" on every one of Balloonman's very questionable AfDs (I believe that editor is the only delete !vote on every single one of them) including Jimmy Clausen. That AfD is a bigger test of whether we believe that FBS college football players inherently pass WP:ATHLETE, which I believe they do as that policy is currently written. Oren0 (talk) 18:33, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
I believe your interpretation is too generous and will ultimately allow for [120 (teams) x 85 (scholarship players)] 10,200 new articles (at least). While I disagree on that, here's the best part: Gatena is a walk-on (proof). If you include walk-ons, that 10,200 number increases with very little room for any opinion on notability. A line must be drawn. --Bobak (talk) 21:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
WP:ATHLETE states that notability is achieved when someone has "competed at the highest amateur level of a sport." This guy is a third string left tackle [17]. I wouldn't consider this to be competing at the highest level. If the AFD is reopened, I would vote to Delete. I already tagged on of his images for Deletion. Ndenison talk 04:29, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Exactly. I'm certainly not saying Gatena will never be notable, but he would need to achieve something like teammate Clay Matthews, who rose from a walk-on to being a scholarship starting LB/DE this season and a solid NFL Draft prospect. --Bobak (talk) 16:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I realize people are a bit distracted by the Non-free content discussion, but I have gone ahead and re-nominated the Steve Gatena article for AfD. Please participate (one way or the other), the last AfD had a total of 6 votes which --given the significance of this notability decision for a walk-on-- is far too low. --Bobak (talk) 18:24, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

infobox help

Can someone please help me with the 1998 Big 12 Championship Game page? The game went into double OT, and I can't get the infobox to show the two overtime periods. K-State scored 3 points in each period, and A&M scored 3 in the first, and 6 in the second period. Thanks in advanceTopgun530 (talk) 19:57, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Help again! This time it is the 1998 Alamo Bowl. What's missing and messing up the infobox?Topgun530 (talk) 19:38, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
It appears to have been fixed. JKBrooks85 (talk) 20:52, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Request for Comment on College Football logos

Users opposing the use of College Football team logos being used in articles through out the College Football project have filed a Request for Comment trying to ban use of team logos. As I am sure you know our current standard/system of using logos legitimately with fair use rationales do not violate any wikipedia policy. It would be appreciated if you could take a moment and voice you opinion on the subject here: RFC: Use of logos on sports team pages. Thank you in advance and thank you for your contributions to the College Football Project. Rtr10 (talk) 04:31, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

It appears that Seraphimblade has gone on a deletion spree before the issue has been decided. Cardsplayer4life (talk) 12:48, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
His edit summaries appear threatening as well. Has he become the sole representative of Wikipedia law? --Geologik (talk) 18:05, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
I told him he was a vandal. Lets see how he takes it. I don't consider Rtr10's posts to be in violation of WP:CANVASS. He's informing member of this project about something that will directly effect a lot of articles they work on. Ndenison talk 19:55, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Everyone remember to keep a cool head. Given how adamant both sides are, this could end up moving up in the dispute resolution process. Acting badly isn't going to help us, and will harm individuals (and arguable the whole). In the meantime, if you want to get more attention on this important discussion, you can place a notice, similar to the one JohnTex used above, on the discussion pages of affected articles, to let people know there is a conversation going on that will influence those articles. Remember, as per WP:CANVASS, you have to keep it neutral. This is a variant of how JohnTex did it that you can use: "There is a Request for Comment occurring about whether certain college-football related pages should include a logo. This is an article that would be affected by the decision. You are invited to participate in the discussion if you wish. permalink to discussion as of this point in time." (feel free to use it) I recommend avoiding individual user talk pages and reviewing the WP:CANVASS guideline before going forward. I think we will prevail on the merits of our arguments, we just need people involved in areas such as college football and college basketball to know what's going on. Let's just keep it cool, and to it the right way. --Bobak (talk) 21:16, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

RFC on College Football logos

As the NFCC talk page was becoming difficult to navigate (it was 400K), I have moved the RFC to a subpage at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/RFC on use of sports team logos. If you had the talkpage watchlisted, you may wish to add the subpage also. Best, Black Kite 11:31, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

USC national titles

I have counted 11 national titles, but the person who is controlling the USC Trojans football page counts 7. What gives?

I believe the University of Southern California only claims seven national championships, which is the number recognized by most. Several teams (Alabama, Notre Dame and Michigan just to name a few) have been awarded more national championships than they actually claim. Since the NCAA does not officially name the National Champion there is no exact way to say "this team has this many" so generally you go by what that school claims. Rtr10 (talk) 18:41, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I have heard the USC Trojans football dept claims 11 national titles. (1928, 1931, 1932, 1939, 1962, 1967, 1972, 1974, 1978, 2003, 2004)

For the 1939 team:

"The 1939 Trojans were presented with the Knute Rockne Intercollegiate Memorial Trophy, at the time emblematic of the nation's No. 1 team. The trophy (originally called the Rissman National Trophy) was given to the team that finished atop the Dickinson System, a mathematical point formula devised by Illinois economics professor and nationally-respected football analyst Frank G. Dickinson. His system crowned a national champion from 1926 to 1940 (with predated rankings in 1924 and 1925). It was the first to gain widespread national public and media acceptance as a "major selector," according to the NCAA Football Records Book."

http://usctrojans.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/072604aaa.html [/quote]

Teams such as Michigan, Stanford and SMU have claims championships solely using the Dickinson System as well, and they are not disputed. USC should have the same right. (Phenix621 (talk) 22:24, 1 December 2008 (UTC))

The USC page wasn't just about the Dickinson System, rather non-wire titles. Since that page keeps getting hammered by new users who haven't read about collaboration instead of unilateral action, we keep running into this. --Bobak (talk) 23:13, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
USC claims 11 titles. But, as seen here, they have 7 wire titles. The question of which number to include in the Template:NCAAFootballSchool infobox is contentious, and I think may deserve further discussion...
On February 29, 2008,Allstarecho (talk · contribs) removed the "wire" from "Wire national titles", which had been added back on December 30, 2006, by PassionoftheDamon (talk · contribs) (no doubt following this discussion). The topic was broached once on Template talk:NCAAFootballSchool, referring to this Dec 2006-Jan 2007 thread, which seems to be the largest centralized discussion on the issue. This is a case where form and practice aren't quite matching up and we could use clarity on the situation. (My personal preference: link to NCAA Division I FBS National Football Championship in the category "Claimed national titles" and just use the numbers that the schools choose to promote.)
So...I think opening up a new thread to generate discussion on the issue would be worthwhile. Perhaps an RfC would be useful? — Scientizzle 00:45, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
This is just personal opinion, but I have always found the whole "non-wire National Championship" argument to be kind of week. If a team has a valid claim to a National Championship and that is a championship recognized by the NCAA and the school claims that National Championship, there is really not much to debate, since there was never a clear way to name a National Champion. Rtr10 (talk) 05:58, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
The problem is that Div-1A football is the only college sport in which the NCAA doesn't run a championship, and therefore they don't "recognize" any particular claim to a championship; the best we get is a list (starts on p.81) of every selector's yearly pick. While this is a reasonable way to go in terms of quality sourcing with minimal external bias, many years list multiple teams that most practical fans would not consider that year's (co-)champion--i.e., only 8 of the last 50 years list a true consensus champ. The situation is clearly muddier prior to the introduction of the AP poll in 1936, compounded by the fact that the two major polls took their final votes before the bowl games until '67 (AP) & '73 (Coaches). — Scientizzle 18:06, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
They do recognize selectors of national championships which you can see on NCAA.com (probably the link you have listed there, I just didn't look at it) The NCAA doesn't name a national champion for Division I FBS, like I said though, they do recognize certain selectors such as the AP, UPI, current BCS, etc. Which gives those titles legitimacy. And if a school has a legitimate claim to a national title and it is recognized by the NCAA, then it should be counted. It is really not up to us as editors or any particular website to determine how many titles a particular team has. If the school claims it and it is legitimate, there is really no argument after that as far as counting the title. Rtr10 (talk) 21:09, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Yes, they certainly recognize "major selectors" (AP, UPI, Football Writers Association of America, National Football Foundation/College Football Hall of Fame, USA/CNN — USA/ESPN) for a "Consensus National Champions" section (since 1950, pg. 85). However, they also list for every year: Alderson System, Anderson & Hester, Berryman, Billingsley Report, Boand System, Caspar Whitney, College Football Researchers Association, Colley Matrix, DeVold System, Dickinson System, Dunkel System, Eck Ratings System, Football News, Harris Interactive, Helms Athletic Foundation, Houlgate System, International News Service, Litkenhous, Massey College Football Ratings, Matthews Grid Ratings, National Championship Foundation, New York Times, Parke Davis, Poling System, Rothman (FACT), Sagarin Ratings, Sporting News, Williamson System, and Wolfe. Many of these are the only selector of a particular team in a particular year. I can just imagine the bitching of Florida Gator fans if we wrote that Florida State shared the 1996 title based on their finish in Alderson's ratings... :) — Scientizzle 22:05, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Scientizzle did a great job of find and linking all the previous arguments that led to this situation. I still side with allowing all "claimed championships" in the infobox without changing the line. The current USC article claims 11 in the text, anyway. --Bobak (talk) 16:33, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Is there any reason we couldn't just split up the "national titles" section on the infobox into multiple sections? So USC's infobox would say Dickinson National Titles X, AP National Titles X, BCS National Titles X and so on. It would add a little more length to the infobox but it seems to me like the easiest way to defuse a reoccurring problem we have regarding this issue and provide a lot more clarity on where the total number championships listed came from Ryan2845 (talk) 16:59, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I think a more practical split might be "wire" titles and "claimed" titles. Wire titles are the most widely recognized as legit, but they're practically and temporally limited (see above). Claimed titles can be easily sourced to each university's athletic department and don't require any WP:OR to justify the acceptance of one championship selector over another. — Scientizzle 18:11, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
That is a very slippery and unnecessary slope in my opinion. Don't even like the wire title split. Most people, including SID's and media do not use any type of split as to saying well this team has x national championships, but only x "wire" national championships. Since the NCAA already recognizes certain selectors of National Championships this discussion is more of personal opinion as to whether certain titles are legitimate. If it is good enough for the NCAA, I believe it is good enough to count as long as the school claims the title. The whole argument as to Wire titles has always been and still is stupid to me. If the NCAA recognizes that selector then there shouldn't be much more debate. Rtr10 (talk) 21:16, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Please don't hesitate to share that opinion in the section below. Cheers, — Scientizzle 21:41, 2 December 2008 (UTC) ... whihh you did whilst I was writing here. Thanks! — Scientizzle 22:05, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

See below for the newly-minted RfC. — Scientizzle 20:22, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think splitting "wire" (which isn't used very often in the media) and "claimed" is a good idea, and I also don't think an RfC was necessary. But here we are :-) --Bobak (talk) 21:26, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

It may be a bit much, but I opted for the RFC because everyone seems to have a different opinion on what's best, the last consensus seemed to be uneasy even at the time and is almost two years old, and an RFC held on this page would have the greatest liklihood of gathering significant input. Worst-case sceniario, I think: no real consensus to change what we're currently doing, thus (by default) supporting the status quo. Best case: a clear consensus emerges, providing a recent discussion to which we can point if/when further concerns are voiced or edit wars started. Cheers, — Scientizzle 21:41, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

If you look on the sporting news alamanc regarding NCAA titles for college football, they grant USC 10 titles (1939 goes to Texas A&M). Not only that, but they USC the Dickinson System as a legitimate and a major determinate for the national title.

http://www.sportingnews.com/archives/almanac/nfl/cfbnatch.html

And moreover, if you want to remove USC's 4 titles pre-AP, then you should remove them for Stanford, Michigan, Notre Dame and SMU as well. I have listed my arguements under the USC trojans talk page(under USC titles again.....). TO be fair, either we grant USC claims to the 4 titles they say, or remove all title given. Phenix621 (talk) 00:10, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Until we can come to some consensus on this issue, I think it is fair to list titles for USC in the exact same manner as what is currently listed for every other school (e.g., Alabama, Michigan, ND, etc.). Once we can determine consensus, we can change for all or for none. It is simply unacceptable to hold one school's article to a different standard than is currently being practiced for every other school's article. Newguy34 (talk) 07:56, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

RFC: National titles in Template:NCAAFootballSchool infobox

Edit warring consistently occurs regarding the appropriate number of national titles to be listed in a team's infobox when the number of AP/Coaches/BCS titles, claimed titles and/or other externally awarded titles varies for any particular team. I've detailed much of this in a thread above, but will lay out everything as clear as possible here.

Background

Template:NCAAFootballSchool is the widely-used infobox for college football school articles. On February 29, 2008, Allstarecho (talk · contribs) removed the "wire" from "Wire national titles", which had been added back on December 30, 2006, by PassionoftheDamon (talk · contribs) (during this Dec 2006-Jan 2007 discussion). The topic was broached once on Template talk:NCAAFootballSchool, referring to the aforementioned Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football thread, which seems to be the largest centralized discussion on the issue.

What makes this a problem is that Div-1A football is the only college sport in which the NCAA doesn't run a championship, and therefore they don't "recognize" any particular claim to a championship; the best we get is a list (starts on p.81) of every selector's yearly pick. While this is a reasonable way to go in terms of quality sourcing with minimal external bias, many years list multiple teams that most practical fans would not consider that year's (co-)champion--i.e., only 8 of the last 50 years list a true consensus champ. The situation is clearly muddier prior to the introduction of the AP poll in 1936, compounded by the fact that the two major polls took their final votes before the bowl games until '67 (AP) & '73 (Coaches). Thus, in any given year, there are commonly multiple teams that have some arguable claim to a national title; some schools accept and promote all of these claims, some only recognize the "major" selectors.

This is a case where each potential listed number has problems and benefits, particularly regarding WP:NOR in whether and how Wikipedia should filter these different categories:

  • If we list only wire titles, as was the explicit practice since 2006, we're ignoring over 60 years of history (even if most pre-1936 championships are retroactive). Also, "Wire National Titles" may be (to steal the wording of Tlmclain (talk · contribs)) "too esoteric for the non-college football fan...we have to write the articles for people who are not college football fans. We cannot expect the non-college football fan to know that 'Wire National Titles' excludes anything before 1936, is limited to one poll from 1936 to 1950 and limited to two polls after 1949." These poll results, though, are the most widely-accepted arbitor of football championships.
  • If we list the results of the NCAA's panopoly, we'll find big, highly-disputed numbers which include selectors that may not be regarded as mainstream enough. However, the NCAA is almost neutral-to-a-fault in its acceptance of multiple selectors and it's clearly a high-quality source.
  • If we list a school's claimed championships, as was argued by PassionoftheDamon (talk · contribs), the infobox may become the "product of a school's public relations propaganda". Individual schools have varying philosophies regarding their recognition of possible claims and certainly biases come into play. These claims, however, are readily sourced and commonly recognized by media outlets, even if fans and haters will argue incessantly about the validity of any particular disputed year.
Suggested solutions

Assuming that "national titles" is a field that has wide support for inclusion (in some way) in the infobox, I propose a few options that may address this issue and help (re-)establish consensus on Template:NCAAFootballSchool:

Option 1: Leave the template as it currently is and list wire titles. Although, re-adding "wire" (or maybe "poll"?) to the infobox with a link to NCAA Division I FBS National Football Championship would likely help ease terminological confusion.

Option 2: Leave the template as it currently is and list the number in the NCAA record book.

Option 3: Change the template to "Claimed national titles" and allow schools' individual claims to be listed.

Option 4: List both wire & claimed titles

Option 4a: On same line, i.e.,

National titles X wire (Y claimed)

Option 4b: On separate lines, i.e.,

Wire national titles X
Claimed national titles Y

Further suggestions are welcome. — Scientizzle 20:21, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Responses

  • I'm not in favor of using just wire titles because even the oldest wire poll, the AP Poll, didn't come into existence until 1934 --so its simply incomplete (e.g. what makes Michigan's 1933 title lesser than Minnesota's 1934 title?). I'm for a variant of Option 3 where the line still says just "national titles" but we go with claimed titles. If someone could show me a regular use of "wire" titles in the media, I might be swayed towards Option 4. I just don't see "wire" titles much, in fact the few times I have seen a wire number, the same network has later conflicted itself by using the claimed numbers in a graphic. As a current example, from watching a lot of college football, these days ESPN is using claimed. --Bobak (talk) 21:31, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Side note: the biggest elephant in the room when it comes to older polls, the one that should shadow the pre-1968 AP and pre-1974 UPI polls, is that they released their final polls before the bowl games. But that's something we're not going to address for obvious reasons. --Bobak (talk) 21:37, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
Let's not even start with that stuff. That is a totally different discussion in itself and has very little to do with the actual titles. It's just the way they were awarded back then. To put it simple with that "it is what it is."Rtr10 (talk) 21:42, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Out of those I would suggest Option 3. Seems very simple and a very reasonable solution in my opinion. Rtr10 (talk) 21:39, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm for option 4 which covers both grounds and appeases both camps.↔NMajdan•talk 21:45, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Option 4b - it's a nice compromise since it allows display of the wire titles on their own and also whatever other titles the university may choose claim. If a university claims it then there is no reason it shouldn't be on here in some fashion Ryan2845 (talk) 22:23, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I prefer option 3 (whether it says "Claimed national titles" or just "National titles", per Bobak) because it takes the onus off of Wikpedia editors (WP:NOR territory) to justify any championship selector over another and simply reports what the university claims. It isn't perfect, but it includes 100% of the sport's history rather than just the more recent years. That said, option 4 is an acceptable compromise, I think, as wire polls are well-established as the top in the hierarchy of championship selectors. — Scientizzle 22:39, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Since I was referenced here, I will explain why I did that. It was just simply a matter of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). To the non-football inclined, they wouldn't know the difference between a wire national title or some other labled national title. Whether it's claimed only by a school or given by the AP, BCS, Coaches, Harris, etc., it's still a national title. Plus it just made more layout sense with the other 2 title fields, those being conference and division. So I hope that clarifies why I did that. This came about because of a past edit war over Ole Miss Rebels football and its national titles. Some people don't recognize them even though waaaayyyy back (1959; Declared national champs by Berryman, Billingsley, Dunkel and Sagarin, 1960; Declared national champs by Football Writers, DeVold, Dunkel, Football Research, National Championship Foundation and Williamson. and 1962; Declared national champs by Litkenhous) when they were awarded, they were recognized by news media and other reliable sources. - ✰ALLST☆R✰ echo 22:49, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I strongly support Option 4b, which I think strikes a nice, workable compromise that should be immune to edit-warring and constant revisions while simultaneously being educative about the differences among national championships. Any solution to this problem is necessarily going to require line-drawing (just as any Wikipedia article requires selectivity in terms of what sources to use, what information to include, etc.), and I think this is the best, most impartial, and most informative way. In response to the question posed earlier in the discussion, yes, there is a big difference between titles won before the advent of the polls and titles won after: aside from being the only accepted measure of national championships in modern college football, it's much more difficult to be a wire national champion, since there are only two selectors, than it is the national champion of 1 of 7 or 10 or 12 or however many selectors. If we are not going to list wire NCs solely, then we should at least note that very big distinction by splitting the NC field into "Wire" and "Claimed" subfields. A similar solution seems to have been reached regarding the championship field in NFL team infoboxes: it's split into League Championships and Super Bowl Championships to reflect the different circumstances of each accomplishment without excluding either.-PassionoftheDamon (talk) 03:58, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Support Option 4b for the reason Scientizzle said. By including both stated options, you offer the reader more information as well as the chance for him/her to make up him/her's mind about which is likely to be the more accurate version. JKBrooks85 (talk) 04:11, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment on Option 4b: Can someone answer the following two questions: What major media source still uses "wire" titles to count the total? What makes Michigan's 1933 title lesser than Minnesota's 1934 title? --Bobak (talk) 17:29, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Wire national championships are the usual criteria used in the mainstream media, but with wire services becoming something of an anachronism, they're not generally labeled such. Instead, they tend to denote them as "AP/Coaches" (or something similar), use the term "consensus national championships" synonymously, explicitly use 1934 or '36 as the starting point, or simply use the wire number in the tally. That's a matter of terminology and style. As to your second (rhetorical) question, that's already been addressed. They were "won" in different eras under different circumstances and from selectors with stark differences in prestige and public acceptance. Penn State in 1994 happened to be proclaimed a "national champion" by many of the same selectors that named Michigan for 1933, but nobody actually recognizes them as such or pretends that their NCF or Sagarin championship is "equal" to Nebraska's AP and Coaches titles. The fact of the matter is that circumstances changed with the establishment of the AP and UPI Polls, which finally provided a means with widespread public and establishment currency for recognizing a national champion, and those different circumstances should be reflected in the article by distinguishing between wire and claimed national championships, which are contentious, inconsistent, and often retroactive. Again, I point to the infobox for NFL teams, which splits the "Championships" field in two rather than lumping together "Super Bowl Championships" and "NFL/AFL Championships" as if they are the same thing.-PassionoftheDamon (talk) 19:56, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
You're statement that "nobody actually recognizes them" isn't correct, since ESPN uses pre-wire polls (I already knew what the "wire" meant, thanks) to show "total national titles" in various info-graphics. Again, I haven't seen a major media source use the wire total as some superior measure, and if they have ever used it as a number, it hasn't been with any consistency. There's nothing different between the football played in 1933 and 1934; in fact the very introduction of the AP poll was meant for pure marketing, as demonstrated by the recent article in the Wall Street Journal: In 1985, Alan J. Gould, father of the AP college football poll, explained at a press conference, "It was a case of thinking up ideas to develop interest and controversy between football Saturdays. . . . That's all I had in mind, something to keep the pot boiling." Selling newspapers. I don't see anything different between the AP/UPI-Coaches era, the BCS era or the era before the BCS. The history of college football doesn't demonstrate otherwise. I feel the NFL analogy doesn't work because the college football didn't have different leagues that merged, the closest would be the split of D-IA and D-IAA in the late 1970s. It isn't relevant here. --Bobak (talk) 23:35, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
Your statement that "ESPN uses pre-wire polls...to show total national titles" isn't correct; ESPN rarely uses "national titles claimed" -- and when it does, it invariably qualifies the statistic by, you know, inclusion of the operative word "claimed." You may choose not to see anything different about the pre-wire poll era, the AP/UPI era, and the BCS era; that naked decision doesn't actually make it so. The bottom line is that before the advent of the AP and UPI polls, there was no widely accepted method for declaring a national champion; after, there was. All "national championships" are not created equal; winning one in an era where two selectors are popularly recognized is a substantially more rigorous accomplishment and is not near as disputable as winning one in an era with 8, 10 , 12 purported selectors, none of whom enjoyed the individual prestige/acceptance of the wire polls. And, of course, having to run the gauntlet of an actual playoff would be even harder and conclusive still. If one day in the future a playoff was actually implemented, it would only be right for national championships won under that format to be further distinguished from wire national championships and pre-wire national championships. As for your tangent about the alleged initial purpose of the AP Poll, it's purely academic. It doesn't matter whether the AP created it only for purposes of "marketing"; what matters is that it gained the widespread acceptance and credibility that the pre-1934 selectors did not. NBA team infoboxes distinguish between NBL and NBA championships. NFL infoboxes distinguish between Super Bowl and League titles. So should be the case here. College football may not have an "official" system for determining a national champion, but the wire polls do serve as a de facto one - something that did not exist prior to their implementation.-PassionoftheDamon (talk) 01:20, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong support option 3 Claimed championships are easier to figure out than wire NCs, especially prior to 1936. Anything prior to 1936, I believe, would be a mess to figure out and would likely lead to more arguments as to which selectors in that era should be counted, or which should just be thrown out the window. –  LATICS  talk  07:33, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Strongly support any but Option 1 Let's just make it consistent. There is no magic to wire titles or those from the modern era. The articles include the entire history of a particular program, not just that which the community deems relevant, so shouldn't the NC's be the same? Newguy34 (talk) 08:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong Support option 3, though I prefer the word "Claimed" not be used. "Claimed" immediately connotes questionable legitimacy. Wikipedia shouldn't be the arbiter of which organizations' titles are more legit than others. All that matters for wikipedia is that the claim of the title have a recognized source, whether it be BCS, AP, Dickinson, Helms or whatever. I am strongly against option 4 because the word "Claimed" when juxtaposed with "Wire" exacerbates the problem of questionable legitimacy suggested by the word "claimed".Vantelimus (talk) 13:23, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Userbox

I was bored for a few minutes, so I made this. The image is one that I took myself at a Georgia Tech football game. Its included in a GT Football article, and I thought it made a good fit.

This user is a member of WikiProject College Football.




{{User Project CFB}}
Fell free to add it to your user page. Ndenison talk 23:50, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Nice work! JKBrooks85 (talk) 09:10, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
looks good!--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Not bad, buttt... Maybe it's just me. I'm not entirely sure that it's a great image for a userbox, as it's a bit difficult to see anything more than the green grass or the fans. I've used the same concept here, but with different images. –  LATICS  talk  21:56, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
Nice, are you proposing it as a replacement to the old template (Template:User WikiProject CFB), or just an additional one? Maybe you can add the participants category (Category:WikiProject College football participants) to it too, like the old one does. Ryan2845 (talk) 22:12, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Another "west" restoration

I restored another "West incident" article at John D. Schwender. Turns out there's some good sources (washington post, chicago trib, etc) on the faculty of the school voting to discontinue the program for a year due to excessively rough practice sessions. Anyway, we're now at 35% of the West deletions getting restored.--Paul McDonald (talk) 06:01, 29 December 2008 (UTC)


72.208.8.229

Can someone check Special:Contributions/72.208.8.229? The IP has been adding incorrect information to hockey articles. I tried double-checking the football edits, but I have no idea how to verify what they've added.-Wafulz (talk) 16:39, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


Chas Henry is a Sophomore not a Senior on the Florida Gators roster. How can this be changed? I cannot edit the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rwbannon (talk • contribs) 23:26, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Since logo usage is such an uncontroversial issue...

Seriously though, I noticed there were issues with incomplete fair use rationales for the WVU logo, but then I noticed they had some older teams (that certainly predated their current logo), so I went through and found the old logos online. Now the two relevant teams, 1975 and 1969, have the actual team logo from those years. Anyone else thing this is a good idea for older team pages? The actual trademark on these logos is almost certainly abandoned, though the copyright ownership (unless they were made pre-1923), would be active. Thus an abandoned logo from pre-1923 would be straight-up public domain, not sure how many of those there are. --Bobak (talk) 21:26, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Bobak, I have updated the licensing on the 1969 logo, because it is not eligible for US Copyright. It actually falls under public domain. The 1975 logo is a little more questionable because it has the state outline (which still isn't really original content, but I'll leave that for some one else to determine). I do like having the actually logo of that team though. Nice work! Rtr10 (talk) 21:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree on the 1969 logo. While it does use type, it is stylized and used as a single image/logo --it was not a part of a typeface/font set that would fall into that exception. The design as it is is more of a piece of art. This point actually falls into the classic discussion of form/function, copyright/patent (for industrial design) that's found in important cases such as Brandir. While a font set is the blend of form and function that disallows copyrights (but permits dsign patents), this design is an image that was made in the same way that might protect the FedEx or Big Ten logos and their hidden images. Of course, companies always prefer to protect trademark because (1) they need to in order to keep it trademarked and (2) they last forever (vs. copyrights or patents). The courts have always had a surprisingly low bar for creative work, and this would be one that (I personally) would agree with arguing for --but the bottom line is this isn't clear cut and we need to be safe. The 70s logo is certainly copyrighted. Of course, for all we know, since the 60s logo was before the Copyright Act of 1976, and could very well be in the PD for a lack of renewal (which is no longer necessary, but was at the time --once something goes into the PD, its almost certainly gone). --Bobak (talk) 01:44, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
You cannot copyright letters themselves no matter how distinctive the font; it's a trademark. Coca-Cola's logo is a prime example of that. The 1975 one is another matter altogether and I wouldn't place money going either way. — BQZip01 — talk 03:09, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Actually, the CC logo a terrible example because it predates 1923 so the copyright would've expired --however that's exactly why trademarks are defended, they last forever. If I were to paint stylized letters, copyright would attach and there would be a certain legal fight over it. The WVU letters weren't part of a type set, rather were designed to be a part of a stylized logo. See examples of FedEx and Big Ten. I would normally find myself on the "Wikipedia is too copyright paranoid", but this time I can't agree. --Bobak (talk) 15:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Just thought I should point out that there is a major difference in between the FedEx & Big Ten logos and the 1969 WVU logo. Both FedEx and the big ten are not just pure letters/characters. The "dE" in FedEx is not a letter/character that could be identified as a font and the Big Ten logo has the number 11 embedded into the Word Big Ten. They are both VERY different from the 1969 WVU logo which is simply three letters in a style of font. While the style of the letters might have possibly been new at the time they are still just letters and that is not "original enough" to get it to fall into US Copyright. Rtr10 (talk) 18:37, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

While the FedEx/Big Ten logos are more creative, the threshold for originality is exceptionally low. The US case that is now cited is the Supreme Court decision in Feist v. Rural (1991, text here). It was a case over one phone book literally copying another (not original), but in reaching the decision in laid out a good summary of how low the threshold actually is:

The sine qua non of copyright is originality. To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author. . . . Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. . . . To be sure, the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, "no matter how crude, humble or obvious" it might be.(from Feist)

So my point is that the old WVU logo could arguably fall into this minimum degree of creativity, "no matter how crude, humble or obvious" it might be. As such, we should be careful and assume that it is remains under copyright and used under fair use. --Bobak (talk) 19:07, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Formatting individual yearly bowl game recaps

I'm getting flustered by some Wikians who are using the short names in some of the yearly bowl game pages. I, for one in the last couple years have used the full name of the school and team nickname (i.e. "Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Hokies") while some use the shorter version (i.e. "Virginia Tech Hokies") in the game summeries on the annual pages, NCAA football bowl games, 2007-08 as a most recent example. However, this year, I feel that we should not do one or two sentance recaps on that page, rather than that, have a summary on each bowl game page with the full school name. Examples include 2008 Armed Forces Bowl, 2009 Cotton Bowl and 2009 BCS National Championship Game, of which I have put the proper name but instead use the short version. In such cases, I would like to see the following schools (such as Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, LSU, etc.) be listed as folows with a back link to the team that year (such as ((2009 Ole Miss Rebels football team|University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) Rebels)) (using the Wikilink brackets):

  • Virginia Tech: "Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) Hokies";
  • Ole Miss: "University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) Rebels;
  • LSU: "Louisiana State University (LSU) Tigers";
  • Georgia Tech: "Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) Yellow Jackets";
  • USC: "University of Southern Californa (USC) Trojans".

These are the only schools that I know of with this problem, and complicating matters, both Southern California and South Carolina share the "USC" initals, hence "Southern California" is usually used in the recaps and stories in lieu of the USC initals. Please take this under consideration, and thanks. NoseNuggets (talk) 2:54 PM US EST Jan 12 2009.

The problem with getting into that is that you are often times using incorrect names or use of the school name. The teams are known by and referred to by what you call "short names" (which is not really correct at all) not the full name of their institution. For example no one knows the ACC's Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets as "The Georgia Institute of Technology Yellow Jackets" and the institution itself does not even refer to the team in that name, they officially refer to the team as the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and the same is true in a ton of situations. Ole Miss is the same. The University of Mississippi officially refers to their athletic teams as the Ole Miss Rebels, not the "University of Mississippi Rebels. I also noticed one instance in the 2009 Sugar Bowl article you referred to the Alabama Crimson Tide as the "University of Alabama Tuscaloosa Crimson Tide", well as both a student and employee of the university I can tell you with assurance there is no such thing as the "University of Alabama Tuscaloosa", there is a University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama which is the flagship institution of the University of Alabama System, but it is not referred to in an circumstance as the "University of Alabama Tuscaloosa". That is just one of many reasons using full institution names is a bad idea. Using these name are simply unneeded and only cause confusion to those reading the article. If there is question as to who the team represents, then the reader can click the wikilink of the team and will see who the team represents in the very first sentence of that article. Just no need to cause confusion by using names that are not even used by the institutions themselves. Rtr10 (talk) 23:07, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Right. I'm in complete agreement with Rtr10. The name a college or university uses can be different from academics to athletics. The athletic names of these schools (LSU Tigers, Virginia Tech Hokies, USC Trojans, etc.) should be, and stay, the preferred way to refer to them in sports related articles. --Geologik (talk) 00:55, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm a student at Georgia Tech, so I have first hand knowledge on this matter. The name Georgia Institute of Technology is appropriate when referring to the academic institution. However, the Athletic Association only uses the name Georgia Tech. The terms Georgia Institute of Technology Yellow Jackets and Georgia Institute of Technology football are erroneous. I'm not positive them same is true with Virginia Tech, but I'd be willing to bet it is. Ndenison talk 01:32, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
It is. JKBrooks85 (talk) 02:17, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
And there is never any confusion between the USC Trojans and the USC Gamecocks.--2008Olympianchitchat 04:49, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Really, I never see South Carolina expressed as "USC" except on the TV score box. Whatever the athletic program uses, I'm thinking we should do the same. Since I'm pretty certain that a lot of programs never use the university's full name. –  LATICS  talk  07:59, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

2008 ACC Championship Game FAC

Just wanted to give you all a heads-up that I've submitted 2008 ACC Championship Game to be a featured article. Any comments, questions, concerns, criticism or support you'd care to add on the review page would be appreciated. Thanks! JKBrooks85 (talk) 05:36, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

"Part of a series on...." template

Would anyone else be interested in having a "Part of a series on.." template for college football? (describing the major aspects of it) For examples of what I mean, and ways in which this sort of template can be used, see Template:Judaism, Template:History of Australia, Template:Censorship, Template:Islam, Template:Love table, Template:BibleRelated, Template:Creationism2, etc... I could create one for college football fairly quickly to see what people thought of it before implementing it, if anyone would be interested. Cardsplayer4life (talk) 06:09, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to see what it would look like, what kind of scope we'd have under it (or I guess on it). Rtr10 (talk) 06:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I was thinking along the lines of having different sections for awards (heisman, coach of the year, national championship trophies, etc.), major games played (BCS games, Conference championships, etc.), maybe something with conferences or past college football seasons, etc. Actually, if anyone has any good suggestions on areas of college football that would be worth highlighting, I would love to hear them before creating such a navigation template. Cardsplayer4life (talk) 06:34, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I think it would be a great idea. I've just started to toy around with an idea in my sandbox of doing one of those templates for Athletic Departments. Of course I did one of Alabama which probably has more athletic articles than most universities, but I still think it has a lot of potential. Rtr10 (talk) 07:11, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
That one is looking excellent so far! I think it would be great if there were templates like that for most major universities that have a lot of articles, so maybe you will spur on the development of them from people that see yours and have interest in other universities. One thing I have a question about is where you put these templates in relation to infoboxes, if there are ones for the articles. (above or below them) I suppose below the infobox since the infobox is on the specific article. Cardsplayer4life (talk) 07:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

<---I was messing around with a template for one, but I started thinking, should this be a template about all of college football or just Division I? I say that because if it were on all of college football, then it would need to be much more general and include links to Division II, Division III, and NAIA stuff as well, and likely could not contain information on, say, the BCS and whatnot. (Well, not as detailed information on it anyway, since it would be more of an overview) I don't know what the best format would be. Anyone have any ideas? Cardsplayer4life (talk) 07:42, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

New college football FAC

I'm sorry I didn't mention this earlier, but another new college football bowl game FAC has been submitted — and this time, it's not by me. Strikehold has submitted 2008 Humanitarian Bowl to FAC, and more reviewers and commenters are needed. Thanks! JKBrooks85 (talk) 11:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


Milestone Announcements

Announcements
  • All WikiProjects are invited to have their "milestone-reached" announcements automatically placed onto Wikipedia's announcements page.
  • Milestones could include the number of FAs, GAs or articles covered by the project.
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Click here for more information or to sign your project up.

I thought this WikiProject might be interested. Ping me with any specific queries or leave them on the page linked to above. Thanks! - Jarry1250 (t, c) 21:46, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

College fight songs

There is a thread on the administrators' noticeboard which may affect editors involved in this WikiProject. Please see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Lyrics. CrazyPaco (talk) 01:06, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Another vote on the use of college logos

There is another vote going on to determine the way college and university logos can be used in sports articles for those interested. Cardsplayer4life (talk) 23:44, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Ed Orgeron

Resolved

Would a few eyes, uninvolved of course :), mind taking a look at just the lead section and how it is curently crafted. I would rather remove the phase "well-known" per WP:PEACOCK, but have been met with pretty feirce resistance. I am sure there is a better way to write this material so that term is avoided but still covers this factually. Thanks in advance. --Tom 13:54, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

This seems to have been resolved for now. Two other editors have shown up and chimmed in. Hopefully this needless drama is finished. Thank you, --Tom 18:10, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

I just wanted to let everyone know that I've signed up the project for article alerts, an automated notification of events like AfDs and things like that. It's been linked in the project navigation toolbar. JKBrooks85 (talk) 11:41, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


Team articles

The project almost has full inclusion for Division I FBS team articles, with 109 (91%) by my count. We're also very close on 2008 season articles for Division I FBS teams, with 101 (84%). Anyone interested in helping close the loop on these? Strikehold (talk) 01:35, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

2009 Sugar Bowl neutrality

Please refer to my comments made here about the 2009 Sugar Bowl article's neutrality. I'm debating on removing the entire game summary section, as I believe it might just be clever vandalism. The entire section is unreferenced, and has some wild slanting in Utah's favor, in my opinion. Help and comments would be appreciated. :) –  LATICS  talk  18:29, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Chris Beatty

Someone from here might want to look over the article on Chris Beatty and comment at the afd, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chris Beatty, it'd be useful for those of us with less of a clue to help voice an opinion. Ta. Hiding T 11:49, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I've left my comment. –  LATICS  talk  14:02, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

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