Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Archive 23

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Help requested

FYI – we have several IPs (and a troll: Corkythehornetfam) who have been switching the Michigan–Michigan State football rivalry so that Michigan State is first. Our standard (and possibly consensus?) is to list it as Michigan–Michigan State as it also matches the other UofM articles. I'm requesting help to tackle this issue with the user (IP and user are the same person). Thanks, Corky 12:59, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

As it is not a UM article, but an MSU and UM article, wouldn’t the order UM articles exclusively use not matter? It was originally called the Paul Bunyan trophy, a more neutral name. Is the order really that important? Shouldn’t users just be able to add content or create edits in whichever order they see fit? There is no team that inherently requires being said first, and with only two, it is not confusing in any order. It seems overkill/petty to insist one school is always first, or always second. Users should edit freely and unambiguously in any order.

-Friendly Accountless User — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1007:B111:8327:FC3E:8804:6870:6DB4 (talk) 13:49, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Every single football rivalry article on Wikipedia without a common name (e. g. Red River Rivalry) orders the teams on alphabetical order. See List of NCAA college football rivalry games. It's just easier to find the articles when they follow this predictable pattern. And the article is cleaner when all the references are in the same order. Ostealthy (talk) 15:52, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

That makes sense. It just seems of minor importance/more effort than it’s worth to police. It is not a hill I would want to die on. People will still find the article easily regardless of order. The order isn’t that big of a deal one way or the other. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.188.143.151 (talk) 18:07, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Right, so why are you hell bent on changing it? Ostealthy (talk) 18:34, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Now we’ve got sock puppetry going from the IP/user. They’ll be reported soon. Thanks for your help, I appreciate it! Corky 20:18, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Just saw. Already reverted and have requested PP. UW Dawgs (talk) 20:20, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Inaccurate Coaches Poll results on USA Today website

I've recently become aware that USAToday's website is no longer a reliable source for Coaches Poll results from 2008 to 2013. For each week's results in that period, there are several ballots missing from the results, resulting in teams that are out of order from their original position. For example, for 2013 Week 9 the USA Today website implies (from FPV totals) that there are 54 ballots in the count, while an archive of the page from 2014 lists the full results from 62 voters. This results in discrepancies like Missouri and Miami being flipped. Every single week from 2008 to 2013 is like this, and the further you go back the fewer ballots are counted. So just keep this in mind if you see anyone changing ranking information based on these incomplete results, as I've seen at least one person doing. I've contacted USAToday and they seem completely uninterested in fixing their records, so please consult archived versions from now on, or default to ESPN, who have the correct results. Ostealthy (talk) 22:31, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

This issue appears to have been fixed on USAToday's website. The site now features accurate results going back to 1992. Ostealthy (talk) 14:48, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

High school football coaches categories by school?

I'm under the impression that the sports' WikiProjects have all drawn a hard line in the sand regarding over-categorization for high school sports, such as Category:Hillsborough High Terriers football coaches and Category:Montgomery Bell Academy Big Red football coaches. Or am I mistaken? SportsGuy789 (talk) 05:22, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, these should probably be up-merged to Category:High school football coaches in the United States. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:27, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

All – I've nominated these two for upmerging (CfM discussion here). Pinging @MisterCake:, the creator of these subcats, so he is aware. SportsGuy789 (talk) 03:16, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Template:Infobox NCAA team season field name cleanup

Please see Template talk:Infobox NCAA team season#Cleaning up field names for discussion. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 14:18, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

AfD

Hey, guys, this is kind of off topic, but I didn't know exactly where else to bring it up. So, there's this AfD. Some background info here: it's an ice hockey AfD. The subject involved was national player of the year in Canadian college ice hockey (CIS), which doesn't meet any of the points of WP:NHOCKEY, but people are now bringing up WP:NCOLLATH. The broader question I see here is whether or not WP:NCOLLATH ought to be applied to CIS athletes as well, or whether it's for NCAA athletes only. Thanks!! Ejgreen77 (talk) 07:35, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Remove Championship Game result from Red River Rivalry discussion

Hey y'all. There is a discussion at Talk:Red River Showdown#Remove Championship Game result from Red River Rivalry that some editors may be interested in contributing.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 23:31, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Just FYI it's still going on.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 23:10, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Portal:College football

Proposal to delete all portals

The discussion is at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal to delete Portal space. Voceditenore (talk) 07:53, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject American football#Meaning of "field goal attempt"

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject American football#Meaning of "field goal attempt". -- Marchjuly (talk) 03:37, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Just want to update that the above-mentioned discussion is closed and the issue appears to have been resolved (at least for the moment). -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:00, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

User:Dragonash1974

Just an FYI to this project that this inexperienced user is creating college football list articles of questionable quality, and could probably use a patient mentor to help him improve. At the very minimum I wanted to bring these new articles to your attention. SportsGuy789 (talk) 15:08, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

The articles at issue are lists of football seasons, including Richmond Spiders, Villanova Wildcats, Rhode Island Rams, Northeastern Huskies], UMass Minutemen, and Hofstra Pride, Maine Black Bears (draft), New Hampshire Wildcats (draft), Elon Phoenix (draft), Presbyterian Blue Hose (draft), Stony Brook Seawolves (draft), Portland State Vikings (draft), Sacramento State Hornets (draft), and others. Can someone familiar with our best practices for such lists take a look and offer any needed input and encouragement to User:Dragonash1974? Cbl62 (talk) 17:32, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

These lists display yet another "style fork", if you will. See List of Michigan Wolverines football seasons vs. List of Alabama Crimson Tide football seasons. There's been discussion in the past about applying a uniform format for these lists, but the issue has never been resolved. @Dragonash1974:, welcome. Perhaps you'd like to take that on that project? Jweiss11 (talk) 17:57, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

I would be open to trying to apply a uniform format for these lists. If anyone would want to share some opinions on which format seems best. One that I like is List of William & Mary Tribe football seasons. Dragonash1974 (talk) 12:27, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Some MAJOR inconsistencies

I know a few of us are standardization wonks, and as such I've found two glaring discrepancies between styles on season article pages.

• The first of which is rosters one example the 2013 Oklahoma Sooners football team page uses Template:American football roster, while 2018 Alabama Crimson Tide football team uses some sort of wikitable and has it broke down by position.
• The second is how we record game summaries within season articles. This is even just for 2019 like this for Oklahoma, compared to this for Kansas State. Of course, this doesn't even begin to describe all of the historical articles.

I honestly don't care which way we go on the roster as far as we're consistent. I do care more about the game summaries (I prefer the first example, but it's about consensus not what I like). IMO this is the most obvious overlooked thing on the project, (especially considering all of the work over two seemingly similar schedule tables styles).-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 19:10, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

UCO2009bluejay, thanks for bringing this up. I've noticed these style discrepancies as well. For the rosters, a template-based solution seems preferable. The 2018 Alabama table include heights and weights for each player. Do we need to include that? Note that articles such as 1997 Michigan Wolverines football team have roster tables that include, heights, weights, hometowns, high schools, and previous colleges. As for the game summary sections, there's also a third scheme, exemplified by 2017 Michigan Wolverines football team, which employs Template:AFB game box start, Template:AFB Game Box Scoring Entry, and Template:AFB game box end. I think that's the best version of the three, as it's more comprehensive than the 2019 Kansas State scheme (using Template:Linescore Amfootball) and much cleaner and less obtrusive than the 2019 Oklahoma scheme (using Template:Americanfootballbox). And what about those tables that show "Overall record", "Last meeting", "Result"? Do we need those? Jweiss11 (talk) 20:27, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

In regards to last point it sounds like WP:Fancruft or stuff that typically gets mentioned in run of the mill coverage.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 20:33, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Agree on the "Overall record/Last meeting/Result" tables. Seems like trivial clutter that doesn't have lasting value. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:29, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

I do not believe we should be slaves to consistency where such practice would result in deletion of useful information. In particular, where editors have gone to the trouble to develop rosters with player height, weight, and hometown, as found at 1997 Michigan Wolverines football team#Full roster (a Good Article), we should not eliminate that useful information for the sake of "consistency". We should not all be bound to the lowest common denominator. Cbl62 (talk) 23:25, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Cbl, any information that is deemed useful and non-trivial should be supported by the preferred format/templates. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:29, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I also think the format used at 2018 Alabama Crimson Tide football team#Roster is terrific in that it allows for inclusion of player height and weight. These fields are far from trivial. Could the template be modified to include these fields (also hometown) as options? Cbl62 (talk) 23:31, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the template could be modified to include these fields. That's going to require some considerations about layout. As for the the 2018 Alabama Crimson Tide football team roster, its got some basic formatting problems in that it misuses capitalization, italics, and hyphens. It's probably makes the most sense to start with Template:American football roster, already in use on over 2,000, articles, and play with a sandbox version of it to cover the additional fields. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:43, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I suggest that the height, weight, and hometown fields be created only as optional fields. We can then see how it looks. Cbl62 (talk) 16:36, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

"Current coaching staff" section on team articles

@Mack2700:

Many team articles have a "Current coaching Staff" section (Ex USC Trojans football#Current coaching staff). Current NCAA rules limit the assistant coaching staff to 10 individuals (or such) with that same article noting the Alabama media guide lists "41 photos of people with a numbing array of titles." and similar examples of non-coaching staff largess.

So I recently updated 15 team articles to remove non-coaches from the "Current coaching staff" section as these longtail non-coach, staff members are a better fit for the YYYY/2019 team season articles (Ex 2019 USC Trojans football team). The general result was a limited display of 10~11 actual coaches on these articles and no reverts until today.

Today, Mack270 reverted on Army Black Knights football#Current coaching staff which restored 15 non-coaching staff members (who are already included on 2019 Army Black Knights football team#Coaching staff). The Army article is scoped to 130 years of Army football, but now also conveys 15 additional staff such as "Michael Zeol, Assistant Director of Video Operations, 2017, 2017, William Paterson" which seems dramatically misaligned from the article topic. The content doesn't even seem to rise to WP:FANCRUFT. So am looking for some general consensus that the team articles should directionally attempt to restrict the "Current coaching staff" section to only actual coaches. UW Dawgs (talk) 21:29, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I think we ought to remove current coaching staff sections from main team articles. That's detail that belongs on the relevant team season page. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:49, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree in full with Jweiss11. That stuff belongs on the season page. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 22:49, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I think it's fine to include current coaching staffs on the main team articles. It's information relevant to the current state of the program, after all. But I think non-coaching staff should be removed, on both main team articles and season articles. The director of video production, etc. is pure fancruft. Ostealthy (talk) 23:16, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Draft:Butch Nash

Hello football enthusiasts. There is a draft waiting for review at WP:AFC about a coach with an award named after him. Please check it out.—Anne Delong (talk) 12:24, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2018 Saint John's Johnnies football team

A current AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2018 Saint John's Johnnies football team raises interesting questions about where we should draw the line on season articles. Saint John's (MN) is a small-college program that won a local conference championship in Minnesota and lost in the quarterfinals of the Division III playoffs. I am a supporter of season articles for Division I (FBS and FCS) programs, but I have serious reservations about proliferation of articles about Division III programs. The current AfD presents an opportunity to explore the question. Feel free to offer your views one way or the other. Cbl62 (talk) 03:50, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

• See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2018 Olivet Comets football team and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2016 Chicago Maroons football team further dealing with the notability of non-championship Division III seasons. Cbl62 (talk) 01:54, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

remove "Current coaching staff" section from team articles?

Per the above discussion (in #"Current coaching staff" section on team articles), the success of the Season articles campaign in creating YYYY/2019 season articles, and many team articles already exceeding wiki's 100 kB size guidelines (WP:TOOBIG, Articles to be split), lets revisit the purpose of including "Current coaching staff" sections (Ex USC Trojans football#Current coaching staff) as seen in some but not all FBS team articles.

The assistant coaching staff content already has a natural home in each YYYY (2019 USC Trojans football) season article, but does it deserve its own section in the full team article (Ex USC Trojans football team) which are covering 100+ years of team history?

Q1. Should we remove "Current coaching staff" sections from all FBS team articles.

Related, WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE says When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article. ... The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. The team article infoboxes also render various non-head coach staff (OC, DC, ST, AHC/TEs, etc), such as Nevada Wolf Pack football:

• Angus McClure (AHC/OL)
• Matt Mumme (OC/QB)
• Jeff Casteel (DC/LB)
• Jackie Shipp (DL)

Q2. If removal of the "Current coaching staff" section removes the names of all ~10 assistant coaches from the team articles, should the "OtherStaff" (assistant coaches) parameter of Template:Infobox NCAA football school be deprecated per INFOBOXPURPOSE? UW Dawgs (talk) 02:39, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes 1 and 2. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:39, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• Support removal of both "Current coaching staff" sections from main program articles and "OtherStaff" parameter from Template:Infobox NCAA football school. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:56, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
• UW Dawgs, that was a quick consensus. Anyway, I'm all for it, and I'm all for pruning more. You just tackled Tennessee_Volunteers_football--"Past and present NFL players" can be handled by a link to a category, an all-time list of all-time history against all opponents is...well, a bit over the top, and that list of captains should be cut as well. How about it? ;) Drmies (talk) 01:52, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Florida Gators football, Uniforms and Current coaching staff

There is a discussion in which you might be interested at Talk:Florida Gators football#rearranging sections about an editor's aesthetic preference[1] to elevate the "Uniforms" and "Current coaching staff" sections above more traditional content. UW Dawgs (talk) 03:03, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Um, that's not at all what I proposed to do. I suggested moving sections with lots of text to the top half of the article and moving long lists to the bottom, basically arranging it into a text/appendix format for easier readability. I'd actually forgotten about it, and though I still think it'd be a much better arrangement, it's probably an idea best revisited after the season. Zeng8r (talk) 22:19, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Inclusion of W-L record for every opponent

Three FBS articles display the all-time records for "every" (100+) opponent series.

• Nebraska Cornhuskers football#Series records
• Iowa Hawkeyes football#Division I opponents
• Tennessee Volunteers football#History against all opponents

All three team articles currently fail WP:TOOBIG. These serires sections are 5-15kB, where TOOBIG begins to flag at >50kB. So the sections are inherently problematic.

Do we have consensus around either 1) outright removal, or 2) merging to a new "List of Team Nickname all-time series records" type article convention to support this content? Observationally, this content is not consistently maintained and diverges from sourcing. My view is remove, but a new stand-alone article type is also reasonable. UW Dawgs (talk) 22:34, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

The concept of separate, stand-alone series record articles was soundly rejected by the community in this AfD (and others) back in 2016. Dumping the same data into the main program article looks like an attempt to end-run around that process. FWIW, I have no objection to all time record table in program articles on a limited basis where it makes sense (such as conference or in-state opponents). But, listing every single team they've ever played a single game against seems like overkill to me. Ejgreen77 (talk) 22:58, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Removed x3 per prior consensus (on stand alone article format). UW Dawgs (talk) 12:53, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

I removed again from Nebraska after they were re-added.—Bagumba (talk) 03:33, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I would like to see the series records remain on Nebraska Cornhuskers football. I maintain the records and keep them current after every weekend. Wscsuperfan (talk) 23:20, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

New article on games

Found a neat article that can be used as a source for historical games ESPN: The 150 greatest games in college football's 150-year history.--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:12, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Paul, saw this article earlier today. Seven Michigan games from my tenure as a fan made it—all tragic losses! :( Jweiss11 (talk) 00:51, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Request for comment: Lower division season articles

There has been good discussion in recent days about when, if ever, we should have season articles about college football teams that play at levels below Division I. See these AfDs: 1973 San Diego, 2016 Saint John's, and 2018 Olivet. As of now, we have not adopted any formal guidance, leaving the matter to be debated endlessly under WP:GNG. With 450 D3 schools, 251 NAIA schools, and 314 D2 schools, opening the door to articles on all such seasons means we could eventually face 50,000 stubs (1,015 lower level schools x 48 seasons since the multi-division system was adopted in 1973). To me, and particularly when we have not even come close to building quality season articles on all D1 programs, this would be a misdirection of limited resources and an ongoing maintenance problem. I'm not sure where consensus is on this, but I think it would be reasonable for us as a project to formulate guidance. I initially thought that we might limit such season articles to lower level teams that have won their divisional national championship. Consensus did not seem to support that. In an attempt to establish some consensus, I'm offering a few alternatives below. Please offer your view. @Jweiss11: @Bagumba: @SportingFlyer: @Paulmcdonald: @Ejgreen77: @Eagles247: @Lizard the Wizard: @Smartyllama: @Ocfootballknut: @Strikehold: @MisterCake: @Patriarca12: @PCN02WPS: @UCO2009bluejay: @Corkythehornetfan: @UW Dawgs: @Ostealthy: @SportsGuy789: @GPL93: @Pvmoutside: @Zeng8r: @JohnInDC: @Bsuorangecrush: @Rikster2: @Hoof Hearted: @TonyTheTiger: @Clarityfiend: @Dirtlawyer1: @BD2412: @Edge3: @Metropolitan90: Cbl62 (talk) 20:44, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

• Scope note: This vote is not intended to apply to articles from the era before the multi-division system was created. Teams in the older era often shifted between periods of greater or lesser significance, and I believe that these seasons should remain governed by WP:GNG. But the development of the divisions in 1973 provides a clear framework for assessing notability from that point forward, and we should make use of that framework. Cbl62 (talk) 20:44, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Option 1: Leave everything as is, governed by GNG

• Support I gotta say--every time I try to come up with some kind of rule or guideline that's better than GNG I fail. I'm not saying that GNG is perfect by any stretch, but it's already in place and it seems to work well. When things "don't" work well is when an individual or group of editors argue against the well-established General Notability Guideline. "Look at season article for XXXX team in the year 19XX -- it's just a small team/school/Div III/NAIA/whatever, they don't deserve an article": Well, what does the coverage about that topic say? If there is enough coverage to surpass GNG, then any argument against it based on size or whatever is really just WP:IDONTLIKEIT. If the article doesn't have the coverage to pass GNG, then no amount of arguing if favor of keeping the article can overcome that. GNG works.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:22, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
• Support If it passes GNG, it should have an article, whether it's DI, DII, DIII, NAIA, middle school, or a team of goats. Some of those are more likely to pass GNG than others, but that should be the standard. Smartyllama (talk) 22:11, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
• Support after some thought and after reading User:Paulmcdonald's argument. If the season passes GNG then it should be kept. Best, GPL93 (talk) 00:09, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support at least for now. I'm open to the possibility of a categorical restriction here, but I don't see a satisfactory one among the other options, as yet proposed. Specifically, none of the options proposed address the the run of historical seasons as we cross the introduction of tiers by the NCAA in 1956 and 1973. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:09, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support There doesn't seem to be any rush to create all these small college season articles, so I really don't see the need to devise any special notability rules. The main difficulty in writing them is that there's often little documentation, and since a lack of coverage would fail GNG, the potential problem takes care of itself. Zeng8r (talk) 10:54, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support – though it may seem disorganized now, I think it's definitely better than the two extremes (create and maintain all the stubs, which would be a pain and indeed a mismanagement of resources, or ban them completely, not leaving room for any exceptions) and I think we can leave it to the community and our editors to determine whether the lower-level articles pass GNG and any other notability guidelines. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 11:41, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support Honestly, I think this is the only way. I don’t think it is appropriate to presume notability below D1. But there are some power programs at D2, NAIA and even D3 that get covered at the level of D1 programs so there needs to be some leeway here. It’s not always just the team that wins a title or goes to the final four - other factors exist. GNG is the only way to determine these in my opinion. Rikster2 (talk) 13:39, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support GNG is the best way to handle a case-by-case basis and I support case-by-case basis for this issue.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:20, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support GNG is probably the best way. I've done a few lower level articles, but only when they make sense in terms of a larger project (for example, to have a record of all intercollegiate football played by all campuses of the University of California). Ocfootballknut (talk) 05:05, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
• Comment I think this is the obvious answer, but it doesn't solve the problem - what sort of coverage qualifies a season for WP:GNG? As I've noted in a couple recent AfDs, my local amateur team receives press coverage - we have a bunch of clippings hanging all over the clubhouse - but in no way would we consider this notable. Furthermore, many teams, especially at the lower levels of football, receive a similar and sometimes often lesser amount of press coverage than high school football, which is clearly non-notable. I don't think the issue here is WP:GNG as such but rather being able to distinguish which types of articles demonstrate notability for the season - for instance in the San Diego Toreros article, consensus is GNG is met even though there's only two feature articles on the team, both from local newspapers, and most game coverages are either box scores or brief two-to-five sentence recaps. I would exclude this type of coverage myself. SportingFlyer T·C 07:38, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

  There's a difference between rootine game coverage for a bio vs for a team. For a bio, it's often just passing mentions. The same coverage is routine if trying to establish notability for an article on a single game. But consistent routine coverge for many games of a season for a single team may be sufficient for an article on that entire season. Think of WP:WHYN: We require "significant coverage" in reliable sources so that we can actually write a whole article, rather than half a paragraph or a definition of that topic. If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate page, but should instead be merged into an article about a larger topic or relevant list. If the only sources we have are stat lines, there's really not much interesting to write about.—Bagumba (talk) 09:09, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

  Also, generally speaking two such feature articles are often considered enough for an article on any topic--not just college football.--Paul McDonald (talk) 12:48, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Option 2: Ban lower level season articles completely

• Oppose A complete unconditional ban like this doesn't make sense. Some programs in the "lower-levels" actually have (or at least could have) notable seasons and even games. Such a hard line like this does not need to be drawn.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:16, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Doing so would conflict with Wikipedia-wide GNG criteria, if specific lower level seasons happen to be notable for any number of reasons. SportsGuy789 (talk) 00:35, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per the two above. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 11:42, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Option 3: Limit lower level season articles to national championship seasons

• Support I think we can presume notability for D2, D3, and NAIA national championship seasons, but anything less than that should rely on GNG. Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:04, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose A blanket ban is inappropriate - if they pass GNG, they should have an article. Smartyllama (talk) 23:41, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Option 4: Limit lower level seasons to final four in each division

• Support. This seems like a reasonable compromise and provides some bright-line guidance to deter proliferation of masses of stub articles. Cbl62 (talk) 20:44, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Option 5: Limit to playoff teams

• Leaning Support and extended to any conference championships for teams that win a conference but who's leagues bar postseason play. Best, GPL93 (talk) 20:50, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose sometimes teams and organizations can gain notability through the news not because they are great but because they are so bad at what they do they generate press. Ours is not to judge the press, ours is to build an encyclopedia from the results of that press.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:29, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Option 7: Require regional or national coverage for lower level teams

• Support per WP:GNG. Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:04, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose 1: what's a "lower-level" team? That's determined by opinion. What's a regional or national coverage? That's also determined by opinion. It leaves too much open to strength of argumentation.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:27, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

• Comment I think the presumed definition of "lower-level" here is any Division II team or lower, based on the opening paragraph in this consensus-building discussion; I disagree that it's subjective. I do agree that regional coverage is subjective and should be avoided as a criterion, but on the other side I don't think national coverage is a debatable topic (for instance, if USA Today wrote an article on the 1972 Millsaps College squad, are you going to argue that's not considered national coverage?). SportsGuy789 (talk) 00:30, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

• What I was going for there (and now I see that isn't clear) is that the definition of "lower-level" can change over time.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:30, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Option 8: Omit D2 from the guidance as it represents a higher level of play

• Oppose Division II season articles should not be presumed notable, GNG should be required for inclusion of these articles. Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:04, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per Eagles247. Each DII article should be judged on a case by case basis. SportsGuy789 (talk) 00:31, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Option 9: Limits are fine for D2 and D3, but ban NAIA season articles altogether

• Oppose the NAIA was the first college level play to have a national championship and the organization was once much bigger than it is now. Many current Division II schools were once NAIA schools. Drawing a hard-limiting line like this creates trouble down the road.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:26, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per largely what PaulMcDonald states, but to add: there are a number of present-day FCS and FBS teams that began as NAIA programs. To be pedantic about banning NAIA seasons would be in direct conflict with the established guideline that FCS and FBS programs' articles are deemed notable. SportsGuy789 (talk) 00:32, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Comments

I'm not sure why "Option 7: Require regional or national coverage for lower level teams" needs to be discussed. A WikiProject would not be able to override a website-wide guideline (WP:GNG). Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:04, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Couple general comments. First, for the sake of simplicity, I think we can treat NCAA Division II, NCAA Division III, and NAIA identically as one bucket named "lower division" or "sub Division I". There's no need to stratify our treatment among these. Second, if there's going to be a policy other than Option 1 above, it needs to deal with the introduction of tiers in college sports, first in 1956 with the NCAA's creation of University of College Division, and then in 1973 with the introduction of Division I, II, and III. It's unclear to me when exactly teams became "NAIA". Take DePauw Tigers football, now an NCAA Division III, for example. Would some limitation on "lower division" seasons articles only apply to DePauw starting in 1956 or 1973? Jweiss11 (talk) 01:16, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you would propose. Many teams that are now Division III were formerly major or at least mid-level programs. Chicago, Sewanee, Saint Mary's, Oberlin, Case Western come to mind. Prior to the divisional separation, there was much more cross-over and less stratification. So it would IMO be fatally flawed to say that because a team is Division III in 1973, all of its historical seasons before 1973 should be treated as though they were playing at a Division III level. Cbl62 (talk) 02:51, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Sewanee, Chicago, Saint Mary's, and many others were clearly major programs at one time or another, so I'm certainly not proposing that all historical seasons be treated by the current status of the program. But enforcing some sort of bright-line cutoff at 1956 or 1973 would create some weird situations. For example, how does 1955 DePauw Tigers football team compare to 1956 DePauw Tigers football team or 1973 DePauw Tigers football team? Jweiss11 (talk) 04:00, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

In the era before the creation of divisions, there was no official, verifiable demarcation of notability, and so WP:GNG appears to be the best (perhaps only legitimate) way to determine notability. It seems like you're saying that unless we can develop a bright-line rule for the old, non-divisional era, we ought not to have one for the modern era where stratification is official and verifiable? I just don't get the logic of that. Cbl62 (talk) 10:17, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

{{{Ping|Cbl62) It's just seems funny to me what we could have an article for every year of DePauw football up through 1955 and then suddenly in 1956 or 1973, because DePauw is then NCAA College Division or NCAA Division III, the individual season no long warrant articles, even though the level of competition and the degree of media coverage is more or less the same as it is for 1955. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:56, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

End goal? Are these proposals intended to be advice for project members, essays to be cited at AfDs, or as a change to NSPORTS to supercede GNG?—Bagumba (talk) 11:25, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

The first two. Cbl62 (talk) 15:14, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Hopefully, if project members are creating these articles, they have a good track record on notability, and we can even convince then to cite 3-4 pieces of significan coverage, even if it's just on the article talk page. For those with a bad track record on notability, proj member or not, a WP:TBAN on team season creations can be a last resort option.—Bagumba (talk) 16:43, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

DI teams = automatic notability? Is the corollary of this argument "Division I seasons are automatically notable" because they represent competition at the top division of the sport? (Receiving press coverage simply by virtue of playing in the top level?) I'm not challenging this notion, just verifying this is the policy as it would apply to perennial basement teams like 2018 Kent State, 2018 Texas State, or 2018 New Mexico State that other than their division status, don't seem very notable. Hoof Hearted (talk) 19:49, 1 November 2019 (UTC) (On a side note, I just read the Family of WikiProjects section on this project page and must give kudos to the author(s)!)

Comment Could I potentially add an option, it would be "In addition to articles that pass WP:GNG, conference championship seasons, and/or playoff appearances are notable." This seems like a good compromise, we don't have articles for a season that a team goes 0-11, but can for teams that win their conference, or make the playoffs as auto-bids aren't always granted to conference champs. This way we have a common sense approach for keeping articles that meet WP:GNG and can have a clear cut guideline for everything else. In addition, this also would provide justification to keep the standings templates and conference championship team navboxes that have become recently created. My only question is will this apply to FCS teams, or do they automatically pass notability?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 20:01, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

The problem is that if it is a conference championship or a playoff appearance, it's likely going to generate the press required to pass GNG. And if it doesn't generate the press to pass GNG then we shouldn't say "oh, and this one too even though it doesn't pass GNG" --00:03, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

@UCO2009bluejay: Teams that go winless are frequently more notable than middling .500 teams due to the historically bad season they just completed. I know what you're getting at, I just wanted to be devil's advocate that winless teams are more interesting / notable than 6–6 squads. SportsGuy789 (talk) 17:45, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

• @Bagumba: Responding to you above which says "If the only sources we have are stat lines..." The 1973 San Diego Toreros football team article, which consensus states clearly passes WP:GNG in the AfD so far, is primarily sourced to the team's media guide. this is four sentences and a box score, [2] four sentences and a box score, [3] eight sentences and no box score, [4] two sentences no box score, [5] three sentences and a box score, [6] three sentences and a box score, [7] seven sentences no box score. This last one is interesting considering the page it's on actually features a full feature story about Palomar College's game against Riverside, a community college - should those seasons also be considered wiki-notable? Likewise here - the community college football game actually ran on the front page! I'm not trying to litigate the AfD here - there's a couple feature stories I've left out here (though a WP:AUD would show they're pretty local) and I don't really care that much - but I think the context is very important here, and I think we're doing a terrible job at the moment at differentiating between routine stories and stories which actually demonstrate notable seasons per WP:GNG. SportingFlyer T·C 11:48, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

  @SportingFlyer: I don't judge the article on it's current state, but instead on what it potentially could be (WP:SURMOUNTABLE). While I'm usually concerned about whether stats cited to stats sites or media guides are really significant or trivial WP:OR, the ones listed there at least conceivably could be mentioned by some (yet undiscovered) independent source. The fact that there is WP:SUSTAINED coverage on the season by multiple sources makes the season (not the individual games) notable.—Bagumba (talk) 12:21, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• So if I wrote an article called 1973 Palomar College Football Season, you'd be a keep? SportingFlyer T·C 13:04, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• I'd have to judge the multiple sources (i.e. different publishers) you find for it.—Bagumba (talk) 13:08, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• No worries, I'm mostly trying to prove a point here. Most sports have a firm cutoff for what sorts of seasons are notable - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2017–18 Leyton Orient F.C. season (note I'm a keep !vote there, and that is at a national level of the English structure where every match is covered by BBC - one of the top 116 teams that year, so within the range of D-I college football.) 2002–03 St. Vincent-St. Mary Fighting Irish men's basketball team is probably the best example I can find for basketball - certainly that team's season had significant coverage? And Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2009 Portland Beavers season was a AAA team which a quick Newspapers.com search showed received coverage in multiple newspapers (though the Portland newspaper is missing that year) and that was still deleted. SportingFlyer T·C 13:22, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• My cutoff is based on the sources, not based on any particular threshhold I have for a sport. For LeBron's HS team, IIRC, that was pretty much all about coverage because of LeBron that devolved into WP:NOTDIARY. Sometimes the outcome is a result of who shows up (or doesn't) at a given discussion.—Bagumba (talk) 13:45, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Troy–UAB football rivalry

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Troy–UAB football rivalry (3rd nomination) in which you might be interested. UW Dawgs (talk) 01:38, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• Is that really supposed to be a rivalry? I guess it doesn't take much for something to be one--South Alabama–Troy football rivalry is six years old. Drmies (talk) 23:21, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

AP or CFP

Do we use AP rankings or CFP rankings for FBS games played after November 5 (when the first CFP poll was released). I edit PSU and looked back on previous years where it appeared that we continued to use the AP rankings for whole season, even after the CFP poll was released. Was there a consensus to switch to the CFP and I missed weighing in on the discussion? Just wondering as I see many FBS articles being switched to the CFP tonight. Bob305 (talk) 02:48, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Are you talking about the schedule tables? Jweiss11 (talk) 04:02, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I've seen this in both the schedule tables and on at least the Big Ten conference's standings box. I reverted the changes on the pages that I'm actively involved in editing as it seems detrimental to me to have rankings flip part way through the season, both in terms of understanding context for the progression of a team during the season and when comparing a team's performance year over year.Gopherdan (talk) 04:18, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I'm seeing it scheduling tables. Some diffs like [8] and [9], as well as [10] and [11]. Also here is an example in a game summary box: [12]. (Thanks, GDan for your reverts. Looking forward to a great game this weekend.) Bob305 (talk) 04:21, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of the "CFP after November 5" model either. Just keep it consistent with the AP throughout the year. Ostealthy (talk) 15:09, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I'd prefer the switch to CFP after November 5 since that's what TV broadcasts use in their score bugs. Eagles 24/7 (C) 15:12, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I never noticed that. Perhaps it's time for a change. It still seems a little odd to switch polls mid-season on the schedules (only because the CFP starts in the latter half). Even though it's noted in the footnote, how would we feel about a symbol or superscript notation after the rank number to indicate a change in poll? Hoof Hearted (talk) 16:54, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I think switching to CFP makes sense as it is the most meaningful poll. I think denoting it in the schedule beside the rank is a must. Either way it can cause confusion. KD0710 (talk) 18:07, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

In places where we only show one poll, we should go with AP only for consistency. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:56, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

In the final AP poll of 2014 before the playoffs and bowl games were announced, Baylor was #4. However, Baylor was #5 in the CFP ranking and was not included in the playoffs. Wouldn't it be confusing for a reader to see Baylor ranked #4 on our schedule and yet not play in the semi-finals? Eagles 24/7 (C) 18:05, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

• comment I have both feet firmly planted in "you guys decide and tell me what you figured out."--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:07, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Eagles247:, less confusing than switching polls mid-table, and the confusion will be inherent in the subject itself (which we can't control), not in our presentation (which we can). There should also be sufficient description in the prose of the relevant articles about playoff selection. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:42, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

• It should not even be a question. Per WP:RS, wikipedia goes with what reliable sources use. If the NCAA and the media switch over to the CFP ranking, then the articles should reflect that as well. It doesn't matter if someone finds it confusing, it's what the sources reflect so we go with that.--JOJ ^Hutton 19:25, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

It should be noted that the NCAA officially recognizes both polls, the CFP is not affiliated with the NCAA. The media does switch over to CFP so I have no problem with also doing so as long as it is noted in the footer of the schedule tables as it currently is.Mjs32193 (talk) 21:02, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Well if the media switches then they would be considered a Reliable Source, and WP:RS is a core content policy, which should not be ignored.--JOJ ^Hutton 23:37, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

• AP. Flipping to a different ranking system mid-season is unnecessary, period. Additionally, the current Template:CFB schedule and its predecessor have trained editors to supply AP Poll rankings (is the thought to add a qualifier to the help text to the schdule, such as "AP Poll until CFP Rankings are active"?) The Template:CFB Standings End ("2019 SEC standings") defaults to AP Poll and I'm unaware of any FBS instances which diverge from AP Poll (from 1936 inception to present). So "2019 Alabama Crimson Tide football team might be #2 in the current "CFP row" in the schedule, while the article concurrently displays #3 via the embedded Template:2019 SEC football standings. We also have related display locations such as Category:Lists of college football seasons, Category:Lists of college bowl games by team, and Category:Lists of college football head coaches which display AP (and Coaches). So another foreseeable downside of mid-season reversal to CFP appears to editor/reader confusion and spill-through between article types when the AP differs with CFP. Lastly, CFP is a seeding poll and has no post-bowl, final ranking. So there are some interesting consequences such as "Consensus national champion, AP #1, Coaches #1 and CFP #4 2017 Alabama Crimson Tide football team." UW Dawgs (talk) 01:59, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

• What about adding a second column (when applicable) for CFP rankings? Eagles 24/7 (C) 02:22, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I assume you're talking about the schedule tables here? That's an interesting idea. Are CFP rankings presented for the opponent too? Do you need separate columns? What about something like the table at 1950 Michigan Wolverines football team, which shows both AP and Coaches Poll rankings? Jweiss11 (talk) 02:32, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I'm referring to the schedule tables, and I suppose CFP rankings would need to be shown for opponents as well in this case. I'm not really a fan of how the 1950 Michigan table looks, but it could just be because I'm so used to the other layout. I'm also not sure about adding at least two more columns to these. Eagles 24/7 (C) 02:51, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Part of me wonders, is this simply a case of trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist? There's already a section of the standard CFB team wiki that displays rankings from the CFP, AP, and Coaches Poll. So the rankings are already present and available for tracking. My vote is also AP, this historical relevance and consistency are most important to me, and trying to capture the nuance of the changing source of rankings in footnotes just doesn't feel satisfactory to me to prevent confusion.Gopherdan (talk) 21:11, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

• Has anyone done a survey to see which poll the major sports networks and web sites use? Seems like that should be the starting point. If most of those sources use AP throughout the season, we ought to follow that. If they switch part-way through the season when CFP becomes available, we ought to follow that. Cbl62 (talk) 23:59, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

  From what Ive seen, they switch as well.JOJ ^Hutton 01:00, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

  I think it's worth being a bit cautious about referencing the rankings on various media networks, as they aren't objective in this instance. Go to USA Today, for example, and you'll see them use the coaches poll as that's run/sponsored by them, and similarly all AP news stories use the AP rankings. As for the CFP rankings, ESPN switches to the CFP rankings because they pay millions of dollars for the rights to broadcast the rankings shows and have a vested interest in legitimizing them. I recall that when they first came out, there was viewer confusion because of the differences in rankings from one network to another. Given ESPN's dominance, eventually the TV networks switched over to using the CFP rankings as well. In terms of a reliable source to reference, I'm more inclined to follow Sports-References' lead as a historical source for information without any sort of financial entanglement with a given ranking, and that site has chosen to use the AP poll when referencing rankings.Gopherdan (talk) 23:09, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

When the Penn State radio broadcast came on the air for the pre-game show this morning, they made no mention of the CFP ranking, but rather announced it was a game between #5 Penn State and #13 Minnesota (which are their AP rankings). I'm more inclined to use AP throughout the page(s). Bob305 (talk) 17:01, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

• Looks like the networks are using the CFP rankings. They are reliable sources.JOJ ^Hutton 17:11, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Miami–South Florida football rivalry AFD

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Miami–South Florida football rivalry in which you may be interested. UW Dawgs (talk) 04:44, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Redundancy List of Harvard–Yale football games

List of Harvard–Yale football games is just a list that should be in Harvard–Yale football rivalry. It has been part of a requested merge for quite a while now. Could I be WP:BOLD and merge it or would that be a violation of some sort?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 17:58, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

I would go ahead and merge, although you probably want to integrate any non-redundant, cited content about specific games. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:51, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Division champion vs co-champion discussion

You may be interested in the conversation on the following talk page regarding removing co-champions for divisions. Mjs32193 (talk) 02:15, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Talk:South Florida Bulls football#2016 tie-breaker and co-champions

AfD: Jamie Howard

An article for Jamie Howard, former starting QB at LSU, was created today and nominated for deletion. Please see the discussion here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jamie Howard. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 16:27, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

If anyone is looking for a similar improvement project, Fred Haynes is another former starting QB at LSU whose article was deleted as a likely copyright violation (the only significant contributor has been indefinitely banned for massive copyright violations here) after the article had been up for 13 years. I can e-mail the contents to a non-admin for a starting point if requested, but keep in mind the entire page needs to be rewritten. Eagles 24/7 (C) 17:07, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

AfD: List of LSU Tigers football College Football Playoff rankings and Poll history

There is a discussion in which you might be interested at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of LSU Tigers football College Football Playoff rankings and Poll history. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:47, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Mike Kelly (gridiron football)

There's a dispute going on at Mike Kelly (gridiron football), former head coach at Valdosta State and Widener who was fired from his job as head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the CFL following a domestic incident and arrest. This issue has been ongoing for some time as Mike Kelly himself has edited the page in the past and again recently to remove reference to the incident/arrest. The issue is being discussed now at Wikipedia:Help desk#Deleting my biography. The discussion could use some more input to determine the aptness of the controversial content. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:01, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Charlie Jackson (American football coach)

There's an IP editor making unproductive edits to Charlie Jackson (American football coach). Please take a look. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 15:52, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

@Bagumba: should we semi-protect this article? Jweiss11 (talk) 15:58, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

I blocked the IP 24 hours for edit warring. Can you look into the legitimacy of the coaching timeline edits in the infobox? Eagles 24/7 (C) 16:00, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Eagles247, thanks for taking action. The edits the IP was making to the timeline in the infobox were factually correct, just misplaced and mis-formatted. It should stand now as it stands per my last edit by making use of the admin fields. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:04, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

I missed that, thanks! Eagles 24/7 (C) 16:16, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

AFCs to review

Hello, there are a few college football-related drafts that were submitted and rejected at WP:AFC that could use a look and/or improvement:

• Draft:1978 Morehead State Eagles football team
• Draft:1993 Dartmouth Big Green football team
• Draft:2002 Villanova Wildcats football team

Thanks! Eagles 24/7 (C) 17:21, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

All three pass WP:GNG, and I have added sourcing. Cbl62 (talk) 02:36, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Cbl, thanks for sourcing. I moved all three to main space and did some cleanup. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:03, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the help! Eagles 24/7 (C) 16:07, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Couple more that were created by the same IP: Draft:1976 Colorado State Rams football team and Draft:1999 Dartmouth Big Green football team. Eagles 24/7 (C) 03:34, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Deletion review of Melila Purcell

Hello. This is a notification that there is a deletion review for Melila Purcell that you may be interested in participating in at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2019 December 28. The article was deleted after this AFD. Eagles 24/7 (C) 00:47, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Other Sam Pittmans

The fact that Sam Pittman didn't have an article prior to his hiring shaped the narrative surrounding that hire a little (a little, not a lot). I think he was probably notable prior to the hiring; all the sources I used were published well prior and there were plenty more out there. I do think Arkansas surprised folks a bit. That said, are there other Pittmans out there? Long-time coordinators who pass the GNG and might get tapped for a head job? Mackensen (talk) 02:27, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

IDK about creating new articles, but there's an article sitting at AfD right now for a long-time college and NFL assistant coach at Steve Marshall (American football). Ejgreen77 (talk) 06:46, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

And now, there's another one here, Charlie Ragle. Ejgreen77 (talk) 22:03, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Category:Central College Dutch

I have nominated Category:Central College Dutch and its subcategories for renaming. Please see the discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 22:48, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

AfD: Charlie Ragle

Charlie Ragle, current special teams coordinator for California, who also won some high school state titles is up for deletion. Please see the discussion here. @Mackensen: Ragle could be another "Sam Pittman". Jweiss11 (talk) 22:47, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

2020 SMU Mustangs football team

• 2020 SMU Mustangs football team (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

An IP changed this page from a redirect (to SMU Mustangs football) to an article. I'm hoping someone will either clean it up or make it a redirect again. I don't know what is standard procedure regarding notability for an article like this. Johnuniq (talk) 08:53, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: I cleaned it up a bit; the American Athletic Conference hasn't released their conference schedule yet so the whole thing can't be added, but it looks a little better now. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 13:41, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks. Johnuniq (talk) 23:04, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Use of "present" in coach and executive navboxes

There's a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League#Use of "present" in coach and executive navboxes that implicates several hundred navboxes for college football and more. The discussion could use more input. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 01:57, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

AfD: Peter Najarian

There is an open AfD that the members of this project may be interested in, please see here. Ejgreen77 (talk) 02:26, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Coaching tree list section

What does everyone think about these coaching tree list sections that keep cropping up on more and more coach bio articles, e.g. Tom Gorman (American football)? Jweiss11 (talk) 20:05, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I think they are appropriate if limited just to head coaches (as opposed to other notable assistants or administrators or a list of players coached). They've existed on countless NFL and CFB head coach articles since almost the beginning of Wikipedia.108.21.182.146 (talk) 20:13, 23 January 2020 (UTC). Also, there was a thread here, and the consensus as per User:Tarl N. on 21:35, 29 January 2017 (UTC) was to limit it to head coaches. Granted, the Belichick article lists non-head coaches as well, but that's questionable and likely limited to him due to his unique role in modern football. I don't think that should be the norm.108.21.182.146 (talk) 20:21, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

108.21.182.146, thanks for commenting here. Well, these certainly haven't existed in their current numbers "since almost the beginning of Wikipedia". There has indeed been substantial coverage of several coaches with particularly well-noted coaching trees going back several years, e.g. Bill Walsh (American football coach), Sid Gillman, and Fielding H. Yost. But the sorts of sections like the one you added to Tom Gorman (American football), have seemed to mostly crop up in the last year or so. As a side note, such section are often rife with formatting issues (before I clean them up). More importantly, I wonder if they mostly constitute undue fancruft, as we're unlikely to find reliable third-parties sources that talk about Tom Gorman's coaching tree. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

You're welcome. As for Tom Gorman, see this, from the Andy Pilney article: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1942/02/13/85259393.pdf. I apologize for formatting issues (entirely unintentional). As for the coaching trees, I don't think its a problem. Its a recency bias. Older coaches don't get the same depth of info on their pages because they coached so long ago. Modern day coaches articles have coaching trees in them, even less prominent ones. Should Mike Pettine have a coaching tree? Nothing more than recency bias distinguishes him from some of the coaches we're talking about here. Should Mike Locksley? Or Bobby Williams? Denny Stolz? My point is simply that what is good for more recent coaches is good for older ones, with the same level of sourcing (ie, only in rare circumstances have I seen sourcing in a coaching tree section). Also I recall seeing coaching trees on random articles for a long time now. Lastly, please don't judge me for being an IP user. My edits are in good faith.108.21.182.146 (talk) 21:31, 23 January 2020 (UTC).

Also, the conversation here is quite instructive to this one. I agree with one of the commenters there, its not fluff or trivia, its a curated, formatted, and selective list based on objective criteria (ie, being a head coach) that shows relationships, coaching styles, connections, and history.108.21.182.146 (talk) 21:52, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

108.21.182.146, certainly no bad faith detected here. I don't think these coaching tree sections are any more or less appropriate for coaches of different eras, although "coaching tree" seems to be a neologism that has come in use in the past maybe three or four decades. I know it's common for sources about a coach to mention other coaches they worked with. It's just far less common to find sources talking about a group of coaches who are all descended from one coach's "tree". Jweiss11 (talk) 22:10, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

This was discussed over at the NFL project back in 2017 here. Ejgreen77 (talk) 22:31, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, User:Lizard the Wizard's final comment in that discussion proved to be prescient. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:46, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Heh, I don't even remember making that comment. I'd say they're fine since if the sources are there. They can be a good illustration of a coach's legacy. Lizard (talk) 20:41, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• I continue to think a "coaching tree" should be the exception rather than the rule. It makes sense for long-time notable coaches who have actually generated a "tree". In the case of an ordinary coach who simply has a couple assistants that go on to become head coaches, that's really just routine ... and amounts to more of a "coaching twig" rather than a tree. Cbl62 (talk) 04:08, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

TfD: Template:1925 NCAA independents football records, etc

I have nominated Template:1925 NCAA independents football records and six other similar templates for deletion. These have been replaced by regional templates like Template:1925 Eastern college football independents records. Please see the discussion at here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 21:33, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Regional templates have been created for 1925, 1926, 1927, 1934, 1941, 1947, and 1948, but these are likely incomplete. Other years prior to 1956 still need breaking up and fleshing out. Help needed! See: Category:NCAA Division I FBS independents football records templates. Thanks! Jweiss11 (talk) 21:39, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I'll do 1901-1904. Cbl62 (talk) 23:51, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62: Great. I wonder if we should think about further subdividing the East region, as it seems be more far populous than the others. I've been working on building out the standings for the 1934 college football season from the 1935 Spalding guide I recently acquired. You can see how big Template:1934 Eastern college football independents records is already, and I haven't even added a bunch of schools from Pennsylvania yet. The now-D3 schools in PA that are now mostly a part of Centennial Conference or the Middle Atlantic Conference as well as the now-D2 schools are now part of Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference were all independent at the time, joining the Ivies, the smaller New England schools that are in the New England Small College Athletic Conference now, as well as the traditional eastern independent powers like Penn State, Syracuse, Pitt, etc. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:33, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Not sure about further subdivisions beyond the four regions, but jealous that you own the 1935 Spalding guide. The LA84 Foundation has a complete set, and for years I've been thinking about making a trip down there to spend a day reviewing. Cbl62 (talk) 01:16, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62: is Oklahoma South or Midwest? I put Oklahoma City in Template:1947 Midwestern college football independents records and Template:1946 Midwestern college football independents records. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:43, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Per Southern United States/Midwestern United States, Oklahoma is Southern. Cbl62 (talk) 05:49, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Cool. I changed those ones with Oklahoma City. Jweiss11 (talk) 06:15, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chad Hayes (American football)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chad Hayes (American football) presents a close call that has now been relisted for the third time. It presents a question as to when a Division II player should have an article based on WP:GNG. If you have not already done so, take a look and express your view so as to bring this to a consensus, one way or the other. Cbl62 (talk) 15:20, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

To clarify, Hayes is a former Division I-AA player. Eagles 24/7 (C) 16:41, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

AfC question

Draft:Matt Mumme and Draft:Angus McClure have been at AfC for far too long. I've looked at both of them and would decline - I think they both fail GNG - but the test is "would pass an AfD" and college football is a topic area where I frequently am on the wrong side, so I thought I'd come here and ask for a second opinion. If someone could either take a look at these and review them themselves or give your opinion on what would happen at AfD, I'll go ahead and accept/decline them. SportingFlyer T·C 01:00, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

• Mumme is offensive coordinator for a Division I FBS team and as such would most likely pass WP:GNG, though I have not searched for sources. Cbl62 (talk) 03:30, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Mumme coverage includes: this, this part 1/part 2, and this part 1/part 2. Cbl62 (talk) 03:46, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Eh, it's all coverage of the local coordinator at a less important school. Would it pass at AfD? SportingFlyer T·C 06:46, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

I believe so. The coverage has depth and extends to multiple, reliable sources. Cbl62 (talk) 07:27, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. Just G6'd the redirect and will accept Mumme when able. SportingFlyer T·C 09:03, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

@SportingFlyer: I've deleted the redirect. After you accept the AFC, I need to do a histmerge as it appears some of the revisions I've deleted were reused in the creation of the draft article. Please let me know when this is completed. Eagles 24/7 (C) 13:35, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

@Eagles247: Mumme is done. Any guidance on McClure would be appreciated. Over to you for the histmerge, thanks. SportingFlyer T·C 13:37, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

• Looks like someone already closed McClure. If someone wants to dig deeper, any additional sources could be added to the draft to support a re-review. Cbl62 (talk) 17:16, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

School rushing leaders templates

Are we having school-by-school rushing leaders templates now? I just saw Template:Michigan Wolverines football rushing leaders navbox, created by Cbl62 and edited by Jweiss11. I have never seen such a template. Is this the next wave?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:03, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I think its WP:TCREEP for the many accomplished NFL backs that will get yet another nav. Lists are fine for major programs—throw them in a "see also".—Bagumba (talk) 12:19, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

How many schools have this template type?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:55, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I created them for USC, Alabama, and Michigan -- all schools with long histories of great running backs. I have long believed we need some tool to allow us to navigate between a major program's running backs. We have navboxes for quarterbacks, and the argument for doing it for running backs is IMO equally strong. The QB and the RB are the driving forces of an offense and the glory positions filled with great and notable players. Cbl62 (talk) 14:59, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

The navboxes can be seen here: Template:Michigan Wolverines football rushing leaders navbox, Template:USC Trojans football rushing leaders navbox, Template:Alabama Crimson Tide football rushing leaders navbox. Cbl62 (talk) 15:01, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

For players like Ted Kress, Tony Branoff, Fred Baer, Russell Davis, Harlan Huckleby, Lawrence Ricks, Rick Rogers, Tony Boles, Jon Vaughn, Ricky Powers, B. J. Askew, Brandon Minor, and dozens more, being a major program's lead rusher is a career-defining characteristic -- and results in absolutely no navbox clutter. Moreover, I've never really understood the argument that a "See also" section linking to a "List of Team X rushing leaders" creates any less clutter than a collapsible navbox. Cbl62 (talk) 15:07, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

"See also" is a worst-case scenario. Ideally, just link directly in the article where it says "led the Roadrunners in rushing". Moreover, if the link was important and not already in the article, you'd want it in "see also" because the 50+% (and growing) of readers using mobile devices don't even see navboxes.—Bagumba (talk) 17:08, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Tony, thanks for opening the discussion here. I’m not a fan of these navboxes and voiced my concern about them with Cbl when he created them last week. I’m with Bagumba here on the navbox creep. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:22, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I also believe that it is a case of navbox creep and unnecessary clutter. Best, GPL93 (talk) 19:39, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Tie for the Third Consensus All-America Linebacker spot

I posted about this on Talk:2019 College Football All-America Team a while back but it solicited no response. Tere were two ties this year in first-team selections for consensus: Zack Baun and Micah Parsons for the third linebacker spot and Wyatt Davis and Tristan Wirfs for offensive line. Davis has the edge over Wirfs as Davis was named to three 2nd teams (AFCA, FWAA, WCFF) to Wirfs' two (AFCA, AP) so that's it was clear-cut on who was a consensus pick for the final Offensive Line spot. However, Baun and Parsons are in a dead tie with two 1st teams and 3 second teams apiece. In these situations do we include both of them as Consensus All-Americans or neither of them? Best, GPL93 (talk) 19:44, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Has this happened in the past, and if so, how was it resolved? If it hasn't, I'd vote for including both.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 19:59, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Request for input

Hello all. I’m in a discussion regarding what Infobox to use for Steve Spurrier on the talk page. I would like for some input on the discussion if anyone is able to! Talk:Steve Spurrier#Infobox format. I’ve made a similar request on the NFL project talk page.--Rockchalk717 20:01, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Discussion of season articles

Those with a point of view on minimum requirements for season articles may wish to review the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)#Clarification regarding NSEASONS. Cbl62 (talk) 23:47, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Category:NCAA championship seasons templates

I've nominated Category:NCAA championship seasons templates and its subcategories for deletion. Please see the discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 17:46, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Template:Infobox NCAA football school

I have proposed that Template:Infobox NCAA football school be renamed. Please see the discussion at Template talk:Infobox NCAA football school#Requested move 3 February 2020. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 20:03, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Adding captions to tables for accessibility

We have a bit of looming issue regarding tables, particularly those standardized with templates (e.g. Template:CFB schedule, Template:CFB schedule). User:Koavf has begun an effort to add captions to many table likes these; see: Template:CBB yearly record start, Andy Reid#Head coaching record, Template:NFL roster, Template:Football squad start. His justification is to service accessibility for screen readers for the visually impaired, citing Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Data tables tutorial#Proper table captions and summaries. The result is that his effort is creating redundant table headings that simply don't make sense give how we've structured thousands of articles; see Ralph Jones#Head coaching record where the "Coaching statistics" heading for the college basketball record table is redundant and non-sensible clutter. User:Jonesey95, User:S.A. Julio, User:Penepi, User:Eagles247 have been involved in this issue elsewhere. We need to have unified discussion about this somewhere now. Jweiss11 (talk) 14:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

There has already been significant discussion at Template talk:Football squad start and at Template talk:CBB yearly record start, but since this affects multiple sports' templates, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility is probably the best place to have a discussion. I recommend putting a notice at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject American football and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College Basketball with a link to that discussion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:06, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

To be clear, this is not redundant to the level three headings in articles. Headings provide a different semantic meaning and structure to a document than the caption on a table. Note that captions are a high-priority and easy-to-implement accessibility feature and we are obliged to make this change. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:02, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Just a heads up, the issues with Template:NFL roster have now been resolved per the discussion here. Eagles 24/7 (C) 18:04, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

We are obliged to make a change, but some of the changes that Koavf has been making have been inaccurate, unaesthetic, or both. As shown at {{NFL roster}}, it is possible to meet multiple goals through consensus discussions and teamwork. Hence my suggestion that a wider discussion, and experiments in template sandboxes, may lead to proposed changes that meet accessibility, accuracy, and aesthetic concerns. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:26, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Eugene Messler AfD

Football coaching bio article currently up for AfD. If you have a view one way or the other, you may weigh in at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eugene Messler. Cbl62 (talk) 22:20, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Cbl62, Jweiss11, Editorofthewiki you guys did a very nice job, great work on this one. Eagles 24/7 (C) 15:31, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Tree littering

Maybe I'm being a grumpy old man, but the proliferation of "coaching trees" in the last few days is noteworthy. A coaching tree in appropriate circumstances is a measure of the legacy of highly influential coaches such as Tom Landry, Bill Bellichick, Bill Walsh, etc. But in recent days, there's been a proliferation of such "coaching trees" to ordinary coaches where, as a matter of simple routine, a couple of assistants go on to become head coaches. Just in the last couple days, a new user, User:FlaviusFunderburke, has added trees to dozens of coaching bios, including Rudy Hubbard (1 twig), Steve Sebo (1 twig), Carl Selmer] (1 twig), Lloyd Eaton (1 twig), Tony Knap (1 twig), Homer Rice (2 twigs), Jack Christiansen (2 twigs), Tony Mason (3 twigs), Tim Brewster (3 twigs)Foge Fazio (3 twigs), Don Read (3 twigs), Mike Gottfried (4 twigs), and Warren Powers (4 twigs). In my opinion, such coaching twigs add no real value and simply add clutter. While I appreciate Flavius' dedication, I think greater discretion should be used in selecting coaching bios where a "coaching tree" actually reflects a lasting legacy. I know this was raised by Jweiss11 just last week, but the recent proliferation leads me to raise it again. Should we impose some sort of guideline limiting the use of such trees? A numeric limit of, say, five branches? Ten branches? Other ideas? Cbl62 (talk) 17:03, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

I think I'm in favor of always including coaching trees, no matter how trivial. The concept of coaching trees is something coaches and media care a great deal about. The Mike Leach Air Raid tree, the Rich Rod spread option tree, these are concepts that are considered an important narrative of the coaching profession. A coaches' history coaching with or under other coaches is also heavily discussed. It is therefore notable what coaches spawned off every coaching tree, and a lack of "branches" is itself notable. I fail to see how including this information is clutter. Ostealthy (talk) 17:12, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62, thank you for reaching out. The problem is its also recency bias. Why should, say, Tim Brewster have a coaching tree and not older coaches? (Btw, I didn't create Brewster's tree, I reformatted it and added additional coaches). Denny Stolz? Hue Jackson? Its also a living project, with coaches added upon discovery. Discretion is also arbitrary, and I'm not a fan of arbitrary standards. Coaching trees limited to assistants who became head coaches is clear, firm, and will not generate debates (like say, including "prominent assistants" on a tree like on the Belichick page, which is entirely subjective and arbitrary). Coaching trees are uniquely limited to football due to the size of the staffs, historical connections, and such, but I absolutely believe they belong, and every coach page I have added a tree to would have already had one had they coached within the last 20-25 years (like Danny Hope and Tim Beckman. There's no reason those should have trees but not Fazio or Powers (which are still being researched and will have more additions). However, I'm not personally a fan of listing "People Coach X has coached under" but I will not remove that absent any consensus to, and I don't feel strongly enough about it to raise it as an issue.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 17:26, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Flavius: Thanks for your well expressed views. Ostealthy: I used the term "clutter" in the sense that it adds a whole extra section for a reader to navigate, which in some cases is warranted. My view may be the minority, and if there's a consensus that coaching trees are appropriate in all cases, so be it. Cbl62 (talk) 17:31, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Cbl62 You're welcome. You also said something interesting, about the coaching trees adding a whole extra section for someone to navigate. I'll respond with this--I have no personal preference where on a page they should go, or if they should be a whole separate section or a subsection of a Coaching Career section (like in John Madden, though that's probably a unique situation because of that article and the extent of his post-coaching career). I'm interested more in the content. If there's a consensus as to placement within a page, I'm open to ideas and happy to abide by any such consensus. I'm putting them at the bottom of pages partly to avoid the cluttering that you mentioned and partly because conceptually a tree belongs at the bottom because its more about the legacy of the specific coach and that doesn't necessarily belong higher up in the page.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 17:45, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

I feel largely the same way as Cbl62 here. In the case of particularly influential coaches like Walsh, Landry, Sid Gillman, Belichick, etc, where you have reliable sources explicitly discussing the "Bill Walsh coaching tree" or the like, some sort of coverage of that tree is well-warranted. But for more run-of-the-mill coaches like Carl Selmer or Tim Brewster, it strikes me a rather crufty to have a "coaching tree" section. I would expect that a large portion of coaches who served as a head coach for more than a year or two, particularly since the middle of the 20th century, when football staffs got much larger, are going to have at least two or three assistants or players who went on to become head coaches. I don't think anyone is arguing that these sections are okay for more contemporary coaches, but not okay for guys who coached 50 or more years ago. It's just that these coaching tree sections seem to have largely started with more complementary coaches and are now working themselves into more and more bio articles for coaches from yesteryear. Since Cbl62 tends to work more on historical stuff than most other editors, he may just be noticing this trend now. I've been aware of this happening for at least a year now. But as Cbl62, notes, it seems to be accelerating of late, due to the efforts of FlaviusFunderburke and others. Whatever we choose to do here, we should work toward a unified policy with Wikipedia:WikiProject National Football League. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:47, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Jweiss11, the problem is the concept of a football coaching tree really stretches back to the founding of the game. For example, in the context of Knute Rockne, schools couldn't wait to hire former Rockne players to coach their programs (you should know this, JWeiss11, as you've created or edited a fair number of those wiki pages). Its how football spreads, and its how the game grows (like the joke in the NFL the last few seasons is teams wanting to hire anyone who has ever shaken hands with Sean McVay, let alone coached for him). Also, I thought that Wikipedia:WikiProject National Football League already discussed it and determined that assistants who later became head coaches were fine for the trees. The real problem is the idea of a reliable sourced coaching tree vs. more "run of the mill" types tends to be code for "if its been recent enough to have a reliable source on the internet refer to it as a coaching tree, then its ok; otherwise, bad." Well, Ralph Jordan and Wallace Wade have stadiums named for them, and have a coaching tree that would rock your world, but looking at wikipedia, they are just another name on the server. Its shouldn't be up to us to determine who is worthy and who is not. There's a standard, its been applied for more recent coaches, and it should apply equally for older ones. And that there are "stubs" is just part of that. Basically, as long as it's ok for Hue Jackson to have a coaching tree, then Carl Selmer can have one, too (especially when Selmer's overall coaching career is far more impactful than Hue Jackson's, but since he coached pre-internet, Hue's is many times longer. And basically, if these older coaches are entitled to have a page in the first place, then let's put the appropriate content on there.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 19:08, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't know many times I have to say this, but, yes, I agree we should have the same set of standards, irrespective of when the subject coached, in 1880, 1950, or 2020. The Ralph Jordan article isn't suffering from a lack of a coaching tree section, so much it is lacking development of the prose and has almost no sourcing. But the lead of article clearly identifies him as a Hall of Famer, national title-winner, and the winningest coach in Auburn history, not just another "name of the server". The infobox and head coaching record tables look solid there. I've spent the good portion of the last decade standardizing and fleshing those out across thousands of articles. Haven't had time to write a GA-class body for those yet! The Wallace Wade article is much more developed (largely due to User:MisterCake), has good sourcing, and does, in fact, include an extensive coaching tree. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:40, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

My bad on the Wade article. I got it confused with Frank Thomas. Though the Wade tree isn't fully formed and has on it former players (something which is more appropriate for that era of football than the modern day). Jweiss11 It came across that you were taking another whack at the insertion of coaching trees on pages and seemed you would just as soon standardize it by striking coaching trees from most articles, which I strongly disagree with. I am quite familiar with Ralph Jordan beyond his wiki page, but if he were coaching today he'd have a beautiful tree. That was my point, and lesser coaches would too, and that's ok. Anyways, I would like to confirm consensus on coaching trees is to keep them as they are now so we can move forward. If anyone wants to help me tackle larger coaching tree projects, like Bear Bryant (has only a paragraph that is begging for more names) or Woody Hayes (facially incomplete), I'd be happy to talk.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 19:55, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Coaching trees are trivial and don't belong in bios unless there is adequate coverage that shows that it's a notable topic for that subject. Unconditionally including these for each coach is somewhat akin to a team article exhaustively including head-to-head "rivalry" records for the all-time opponents of a team.—Bagumba (talk) 06:54, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Agree with above - some coaching trees will be notable and be written about in reliable sources, and we can include these then. As a whole, though, I would consider them original research if they're not sourced to anything, and I would caution against sourcing them to a directory website. SportingFlyer T·C 07:01, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

• So far we have four users (Cbl62, Jweiss11, Bagumba, SportingFlyer) opposing the rollout of coaching trees in routine coaching bios and two users (Ostealthy and Flavius) supporting same. Further opinions welcome. Cbl62 (talk) 07:23, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Cbl62, thanks for your input. However there are users in the chat initiated by JWeiss11 above from last week on topic who weighed in in favor of coaching trees and there’s the consensus reached in 2017 about keeping them on the NFL page. Counting those votes there are more in favor of trees. Also, this discussion would need to be cross posted on the NFL page because any consensus needs to be standard. Further, this is the second chat in 8 days about this topic, which seems less than appropriate when there’s already an established consensus. Further, you called his “the rollout of coaching trees in routine coaching bios” which is wildly incorrect. They’ve already been rolled out in routines bios—it’s that those bios are of more recent coaches like Roger Theder. I am aapplying accepted consensus to other coaching bios that are older. The opposition comes across as regency bias, the implicit assumption that somethings less noteworthy because it’s older. Lastly; I default to good faith but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m a little concerned about some WP:CANVASSING going on here by editors who don’t like coaching trees and deem them trivial on older bios but haven’t raised these concerns all that much previously relative to their long time existence on coaching bio pages. Lastly, my reading of WP:CON requires much more than a half dozen of us discussing changing something that’s been in place in CFB and NFL coaching articles overall for at least a decade (in some form). See WP:CCC (“ Editors may propose a change to current consensus, especially to raise previously unconsidered arguments or circumstances. On the other hand, proposing to change a recently established consensus can be disruptive.”) I welcome continued discussion on this point and will abide by a fairly achieved consensus. As for sourcing, I’m applying the same sourcing that already exists on existing coaching tree pages, and I don’t see any issue with sourcing them to reference pages.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 21:25, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

What canvassing are you referring to? And there was no consensus in 2017 to permit coaching trees on every ordinary coaching bio. The discussion there related to the Bill Belichick tree, which is anything but an ordinary case. Cbl62 (talk) 21:32, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Canvassing in the sense of the appearance in consecutive comments only of those oppose. Again, that’s not an accusation, I was just voicing a suspicion. As for the Belichick page, that’s been cited as the standard to be applied to all coaches (per the link above). I agree Belichick is an unusual case but let’s be honest here, coaching trees have been de facto prevalent on coaching bio pages for a long time now, both on notable coach pages and on random ones like Hue Jackson]] and it’s not yet clear what has changed or what new arguments exist to challenge them. I don’t think it’s realistic to imply that they exist in violation of consensus, and my reading of WP:CCC is that while consensus is not permanent, it’s incumbent on those seeking to change consensus to raise previously unconsidered arguments or show a change in circumstance. Here, the only changed circumstance seems to boil down to “new guy adding coaching trees to pages of coaches I’ve never heard of and I don’t like it, even if more recent random coaches like Tim Beckman and Adam Gase have them.” That subjective recency bias is not in my view appropriate grounds to challenge them. I’m happy to listen to further arguments and the input of the NFL page folks because what applies here will surely apply there.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 22:24, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

@FlaviusFunderburke: Please redact your canvassing concerns. Even bringing in a suspicion of canvassing may be considered a personal attack, but you have absolutely no evidence considering all of us who oppose at least watch the college football talk page. I don't always agree with Cbl62, but I do respect them as an editor, and I trust they wouldn't canvass individuals just to "win" this discussion. SportingFlyer T·C 02:25, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

@SportingFlyer:, based on your representation and trust that the other would not canvass, as a sign of ,y good faith, I retract expressing my concern about potential canvassing. Once I figure out how to edit with strikehroughs, I will amend those sentences accordingly. Thanks.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 05:06, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

You can use the strikethrough code tag (like I've done here.) SportingFlyer T·C 07:05, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

• We'd need to source every single branch/limb for these coaching trees first and foremost. Many of the college coaching trees are likely original research and wouldn't be supported by independent third-party sources without doing some synthesis. I oppose the mass addition of these trees while their significance to specific coaches is not readily known. As far as the canvassing concerns, all of the editors who have weighed in to this discussion so far are regulars on this talk page and I see no reason to be skeptical of their intentions. Eagles 24/7 (C) 22:36, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

I've just notified WikiProject NFL about this discussion. I was planning to do that anyway before FlaviusFunderburke suggested it above. As I mentioned above, we should aim here to build a consensus on this topic that spans the two projects. I think it's generally good practice in the body of a coach bio article to discuss the other notable coaches the subject worked with, ideally with sourcing that explicitly makes the various connections. I did this a few months back in building out the article for the relatively obscure Harold Mayo. The coaching career section there mentions his relationships with Jim Hess, Bo Hagan, and Dean Slayton. But I doubt any of these four have an influence that rises of the level of warranting a coaching tree section/list, and I think you're unlikely to find any sourcing that explicitly refers such trees. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:53, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, and I genuinely appreciate the neutral way you posted the chat on there.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 23:09, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

‘’’’Thanks [[User:Eagles247|<font face="Verdana" color="003B48", sourcing is a fair concern and something I’ve wondered myself, but sourcing standards should be consistent across all coaching articles. There are no sources on a vast majority of the coaching trees on coaching pages and those may run up against original research issues. I was and am simply applying what’s been done. I’m happy to have a discussion on sourcing and clarify when it is and is not original research both in the coaching tree and navbox contest. For example, assistant coaches are listed in championship team banners/navboxes. An example is the navbox for some of the Michigan State national champion teams in the 1950s and 1960s. Those aren’t sourced but they absolutely belong and deserve to be listed. But a consistent sourcing standard is something that should definitely be decided on. However how do you propose to assess the significance to specific coaches? What specific coaches? We run into very tricky territory there being subjective like that.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 22:55, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

‘’’’’’’I also want to highlight this discussion page from 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ryan_Day_(American_football)#Coaching_tree. Very relevant and an excellent statement why trees are acceptable, standard, and not trivia.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 23:01, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

I added/expanded coaching trees for articles I've just worked on, such as Chris Creighton, Sam Pittman, and Brad McCaslin. I did that because I'd seen them elsewhere, but I don't know that they add all the much. Ideally all the coaches listed are name-checked somewhere in the article. I've seen some discussion of Creighton's coaching tree (in the context of McCaslin and I think Steve Ryan), but sources don't address it in any depth. I'd be on board with restricting such sections, perhaps with the guidance that they be rendered as prose, not lists. Mackensen (talk) 00:00, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

• My issue with the lists on the articles you've just mentioned, as I've noted above, is that I would be well with my right to remove all of these lists for being unsourced and WP:OR, and these coaches would not have been necessarily considered part of the coaching "tree" anyways. I think a coaching tree article or section would be fine for coaches like Belichick or Andy Reid or Saban or Urban Meyer, whose trees have been well documented, but I don't think it should necessarily "flow" upstream unless the coach is a "branch" for a notable coach, and then it should be sourced and in prose. SportingFlyer T·C 02:29, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

• • I agree with you in general on sourcing (even if I dispute that you’d be well within your rights to just revert something as being unsourced and possible OR as opposed to tagging it and giving the editor a chance to fix it). But the lack of sourcing isn’t limited there. For example, the tree on the Bill Parcells page isn’t sourced (but obviously could be in five minutes). But it isn’t right now. Now why would it be seemingly acceptable on the Parcells page, or for most of the head coach entries on the Belichick tree page, but on other pages it’s a problem? Is it because we’ve lived it? That we’ve experienced it? Not sure that’s appropriate (and reeks of recency bias) And why is it routine on the vast majority of coaching tree pages that there aren’t sourced? Where are the sources for the assistants listed in navboxes like this? It’s ok in a navbox but an OR violation in an article? Above all, I want to see standardization and consistency. What’s good for some coaching trees and navboxes should be good for all. If that means sourcing everything then that’s ok with me, but right now it’s undefined and a selectively raised issue. That leads to the class of coaches you believe would merit a coaching tree-Reid, Meyer, Saban, BB. Now I agree those coaches need tree sections. But how would you define that standard objectively? It’s not hall of fame coaches because I don’t believe any of those coaches are in a hall of fame yet (barring something crazy they all will be, but then again I’d have said the same about Barry Bonds in 1998, so that’s out as a potential standard). Number of wins? it can’t be championships because as of this writing Reid doesn’t have any. Number of years coaching? That would rule out one for Sean McVay. The uncertainty leads to an amorphous undefined standard that’s ripe for constant debate, struggle, and potentially edit warring (not from me though) of who is worthy. And it leads to the recency bias issues I have of sources will only be good if readily accessible (ie the internet) which will deprive fans and students and the curious of tracking the evolution of coaches, their connections, inspirations , and so forth. Overall, I just don’t see the issue with providing this information to a reader and allow them to see another connection to a name of the past.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 04:58, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
    • A point by point response to your questions:
      1. You are generally allowed to remove unsourced information, even if it can be contentious.
      2. A Parcells coaching tree article/section should be fine as a simple search brought up two articles immediately. A search for "Chris Creighton" "Coaching Tree" brings up only a single statistical database, a website called "Coaching Tree Hot Seat." Our WP:OR policy means we need someone else to do the research for us, i.e. requires sources, not compile the information ourselves and put it here.
      3. I'm not entirely convinced the 1952 Michigan State template would pass a TfD, but templates are meant to be navigational and separate from article space. It's not WP:OR to look at a roster and then create a navigation box full of links. The 1952 Michigan State Spartans football team article desperately needs improvement, but it should be easy to see if those assistant coaches were actually the coaches for that team, since the point of the navigation box is to help the reader easily find other related articles. Creating a list of coaches that a coach has worked with isn't typically readily compiled in the same way and it would take research to compile this list. SportingFlyer T·C 07:17, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
      4. Applying Wikipedia rules, the objective standard is actually very simple: have secondary sources written about their coaching trees to a point where we can source them? SportingFlyer T·C 07:17, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

      • @SportingFlyer:My responses:

        1. 1) I thought unsourced information should be tagged as such and not just removed.
        2. 2) I think we're talking past each other, as I am talking about a list of assistants who later became head coaches, and it seems like you're focusing on if others have termed that a "tree"
        3. 3) I'm very confused, if its not WP:OR to look at a roster and create a navbox, how is it OR to list those assistant coaches on the head coaches tree? ]}Dan Devine]] is listed as an assistant coach for that team, but listing him on Biggie Munn's coaching tree would WP:OR? That seems like a distinction without a difference. Despite its name as a navbox, they are absolutely relied on as accurate, authoritative lists of rosters and coaches.
        4. 4) Again, I think we may actually be talking about different, yet related things. I'm talking about a sourced listing of those assistants of a coach who later became a head coach, but I am not necessarily talking about a defined "tree" in the conceptual sense as used to discuss Paul Brown and others. However, if I were, I would point to this feature from the Wall Street Journal in 2015 as evidence that coaching trees have become a mainstream concept that no longer limited to some coaches. From the article: "The select crew of 32 NFL coaches is more like a family tree than anything. Fans can study a coach’s pedigree by analyzing who he’s worked under, how those coaches have influenced his own schemes and strategy, and ultimately how his successors have fared when they move on to head coaching gigs of their own. Trying to make a clear picture of this intertwined network of coaches can be more confusing than trying to understand the complex schemes they use on Sundays. It’s a rabbit hole where one coach leads to another, and to another, and by the end it can be difficult to make sense of who’s really connected to whom. So the Wall Street Journal presents the official NFL coaching tree, detailing the sprawling web of head coaching relationships. Clicking on a coach will highlight every coach he worked under, until his first head coaching gig, and any coaches that worked for him and went on to become a head coach themselves, dating back to 1960." Granted this applied only to the NFL, but I think it sets forth the idea quite well that coaching "trees" have expanded beyond a select few influential coaches and is now a matter of encyclopedic interest for fans in general. There's also the coaching tree page, which was created in 2007 (and which survived deletion in 2011), and to me shows that there is general awareness and acceptance of the concept. I'll also point you to the arguments made here in defense of trees. Of particular, I want to emphasize this statement: " I have always thought of coaching trees as standard, or at least widely accepted, content. I don't believe WP:TRIVIA applies at all to lists like this, but is instead intended for much more random, fluff type of information, often presented essentially as fun facts or entertainment. In other words, true trivia as in trivial information. I see a coaching tree as important, noteworthy information for coaches. It helps readers understand a coach's history in terms of the types of coaching styles and systems he was a part of as he worked his way up the coaching ladder." I would add it also helps us a coaches impact on the game through his disciples and coaching descendants.
      • Surely we can reach some consensus on this point. I am a strong proponent that the information belongs, and my reading of the wikipedia standards is that they to not prevent or mandate exclusion of coaching trees. And I think that the long time presence of this information on decidedly non-legendary coach pages should not be discounted as a form of silent consensus (even if such consensus is the weakest form). However, scope, formatting and placement within articles is an area I would be happy to work out a consensus. I don't have a personal preference for how the information is presented (list at bottom, list elsewhere, narrative/paragraph(s) within the body of the bio, coaching tree navbox at the bottom of a page, something else). If that is of interest, I'd be happy to work with you on some potential templates/examples of how they can be done going forward. Thanks. FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 15:38, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Past NFL discussion There was a related discussion in 2017 at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Football_League/Archive_14#Coaching_trees, where the rough consensus seemed to be to apply due weight for a coach, individually, to determine if it belonged in their respective article.—Bagumba (talk) 04:52, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

@Bagumba: curious one your thoughts on this topic made here in 2018, and I’m curious what standards would you apply in determining who should have a tree. Lastly, my reading of that 2017 conversation was it was limited to BB because the actual talk spilled over from the BB talk page. Has there been a governing consensus about other pages? Because since that 2017 talk, the proliferation of coaching trees (before i started contributing) was extensive, appearing on just about every page for a current or recent coach. That consensus by silence is still consensus. Lastly, for the newbie, can you explain how WP:DUE applies here? That seems to be more for points of view; weighing sources, and balance, which to me doesn’t really apply here since this isn’t a balance issue. Thanks.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 05:21, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with Day, so won't specifically comment. Silence is the weakest form of consensus. In any event, consensus can change, even if one existed for inclusion. My interpretation of WP:DUE is that if sources don't talk much about one's coaching tree, it's undue to take up much if any article space on the topic. There's also WP:ONUS: not everything that is true necessarily gets included. Regards.—Bagumba (talk) 14:56, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

@Bagumba: Day is the Ohio State head coach, but I was more interested in your thoughts on the arguments made re: coaching trees than anything about Day in specific. I agree consensus can change, but my reading of that is there has to be new reasons or previously unconsidered argu,Mets or a change in circumstances (“ Editors may propose a change to current consensus, especially to raise previously unconsidered arguments or circumstances. On the other hand, proposing to change a recently established consensus can be disruptive.”). As for WP:ONUS, that’s a subjective consensus that needs to be researched, but I’d argue the longtime existence and widespread nature of coaching trees in articles deserves its own consideration and weight. Thanks.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 15:35, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

• @FlaviusFunderburke: I read your reply above and given that you admit you had no basis for it, I respectfully echo SportingFlyer's suggestion that you withdraw your allegation that "I’m a little concerned about some WP:CANVASSING going on here by editors who don’t like coaching trees." Cbl62 (talk) 06:32, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
  • @Cbl62:I replied to SportingFlyer that I was retracting my statement expressing concern about canvassing. I assume good faith and if he trusts there wasn’t any I accept that in good faith. Please accept my apologies.FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 07:06, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Proposal

I propose that we adopt a new standard for coaching tree list sections to cover all gridiron football coaches (perhaps with expansion to all sports coaches). In order to include a coaching tree list or section on a bio article, we must show that there are multiple, reliable third-party sources that specifically discuss, in a substantive manner, the given subject's "coaching tree" or legacy in terms of disciples becoming head coaches. While a source that simply notes that coach X was assistant for coach Y (e.g. [13], [14], [15]) could be used to build such a coaching tree section or list, it would not by itself show due-ness. Thoughts? Jweiss11 (talk) 19:37, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

On one point, I definitely agree: there should, in all situations, be links to sources showing, at a minimum, that Coach X is actually a member of/coached under Tree Y. Several questions I have off the top of my head: 1) How do we set the starting point of a "tree"? For example, it took me a few minutes to figure out that Bill Parcells is a branch of the Fielding Yost tree (Yost>George Little>Red Blaik>Paul Dietzel>Tom Cahill>Parcells). I wouldn't necessarily defend the idea that Parcells is a branch of the Yost tree, but its legitimate. Somewhat more seriously, are Landry and Lombardi their own trees or from the Steve Owens>Jim Lee Howell tree? That's a much closer call in my opinion. 2) Coverage of coaching trees is, as you've previously stated, a more modern concept in terms of something reporters and others have written about (even if the idea of hiring people who played for/coached under legends is as old as football itself). We may run into sourcing issues for some of those bigger coaches. On the flip side, there are modern sources for the, among other things, the Dick MacPherson coaching tree and Kyle Whittingham and an older name (on whose tree I worked on) John Ralston. As a result, this could end up filled with a recency bias, which is something that I was trying to counter by working on older coach pages. As for formatting, I was looking at the Red Blaik page, and that casual, narrative form of his coaching tree worked very well there, and merits consideration for the template of future tree sections/paragraphs. 3) For older coaches like Rockne, he didn't have a coaching tree per se, but that was a time when schools across America were hiring star players to start/build programs. How should we deal with those situations? I am very much not a fan of listing tree members based on playing under a coach in the modern era, but historically (pre-WWII especially), that was far more common. (Only one or two of those coaches listed "coached" under Rockne--they played for him). That's something that would have to be addressed. On the broader point, I don't think WP:DUE comes into play here; that to me applies more to viewpoints, balance, and weighing impartiality. Here, were talking about stone cold facts that are black and white, namely either Coach X was an assistant under coach Y or he wasn't. Unless I'm missing about WP:DUE (which may very well be the case).FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 20:27, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Bill Parcells as a great-great-great grandchild of Yost? Sounds like super-crufty Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon nonsense to me. What do the sources say? Do we have any sources talking about a connection between Parcells and Yost? I doubt it. Yes, it seems you are certainly missing something about WP:DUE. Not every factoid that can be sourced deserves to be in every article. We have to make an editorial decision about what is relevant where. On a coach bio articles, you could include a table of every single game that guy ever coached. That could easily be sourced. But it's an undue level of detail. Let take a specific example here: Andy Pilney. I'm going to say to he doesn't have a notable coaching tree. Can you prove me wrong by finding multiple, reliable third-party sources that specifically discuss, in a substantive manner, Pilney's "coaching tree" or his legacy in terms of disciples becoming head coaches? To meet this challenge, sources simply noting that Tommy O'Boyle, Bennie Ellender, John Green, Jim Root, et al, was an assistant to Pilney and later became a head coach won't suffice. You'd need to find a source talking collectively about that group rising to head coaching status in the context of Pilney's legacy. Jweiss11 (talk) 06:48, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Now do Denny Stolz and Roger Theder. The standard you just described would undo years of consensus and wipe coaching trees off of 97% of all football coaching pages Hue Jackson's coaching tree legacy? HA! Adam Gase? HAHA!. I'd also point out that my reading of wiki guidelines is do change consensus, the one proposing changes should articulate what circumstances has changed or what new arguments there are, and this is turning into a rehash of my prior position statements that this seems to be a "new guy making edits I dont like" situation, in violation of WP:DNB. Specifically, a newbie (me) making edits within existing consensus, guidelines (literal application of content, sourcing standards, formatting from existing coaching trees and just changing names as necessary). As the second point says: "Remember, our motto and our invitation to the newcomer is be bold. We have a set of rules, standards, and traditions, but they must not be applied in such a way as to thwart the efforts of newcomers who take that invitation at face value. A newcomer brings a wealth of ideas, creativity and experience from other areas that, current rules and standards aside, have the potential to better our community and Wikipedia as a whole. It may be that the rules and standards need revising or expanding; perhaps what the newcomer is doing "wrong" may ultimately improve Wikipedia. Observe for a while and, if necessary, ask what the newcomer is trying to achieve before concluding that their efforts are wanting or that they are simply "wrong"." (I don't believe there is any objective standard in which I am "wrong", but maybe, just maybe, instead on harping on Tom Gorman or Andy Pilney, you recognize that my additions may be useful to more casual readers? WP:DUE has nothing to do with levels of detail--its about balance and neutral point of view. Lastly, has anyone from the NFL board chimed in here yet?FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 14:37, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Gase and Theder strike me as guys with no notable “tree”. Probably Stolz as well, although he has a long career as a head coach so maybe, if proper sources can be found to establish the notability of his “tree” legacy. Did you catch the part of WP:DUE where it talks about “depth of detail”? Jweiss11 (talk) 16:40, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

You mean the part of WP:DUE that discusses how much detail to allow for the mention and discussion of fringe theories/viewpoints like Flat Earth? FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 16:47, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

You’re misreading that essay. It’s talking about depth of detail in a general sense. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:56, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Depth of detail is literally given as an example of how undue weight may be given to minority viewpoints. [{WP:DUE]] is a subsection of WP:NPOV. We're not having a discussion about points of view or neutrality or fringe theories. Besides, if you've felt this way about coaching trees, why are you only speaking up now, and not when others like User:Lizardkingsman and User:Lepricavark were working on them? You've even edited and added to coaching trees over the years. Why now? Why is the simple, neutral application of existing consensus now such a major issue? Did Tom Gorman or Andy Pilney offend you somehow? You really want to alienate a good faith editor who has a lot to offer because he had the temerity to, in accordance with long-standing consensus, list the assistants under them that later became head coaches? Hello WP:DNB. Nobody batted an eyelash when Tim Beckman or Tim Brewster had trees added, and I promise you had Pilney retired as Tulane coach in 2012 and not 1962, he would absolutely have a coaching tree section without anyone expressing concern about his notability. If you can articulate anything that I did was improper or against standards, I am all for it. If this is just a convenient excuse to undo a consensus that you never liked, just admit it so we can move forward. Also, your analogy of these lists to game-by-game summaries is off base, as the latter violates WP:NOTSTATS. FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 17:33, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

FlaviusFunderburke, you are indeed correct that I have edited scores of these coaching tree sections, particularly in the last year or so, to clean up basic formatting errors like capitalization and endashes and the oddly specific use of "NCAA" in the intro to the lists. But with the exception of the coaching tree section at Fielding H. Yost, I don't think I've ever added a new bullet item to any of these sections, much less initiated a new section of this sort. College football coaching bios are a main area of focus for me, so, of course, I've run across many of these sections. While I may not have batted an eye at them, I certainly raised an eyebrow (silently, to myself) as I saw such sections proliferate on the bio articles of lesser-known and less-influential coaches. They have long been a concern for me, but not a top priority, I suppose—one of a number of little problems I can just deal with later. Well, congrats. Later is now. Your recent efforts seem to be the straw the broke the camel's back and have brought this situation to a head, and not just for me.

You keep getting hung up on the era issue. I don't think Willie Fritz is any more likely to have a notable coaching tree than Andy Pilney is. As I've expressed more than once already, the era in which a coach worked has no bearing on appropriateness of a coaching tree in principal. It does, however, have an impact on the circumstantial odds that some editor will have added a coaching tree section to an article. We should not conflate these two.

You also should stop talking about your newness as an editor as if it's some sort of virtue. Your relative lack of inexperience here does not add weight or merit to your arguments. I think it's also fair to say that once an editor is aware of Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers and has cited it, he's not really a newcomer anymore. So, please drop that racket.

I am, however, indeed concerned about discouraging you. Over the past day or so, I've contemplated dropping by your talk page to express that, but I'll just say what I want to say about that here. It seems likely that my proposal will draw support and reach a status of consensus. If that happens, and we roll back the coaching trees to, say, only the 50 or 100 most influential coaches in football history, that is going to result in reverting/deleting a large portion of your recent contributions. If that comes to pass, are you going to get frustrated and quit? Or will you find other ways to positively contribute to this project? I hope it's the latter. I was impressed with your research efforts on the Garrey brothers. I encouraged you to register an account when you were editing as an IP, and I was happy when you did. You have an obvious enthusiasm for this subject matter and a lot of potential as a contributor. I hope you will stick around. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:59, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

How is this for a counter-proposal? Do not mass delete what I have done (because nothing belies any claim of welcoming contributions quite like mass deletion) and leave what I have added to date; in return, I will restrict all future work on coaching trees to those unquestionably notable coaches who either have one that I feel needs work or doesn't have one but absolutely should (like Bear Bryant). Which is in accordance with the potential consensus that you referenced (even if I have concerns that CFB and NFL would have different criteria--it doesn't seem those are interested in having this discussion). I'll also agree to seek pre-clearance if I want to work on a tree but that may have notability concerns. I see no need to undo work that is under current consensus appropriate and of interest to the broader population of wikipedia users, but it does seem that I have unintentionally and inadvertently struck a nerve. Also, this debate really needs to come to an end. TL:DR- Keep everything that is there now, no deletion, and I'll confine all future work to the consensus of top 50-100 cfb coaches with pre-clearance if I think there is a close call. As for your other topic, can you delete it from this chat and report on my talk page? That's not something I want to address here--its not relevant to college football. Thanks. FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 21:14, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

FlaviusFunderburke, I don't think a policy that treats coaching trees that you added differently from those added by other editors makes any sense, if that's what you are proposing. I am, however, happy to help userify any coaching tree sections that are removed from the mainspace should my proposal be accepted. For example, we could create a repository in your userspace, at say User:FlaviusFunderburke/coaching_trees to store all the info that gets removed from any article. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:33, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Jweiss11 That's not quite what I am proposing. Essentially I am proposing that any new consensus apply only going forward, and not retroactively to delete material that was added under the consensus of that time. This would apply regardless of who added the trees. The other elements of my proposal, such as the pre-clearance, would apply only to me. Since I am singling myself out for more burdensome treatment, that shouldn't be an issue. This way, those opposed to trees for coaches perceived as unworthy of them get to stop the spread, and I don't get pissed off that a band of experienced editors undid my good faith hard work that was within consensus but, unbeknownst to me, struck a nerve and was the impetus for this discussion. TL:DR, no ex post facto application of any new consensus, and a promise from me that I won't ever violate the new consensus. As badly as I would like to go through and propagate all those old coach pages that you and others have created with trees to bring them to life, my concession is to abandon that dream on all CFB articles and work on only those deemed worthy of trees. And you and the others who hate trees get your wish of stopping the spread of those trees. I think this is a fair proposal. As WP:CON advises, " it is often better to accept a less-than-perfect compromise—with the understanding that the page is gradually improving—than to try to fight to implement a particular preferred version immediately." Can we agree on this and move on? FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 19:58, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

No, it doesn't make any sense to grandfather in existing content, but apply a different standard to new content. We need to have a uniform standard irrespective of the circumstances of when one or more editors happened to get around to creating it. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:05, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Flavius: Your spirit of compromise is appreciated, and I can say that I have no intention of mass-reverting your past work. However, what you are suggesting is not consistent with Wikipedia policy. Neither Jweiss nor I can bind others in the future to leave your prior work intact. Wikipedia is always evolving, and there can be no binding commitments that your work, my work, or anyone else's will not later be changed, modified, or deleted by other users. That's simply the nature of our work here. Cbl62 (talk) 20:15, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Cbl62 Thank you for that. I care about my past work. I'll agree to the new consensus with a gentlemans agreement that, you, JWeiss and the other editors who are opposed to the trees, will, how shall I put this, put the work to implement the consensus retroactively at the very bottom of the to do list, after all templates are created, articles improved, etc...? I mean, you guys have so many other articles and pages to focus on, so it should be a long while until you guys have the time to get to this. I mean, it could reasonably be a year or more before we get around to this, right? FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 20:22, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

FlaviusFunderburke, if we approve my proposal, I'll start implementing it quickly. Policies are fairly meaningless unless they get consummated with implementation. Furthermore, newbies and IP editors are unlikely to ever see this discussion, or any discussion really, and will likely continue to build out non-notable coaching trees if the status quo remains. But everyone tends to get memo when you implement changes in the main space. I'm sympathetic to your concern about wasted effort and your interest in this information. That's why I'm happy to help preserve all of the coaching tree info in your user space, so that you or anyone else can make use of it. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:16, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Jweiss11 preserving a monument to getting railroaded On my user page is hardly something worth suggesting. I’ve done my best to engage and propose compromises. You haven’t don’t the same. those trees were hours I could have better spent elsewhere, and should have. I have no desire to continue engagement and assist those who lack any spirit of compromise. Have fun diverting your attention from your current projects to removing coaching trees. Good luck with the Overall project, and nice job done driving someone away who wanted to help because you when it comes to coaching trees, You determined “later is now.” FlaviusFunderburke (talk) 02:00, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

@FlaviusFunderburke: It's not anyone's intention to drive you away. When all of us edit, we see the boilerplate Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions. Consensus by the community might be to modify or fully delete any of our edits. When that happens, we sometimes have discussions to convince others why our edits are a good idea. If people think it improves Wikipedia, all or some of the deletions might be restored. While I do hope you choose to stay, I also understand that a crowd-sourced environment like Wikipedia is not for everyone. Regards.—Bagumba (talk) 06:11, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

• Support proposal. Cbl62 (talk) 19:00, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
• Was probably obvious from my previous comments, but I clearly support this proposal. Also want to be crystal clear I'm not "opposing" the trees - I'm "opposing" trees which cannot be properly sourced and are therefore WP:OR. SportingFlyer T·C 03:17, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

@Ostealthy:, @SportingFlyer:, @Eagles247:, @Mackensen:, @Bagumba: thoughts about my proposal above? Jweiss11 (talk) 02:13, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• Comment Just commenting here since my feedback was invited on my talk page. I think that most of these trees are going to be pointless in the end (as far as value to the reader), and I’d much rather read a small section of prose describing a coach's influence. (For example, if I see on a coaching tree that someone coached under someone else for two seasons, I have more questions. Did the assistant receive some great mentoring, grow as a coach, then take a promotion with another team, later citing that head coach as an inspiration? Or did they hate each other’s guts and part ways as soon as they had the chance?) It's much easier to add valuable info like that in a paragraph or two of prose. But since I think we are stuck with coaching trees, I’d support some standards around reliable sourcing. Larry Hockett (Talk) 06:09, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
• Partial support This seems like an OK minimum requirement, but is not an automatic mandate to automaticaly include a tree. A coach with two assistants becoming a head coach still might not justify a full blown tree.—Bagumba (talk) 08:54, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• I'm reading it as a secondary source must define it as a "tree." If the tree's more of a shrub, I still don't have a problem with that as long as it's properly referenced. SportingFlyer T·C 12:23, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Bagumba, I'm not sure I understand your partial support of my proposal. The crux of my proposal is that even if a coach has 20 assistants who become head coaches, there need to be multiple, reliable third-party sources explicit discussing that coach's tree or legacy of disciples ascending to head coaching ranks in order to warrant a coaching tree section / list. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:52, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

What I was basically trying to say was that a coaching tree needs multiple sources discussing the tree, but multiple sources discussing the tree doesn't automatically warrant a dedicated tree section. The sources are necessary but might not always be sufficient.—Bagumba (talk) 05:58, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Seems like you want a policy that's even stricter than what I've outlined? What suffices for a dedicated tree section? Jweiss11 (talk) 06:00, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Not so much stricter, but open-ended, like how the notablility guideline says This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Coaching trees are sort of new ground for analysis, so we may observe other things on the fly where tress may or may not make sense.—Bagumba (talk) 06:18, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps a MOS section which says coaching "tree" sections are only appropriate if they have been discussed as such by secondary sources. Coaches with small but notable "trees" will almost certainly be better represented in prose. SportingFlyer T·C 06:42, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

• I support the proposal per my comment above; I understand it to mean that a coaching tree section would be UNDUE absent sources specifically discussing the concept. Sections where names have been culled from the main text, without specific sourcing, would be subject to removal. Mackensen (talk) 12:19, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

References

Consensus and implementation

Seems we have a solid consensus to broadly accept my proposal, whereby we only include a stand-alone coaching tree section in an article if it can be demonstrated that multiple reliable third-party sources explicitly discuss that coach's tree or legacy as a discrete concept. As such, I've started culling coaching tree sections from articles that don't make that cut and storing them in a repository at Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Coaching trees. I've got 126 coaches listed there so far. Most of them seem like slam dunks for not having a notable tree, but there a couple guys like Barry Alvarez and Dennis Erickson, both hall of famers with long runs as a head coach, who maybe could suffice if proper sources can be shown. Note that this list of culled trees has 15 in-line citations, but I don't think any of them qualify as a the sort of tree-establishing source we are looking for. Rather they just establish a simple fact that coach X was an assistant for coach Y. There are still 956 more articles that that use the term "coaching tree". I plan to continue to work through these, but could use some help.

Also, which football coaches do we think definitely have a notable tree? Here's a few with particular influence on the development of the game that come to mind:

• Walter Camp
• Amos Alonzo Stagg
• John Heisman
• Fielding H. Yost
• George Halas
• Bear Bryant
• Sid Gillman
• Vince Lombardi
• Tom Landry
• Bill Belichick
• Bill Walsh
• Don Shula (?)
• Don Coryell (?)
• Chuck Noll (?)
• Bill Parcells (?)

Any others? General thoughts? Jweiss11 (talk) 19:02, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

• I think the agreed guideline is sufficient for now and that we do not need to create a complete list of coaches where it should be permitted. There are definitely others where a tree may well be appropriate, including Woody Hayes, Pop Warner, Knute Rockne, Joe Paterno, Bo Schembechler, Fritz Crisler, Hayden Fry (one of the most influential trees of all time), and from the modern era Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, and Bill Snyder. Cbl62 (talk) 19:33, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Forgot Paul Brown too. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:01, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Well, I've culled 822 coaching trees. They are all archived at Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Coaching trees. I think most of these are slam-dunk cases of non-notable coaching trees. A number of them were for articles for current NFL assistants who have never been head coaches in the NFL or in college—the coaching tree sections just included a list of the head coaches for whom they worked. These 822 do include about 40 that Cbl62 and I have identified as good candidates for a coaching tree to be notable, provided the proper establishing sources can be found; see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Coaching trees#Potentially notable trees. That leaves 55 football coaches with coaching tree sections. I left these intact based on some combination of presumed notability in principal and actually development and quality of the section and its sources. However, almost all of these articles last sufficient sourcing to establish the coaching tree as notable. Here are the 55:

Principally college

1. Amos Alonzo Stagg
2. Pop Warner
3. John Heisman
4. Fielding H. Yost
5. Dan McGugin
6. Andy Smith (American football)
7. Knute Rockne
8. Wallace Wade
9. William Alexander (American football)
10. Fritz Crisler
11. Jim Tatum (titled as "Legacy")
12. Bear Bryant
13. Ara Parseghian
14. Woody Hayes
15. Bob Devaney
16. Bo Schembechler
17. Joe Paterno
18. Hayden Fry (titled as "Legacy and honors")
19. Bill Peterson (titled as "Legacy")
20. Johnny Majors
21. LaVell Edwards
22. Tom Osborne
23. Lou Holtz
24. Bobby Bowden
25. Barry Switzer
26. Mack Brown
27. Jim Tressel
28. Steve Spurrier
29. Bill Snyder
30. Nick Saban
31. Mike Leach (American football coach)
32. Urban Meyer

Principally NFL

1. Paul Brown
2. Sid Gillman
3. Tom Landry
4. Weeb Ewbank
5. Lou Saban
6. Chuck Noll
7. Don Coryell
8. Ted Marchibroda
9. Marv Levy
10. Bill Walsh (American football coach)
11. Chuck Knox
12. Ray Perkins
13. Bill Parcells
14. Marty Schottenheimer
15. Jimmy Johnson (American football coach)
16. Bill Belichick
17. Mike Holmgren
18. Mike Shanahan
19. Jon Gruden
20. Butch Davis
21. Andy Reid
22. Tony Dungy
23. Pete Carroll

Missing entirely here are Walter Camp and Vince Lombardi, who did not have a coaching tree section, but seem like good candidates for a notable one.

Finally, there are still a fair number of additional coaching tree sections out there for other sports (see here), mostly for college basketball, baseball, and softball coaches. I think the vast majority of these likely fall into the non-notable/cruft bin. I plan to reach out to the relevant WikiProjects to loop them in on this effort and discussion. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:21, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

FCS season article AFD's

The notability of several past and future season articles for several different FCS teams has been questioned; please see here, here, and here. Thanks! Ejgreen77 (talk) 15:38, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Category:College football bowl games won by eventual national champions

Is this really defining? SportsGuy789 (talk) 06:35, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I think not. Ostealthy (talk) 15:29, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

No. It should be deleted. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:18, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

CfD here. SportsGuy789 (talk) 21:32, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

South Atlantic Intercollegiate Athletic Association standings templates

CFB warehouse had these standings from 1907 on, but it seems the conference did not begin until 1912, and that from 1907-1911 these were independent South Atlantic regional (i. e. Virginia and North Carolina, and Maryland and DC sometimes) titles. The 1907 to 1911 templates should be deleted. The All Southern teams show starting in 1902 and through 1905 there was something of a changing of the guard in Southern football power from the South Atlantic schools (basically the ACC, with the exceptions like FSU and Clemson and Georgia Tech) to the Deep South ones (basically the SEC, minus Mizzou and aTm and Arkansas). In 1897 UVA and Vanderbilt tied. Nobody wanted 1906 Vanderbilt. Thus, it seems, 1905 VPI was a Southern champ, but 1907 NC State was only a South Atlantic champ, and this was confused for a conference title. The Southeast champion seems to be the Southern champion after that. Not so unlike today with those who prefer SEC to ACC scheduling, etc. Cake (talk) 01:08, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Discussion close request for YoUDee

Would someone be willing to close the merge discussion at Talk:University_of_Delaware#Proposal_to_merge_YoUDee_to_University_of_Delaware#Athletics or weigh in if they feel there is more to discuss? Eagles 24/7 (C) 13:58, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

I've closed it as unanimous consensus against the merge. Eagles 24/7 (C) 13:49, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Articles for deletion: independents football standings lists

Per the restructuring of the independent college football record templates by geographical region, I have nominated List of Division I FBS independents football standings (1869–1905) and List of Division I FBS independents football standings (1906–1955) for deletion. Please see the discussion at here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 22:51, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

PROD of former Villanova co-head coach

There is a PROD placed on Timothy O'Rourke, who was the co-head coach for Villanova football in 1902. I am unable to find sources outside of a couple passing mentions that merely state he was their coach. Eagles 24/7 (C) 14:14, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, I added contemporary sourcing to the article indicating the O'Rourke was the team captain (rather than co-head coach) and Richard Kelly was the head coach of the 1902 Villanova team. Cbl62 (talk) 19:37, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I removed the PROD here. Should be taken to AfD. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:28, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

CFB head coach AfD's

The notability of several early head football coaches at Doane University have been questioned at AfD; please see here, here, here, here, here, and here. Thanks, Ejgreen77 (talk) 15:53, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Requested move feedback

Hey, there is a move request Talk:Big Ten Conference Men's Basketball Tournament#Requested move 23 March 2020 that editors may be interested in. I know it started around basketball but has now grew to other sports.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 17:00, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

RFC for Template:CBB yearly record start

I've opened an RFC regarding Template:CBB yearly record start, which has implications for similar templates within the scope of this project. Please see: Template talk:CBB yearly record start#RFC request. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 22:33, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

This issue had now been generalized into a broader RFC, which can be found at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility#RfC on table captions. This has wide-ranging implications for this and other sports projects. Please take a look. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 15:17, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

PROD notifications

The following lists have been PROD'd by KingSkyLord: List of Michigan Wolverines football players, List of Michigan Wolverines football trainers, List of Maryland Terrapins football people. They failed to notify the article creators, so I am notifying the subproject instead. Eagles 24/7 (C) 12:44, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62: the two Michigan lists are your creations. Jweiss11 (talk) 13:02, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Discord

Hey all, I hope everyone is safe and healthy. My name is HickoryOughtShirt?4 and I'm a member of WikiProject Ice Hockey. I was wondering if there was any interest in starting a WikiProject Sports channel on Discord? There's quite a few of us who are interested in sports, and I think it would be a good idea to help the WikiProject recruit more members. You guys can join us through here.HickoryOughtShirt?4 (talk) 23:59, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

OK Boomers

The Oklahoma Sooners football team adopted the Sooners moniker in 1908, after previously using Rough Riders and Boomers. Should some of the pre 1908 articles reflect this? We use contemporary mascot/university names. I am coming up peanuts on when exactly OU had these nicknames.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 21:40, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

UCO2009bluejay, Do you have a Newspapers.com subscription? Contemporary news articles should shed light on the monikers used prior to 1908. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:59, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Jweiss11 No I do not. I am on a tight budget. But I could try to access The Oklahoman through my local library. I will see how that works.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 20:51, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

UCO2009bluejay, you should be able to get a free subscription via your participation with Wikipedia. That's what I have. See: https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/partners/26/. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:52, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Draft GNG

Every single player in the 2020 NFL Draft now has an article. Did notability change based upon being drafted?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:55, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Example:Chris Jackson (defensive back).-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:56, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Not saying they arent notable, but people dont always follow guidelines, which is why AfD exists.—Bagumba (talk) 17:43, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @UCO2009bluejay: No, notability guidelines have not changed to include drafted players, but this unfortunately happens every year. All the drafted players get articles, most of them make their teams in a few months or receive enough coverage before the season to pass GNG, and the rest will bounce around practice squads for the next few years until someone accidentally stumbles upon the article and decides to AFD it. If you want to AFD some of them, I would support your effort, but it's a lot of work. I have a list at User:Eagles247/AFD of hundreds of these types of articles that have slipped through the cracks over the years, and I'm trying to go through them. Willsome429 personally created 44 of the draft pick articles on Day 3 of the draft this year. Eagles 24/7 (C) 17:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

WP:NGRIDIRON only kicks in once a player appears in a regular-season pro game (being drafted is not enough). That said, college players can be notable without ever playing pro ball, and the draftees need to be assessed under WP:GNG and WP:NCOLLATH as these are independent routes to notability. If a draftee doesn't pass any of these, then an AfD would be appropriate. Cbl62 (talk) 18:20, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

TfD: Template:1886 college football records, etc

I have nominated a bunch of independent records templates for deletion as these how now been replaced by regional templates. Please see: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 April 30#College football independent records. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 19:55, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

• Just wondering, what is the issue? ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 22:53, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

This issue here is that single templates for all independent teams were too large and unwieldy in many instances. Breaking the teams down into four geographic regions keeps things more manageable. See 1925 college football season#Independents for a good example. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:04, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

I have nominated the last batch of these templates for deletion. Please see: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 May 10#NCAA independents football records. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 18:58, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Revisit WP:NCOLLATH?

Seeing a few coach AfDs on here and after researching for a vote in this AfD for college basketball coach Stu Aberdeen, I am wondering if the wording of NCOLLATH needs to be amended to show broader assumed notability for college head coaches - at a minimum for football and basketball. My suggestion would be adding NCAA division I coaches for these sports (perhaps a couple others - not sure about baseball, hockey, soccer, etc.) and something like “often head coaches at lower divisions or in other sports meet notability criteria, but these should be considered case by case.” I’ve never seen a D1 football or basketball coach who didn’t meet GNG, but I have seen a number put up for AfD and due to the pre-internet timing of their tenures it’s hard to find sources without some kind of enhanced access. Thoughts? I’m putting a note on the college basketball project pointing here for the discussion. Thanks. Rikster2 (talk) 12:29, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

• I would tend to agree with you, although some early DI coaches might be difficult to source. I would generally think basketball, baseball, and football coaches are generally notable, though there may be exceptions like if there was an interim coach who only coached a few games. Not sure about hockey, soccer, lacrosse etc. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 14:43, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

  • You could make it just for full-time head coaches and exclude interims. Also, if people have heartburn over how far back it goes, you could be explicit that this means Division I from the split of divisions in the 1956–57 academic year. For football, I think you would be safe extending current FBS schools back to their start as football gets such high press volume (this would be a very conservative standard in my opinion). Basketball is a little more nuanced since division I isn’t split. Not sure all head coaches from all 375ish D1 programs would meet GNG (at least before they were D1). Rikster2 (talk) 15:26, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

• I lean toward Rikster's thinking on this issue (i.e, making only full-time head coaches inherently notable). I'd go a little bit farther when it comes to football—full-time head coaches for current D-I schools, both FBS and FCS, meet GNG in my book. Keep in mind that Division I wasn't split for football until 1978. As for basketball, the NCAA didn't split into divisions at all until 1956, and that was into the University Division (today's D-I) and College Division (itself split in 1973 into today's D-II and D-III). That said, the NCAA treats the start of "major-college" basketball as 1947–48; its D-I alignment histories start with that season. With that in mind, I'd say that full-time head coaches of current D-I schools would meet GNG during their schools' histories as "major-college" programs (whether de facto or explicit). In the case of schools that were "major-college" in 1947–48, that can be extended back to the schools' first basketball seasons. I'm still thinking about how baseball should be treated; its media presence isn't in the same universe as football and basketball, though greater than other college sports. — Dale Arnett (talk) 20:15, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

• While college athletics SNGs tend to be very unclear, I'm not sure I support this - I think football will probably be fine, though I've seen some biographies on here for coaches that never coached DI football and who never got press outside their immediate region which I'm not sure count as notable (been awhile, don't press me for an example.) Basketball is probably fine as well, but I'm concerned active coach articles like Dave Dickerson or Tony Pujol only have school sources or sources which are purely transactional in nature (coach hired) which we tend to discount at AfD. I'm sure Dickerson has something written about him and Pujol likely does as well, but I think we should be making sure these articles actually meet WP:GNG instead of expanding the WP:SNG, especially for coaches at lower notability schools. I don't think any other sport should have an automatic notability grant, either - some but not all baseball coaches will be notable, for instance. SportingFlyer T·C 20:30, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

• I’d be careful about confusing the state of current Wikipedia articles with those subjects being likely to meet WP:GNG. There are many articles about notable subjects that are poorly sourced. Rikster2 (talk) 21:24, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

• That's true, but it's fairly common in a lot of college athletics articles that I've seen, in part because it's easy to cite a primary source (a team website.) Considering there are heaps of college sports in the US it makes it difficult to determine whether someone is actually notable or if they just get covered by their school's media department. In terms of DI football coaches and maybe DI basketball coaches, I would generally support a statement - it's certainly true for the top leagues, even if it may not be completely true for all DI basketball coaches, especially those at smaller schools. SportingFlyer T·C 21:49, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

• I suspect consensus could only be developed for presumptive notability for head football and basketball coaches at Division I (and maybe only Division I-A/FBS) schools. I doubt there would be broad support for a presumption of notability at lower levels or in other sports. Since I've never seen a Division I football/basketball head coach subjected to a successful AfD, I'm not sure that a limited amendment for that narrow group accomplishes much. Cbl62 (talk) 21:12, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

• It would save the administrative time and effort of doing an AfD discussion. Perhaps this is only a basketball issue, but you’d be surprised at how many editors outside the US just don’t “get” that major college sports are a big deal and covered at about the same rate as professional leagues. Rikster2 (talk) 21:26, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Every now and then, there's an AfD on a Division I head football coach as well. I believe every one has closed as "keep". If you think it's worthwhile, I'd support the amendment. Cbl62 (talk) 21:36, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Spliting discussion for List of Division I FBS independents football standings (1956–present)

An article that been involved with (List of Division I FBS independents football standings (1956–present)) has content that is proposed to be removed and moved to another article (List of NCAA University Division independents football standings (1956–1972)). If you are interested, please visit the discussion. Thank you. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:17, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

WP:NSEASONS Rfc

For college sports, WP:NSEASONS currently reads:

For college sports teams, weigh both the season itself and the sport (for example, if a US college or university's football and fencing teams enjoy the same level of success, the football team is likely to receive a significantly greater amount of coverage)

• A national championship season at the top collegiate level is generally notable.
• A national championship season at a lower collegiate level might be notable
• A season including a post-season appearance (or, if there is no post-season competition, a high final ranking) in the top collegiate level is often notable.
• For programs considered elite in a sport (for example, Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, in men's basketball; Tennessee and UConn in women's basketball; Michigan, Notre Dame, Alabama, USC in football, etc.) many or all seasons might be notable regardless of the outcome (the amount written by reliable sources on a weekly basis for some of these programs is enough that almost anything or anyone having any relation to them is likely to meet the General Notability Guideline).
• In cases in which the individual season notability is insufficient for an article, multiple seasons may be grouped together in a single article. This grouping might be based on head coaches, conference affiliation, or any other reasonable standard that results in sufficient coverage for the period to warrant an article.

Even for someone generally familiar with college sports, this is difficult to parse, and for reviewers at AfC/NPP who aren't familiar with the subject it might be impossible. Furthermore, it does not accurately reflect what happens to WP:NSEASON articles at AfD, which is the entire point of the SNG: in my mind, SNGs exist to provide guidance on whether an article is likely to be kept at AfD. Therefore, I propose removing the above paragraph completely and replacing it with:

Seasons for top level U.S college teams in football and basketball almost always pass WP:GNG. Consider presenting seasons for teams which receive less overall coverage teams as a group, such as by decade, by coach, or by conference affiliation. Team seasons for other collegiate sports may be notable enough for a standalone article, but must pass WP:GNG.

Please note this is not a formal RfC. I am posting this simply for feedback and edits per the WP:NSEASON cleanup presented above. If enough support is gained, I will be starting an RfC at a village pump at some point. SportingFlyer T·C 21:01, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

One of the things that greatly complicates any effort to rewrite NSEASON is that it applies to all college sports. IMO it's impossible to draft a meaningful guideline that fits all college sports. The reality is that Division I FBS college football generates massive coverage equal to or greater than most professional sports. A meaningful guideline needs to recognize this. In the area of college football, this has been debated many times over the years. I believe that the cleanest result is to (a) have a presumption of notability for seasons played by Division I FBS teams (maybe Division I FCS as well -- I'm frankly not sufficiently familiar with the coverage received by the lower tier of teams within FCS to opine that a presumption is warranted); (b) also have a presumption of notability for teams winning a national championship at the Division Division I FC, II, III, and NAIA levels; and (c) have no presumption of notability for seasons not referenced in (a) or (b). For teams in the latter group, there would need to be a showing that GNG is satisfied. Cbl62 (talk) 21:21, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

At a minimum, start with Power Five conferences. Can always expand if need demands. I've never believed SNGs need to cover all cases, just popular ones that flood AfDs. Use GNG otherwise.—Bagumba (talk) 04:28, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

"just the ones that flood AfDs" -- we don't even have a trickle, let alone a flood, of AfDs directed at Power Five season articles, so an SNG that narrow accomplishes little or nothing. To have any beneficial effect, a proposal should extend at a minimum to all Division I FBS schools. I'd be comfortable with leaving out Division I FCS. Cbl62 (talk) 05:05, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

OK. Are these lower-tier seasons being started by a few prolific creators or many editors with one-off creations?—Bagumba (talk) 05:18, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

The one-sentence sub-stubs largely relate to older, historic programs and were largely the creations of MisterCake (back in the 2014-2016 time period). I pinged Cake to the discussion and, to his credit, he has been working today at improving them (something I hope he will continue to work at). Moreover, I believe that season articles on notable historic programs are fine, so long as they are well-sourced to provide some indicia of notability. As for Division II, III, and NAIA programs, I am not aware of any mass creation of season articles at this level. I did recently nominate one example at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2014 Lindenwood Lions football team. Cbl62 (talk) 05:32, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

MisterCake is the ideal scenario. Good-faith creations where the community can come to a consensus on newer standards. If there is no pressing concern with other scenarios, it could be overkill to get into guideline changes.—Bagumba (talk) 05:55, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Lost on me what my motivation for creating Lindenwood was, but sometimes if a program was historically significant I will add some modern season even if they are a minor program now. Sometimes it was laziness, and others it was the inability to find the schedule. For example, the Dallas Hilltoppers has Joe Utay in the Hall of Fame, but I can't find a single schedule, though I can find mention of their season records. Cake (talk) 14:42, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

AfDs: Josh Kotelnicki and Jeff Floyd

Josh Kotelnicki, head coach at the University of Mary from 2014 to 2017, has been nominated for deletion. Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Josh Kotelnicki. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 15:39, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Jeff Floyd, another head coach, was also nominated for deletion. Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeff Floyd. Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:22, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

High school football season articles at AfD

There are currently pending two AfDs relating to high school football seasons. If interested, feel free to participate in the discussions at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1892 South Bend High School football team and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1893 De La Salle Institute football team. Cbl62 (talk) 04:06, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

AfD for 1917 Temple

There is an AfD pending at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1917 Temple Owls football team which relates to a historical season of a Division I FBS team. It is admittedly a bit of an unusual case since the team's games were forfeited due to a manpower shortage created by World War I. Feel free to comment there if you have views one way or the other. Cbl62 (talk) 16:09, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Slippery Rock football name change?

@Murphanian777: has moved Slippery Rock football to Slippery Rock Rockets football. Where is any indication that SLU changed their mascot? There is not indication that the team has added a mascot on their athletics page [16]. This page seems to be in error. If sourcing indicates a mascot addition I will drop my objection.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 22:27, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

@UCO2009bluejay: I reverted the page move. The Slippery Rock Rockets are a high school athletics team (see [17]) in the Slippery Rock Area School District. The college football team Slippery Rock doesn't have an additional team name. Eagles 24/7 (C) 22:43, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

@Eagles247: That is what I suspected.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 22:46, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

With a great school name like "Slippery Rock", who needs a nickname? If they were taking opinions, though, I'd suggest "Algae". Cbl62 (talk) 22:50, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Murphanian777 created 1936 Slippery Rock Rockets football team yesterday. It seem the "Rockets" fight name was common historically for the college team and seems to have still gotten some use in more recent years per Newspapers.com: see [18]. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:53, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I've made Slippery Rock Rockets football a redirect to Slippery Rock football. Eagles 24/7 (C) 23:02, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm a little concerned about some of the articles this user has created. For example, at 1895 Chicago Athletic Association football team#2nd Half, there is a 1000-word essay on the second half of a game between All-Chicago and All-Boston area teams. It is somewhat sourced, but it looks like they took every single sentence from each source and added it into the article (albeit in their own words, luckily, so no copyright violation, I think). There is also 1895 Indianapolis Light Artillery football team, and for the life of me I can't figure out what kind of football team this is discussing since Indianapolis Light Artillery is a redlink. Eagles 24/7 (C) 23:02, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Murphanian is a new user who is learning their way, improving as they go and receptive to constructive suggestions. I did nominate a couple of their high school season articles for deletion (as noted in a chain above). I was intrigued by their 1895 Indianapolis Light Artillery article . . . so much so that I added 1894 Indianapolis Light Artillery football team which may provide a shorter insight into the program. Cbl62 (talk) 23:40, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62: One of the GoCE editors just cleaned up the 1895 article, so it's much more legible now. This Google Books result indicates the Indianapolis Light Artillery was/is part of the Indiana Legion, so I think a link to that article will bring some clarity to those season pages. Eagles 24/7 (C) 00:00, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I wouldn't want to WP:BITE, they are contributing some interesting stuff, and any changes D-II immediately go on my radar, and I didn't hear of that good to know.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 00:06, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Hello there, I'll contribute my piece to this by saying, thanks for everyone's support. Cbl62 and Jweiss11 have especially been helpful in teaching me the ropes on this site, and I appreciate their help in fixing up some/all of my cfb articles. For the Slippery Rock team, the reason I changed their nickname in the first place was, as Jweiss said, it was a common moniker for Slippery Rock in 1936, and I just assumed it had stayed their official moniker to the present. Of course I hadn't looked into the team enough to realize they did not keep that name... so I'm sorry for that move. As for 1895 ILA and CAA, they were actually my first two articles on this wiki. I had no intention of violating a copyright, but looking back, I regretted writing those play-by-play sections, mostly because they just weren't contributing much to the overall article and turned out to be quite long. I looked into where the Indianapolis Light Artillery came from but found a variety of possibilities, so I decided just to leave it for the time being. My plan going forward is to create a season article for all non-high school football teams that played Notre Dame between 1896 and 1954 (everything before and after those years is already finished), which gives me a 121 planned season articles to write. After that, who knows, I'd like to expand on the ILA and CAA football team histories, and there's a few oddball teams I'd like to improve, like Holy Cross or Illinois Cycling club. I was even thinking I'd tackle all the teams that earned a spot on the early AP polls, but don't have an individual season article for that year. Anyway, I don't know if I can keep this up forever. I have about 4 months until school starts again and then I doubt I'll be able to edit as often. Thanks for the help, advice and criticism. Murphanian777 (talk) 02:30, 26 May 2020 (UTC)Murphanian777

Thanks for your efforts. All teams that earned a spot in the early AP polls is an especially worthwhile goal. It's been on my "to do" list for a long time, and it would be good to have someone work at it. Cbl62 (talk) 03:01, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Gerald Ford FAR

I have nominated Gerald Ford for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:29, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

CfD: Category:Central Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

I have nominated Category:Central Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and its subcategories for renaming. Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 May 30#Central Intercollegiate Conference. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 21:09, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

This nomination has taken a peculiar detour to the root article for the category. Please see the discussion at Talk:Central Intercollegiate Athletic Conference#Requested move 2 June 2020. thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 23:20, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Cleanup of "List of XYZ Wildcats in the NFL Draft|draft" article naming convention

If anyone is interested in a tedious project, the 237 articles in Category:Lists of National Football League draftees by college football team are inconsistently titled, using both "... NFL Draft" and "... NFL draft". UW Dawgs (talk) 23:02, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Which is correct? Is it a proper noun? Should "draft" be capitalized or not? Cbl62 (talk) 23:22, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Consensus at User talk:KingSkyLord#Draft case seems to favor lower case. Cbl62 (talk) 23:52, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) For what it's worth, in articles such as NFL Draft and 2020 NFL Draft, the word is capitalized when referring to the "NFL Draft" or the "YEAR NFL Draft" but lowercase when referring to "draft" by itself. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 00:03, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

MOS:SPORTCAPS

Specific titles and events (or series thereof) are capitalized: WPA World Nine-ball Championship, Tour de France, Americas Cup. Generic usage is not: a three-time world champion, international tournaments. None take italics or other special markup.

--I am under the impression that this would indicate NFL Draft should be capitalized compared to saying something like a college had a player selected for x drafts in a row.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 03:21, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

MOS:CAPS: Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. I'm more of the thinking to only capitalize when the meaning differs from the plain English words e.g. "Super Bowl" vs "super bowl", but the meaning of "NFL playoffs" and "NFL draft" in plain English are the same without needing to capitalize. This is the style of The New York Times. Companies capitalize to promote branding, i.e. inflates an aura of importance.—Bagumba (talk) 08:25, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Bagumba on the general point. Cbl62 (talk) 00:08, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I would say there is a huge difference between the case of the words "playoffs" and "draft" in the NFL as playoff is referred to as a common noun, but "draft" is usually referred to as a proper noun (but only when referring to the main event specifically and not supplemental drafts), hence why it has been capitalized on all of the main lists and most of the college draftees lists. KingSkyLord (talk | contribs) 19:55, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support "NFL Draft"—I'm with KingSkyLord. "NFL Draft" is a proper noun. When the phrase appears unmodified, it should be capitalized. However, when the phrase "NFL draftees" is used, a lower-case D is appropriate. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:46, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

CfD: Category:St. Edward's Hilltoppers football

I have nominated Category:St. Edward's Hilltoppers football and its subcategories for renaming. Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 June 11#Category:St. Edward's Hilltoppers football. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 18:18, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

AfD discussion

There is a discussion in which you might be interested at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Houston–Texas football rivalry (3rd nomination). UW Dawgs (talk)

AfD Marshall Klevenow

There is an AfD discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marshall Klevenow some editors may want to participate.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 18:15, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

YYYY in American football articles

I recently stumbled upon the "YYYY in American football" genre of articles, with the current one being 2020 in American football. I know that these are not CFB-specific, but college football takes up most of the articles. IMO, these articles look pretty sad - they're essentially just lists of bowl games, littered with flagicons, with sprinklings of NFL and other international pro leagues at the bottom. I'd like to revamp these articles, but I didn't want to make super major changes without informing the community. Here are some broad changes I'm planning on making.

• The bowl games for the previous year are listed; for example, the 2019–20 bowl games are listed on the 2020 article; I want to move those to the year for the season that they followed (e.g. put 2019–20 bowl games on 2019 page).
• Add information about things that happened during 2019 regular season
• Add information about the NFL season, and other domestic and international professional leagues

What do you all think? PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 15:34, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Two quick thoughts: (1) these appear at first glance to be duplicative of existing college football season articles, and (2) the flag icons in the middle of narrative text are a bad idea. Cbl62 (talk) 15:52, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62: Point 1 is what makes me want to add more on other leagues (both domestic and international) so that the articles are not just about college football, which I plan to do, and I fully agree with point 2. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 15:59, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Please kill those flag icons with fire! Jweiss11 (talk) 04:20, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62 and Jweiss11: I have created 2013 in American football - at present it contains only the section regarding the 2013 NCAA Div I FBS season, but I will be adding similar sections for all other NCAA divisions as well as the NFL season and most other leagues located at Category:2013 in American football. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 03:21, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

SUNY football redirect discussion

There is a redirect discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 26#SUNY football that editors may be interested in participating.–UCO2009bluejay (talk) 09:43, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to amend WP:NCOLLATH

Please weigh in on this discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)#Proposal to amend WP:NCOLLATH to include coach guidance. Thank you. Rikster2 (talk) 22:57, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Can folks please weigh in here? Seems like a slam dunk to add at least SOME college coaches to the guideline. Rikster2 (talk) 23:13, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Barton College football reinstatement Cfd

I am posting this notice here because the program previously played under the name Atlantic Christian. The program will be reinstated this year. I have requested a move for Template:Atlantic Christian Bulldogs football coach navbox and its related categories at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 June 29#Category:Atlantic Christian Bulldogs football.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 07:37, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

One-sentence, sub-stub season articles -- let's fix them

In the past, we have been tolerant of the creation of sub-stub articles that usually consist of only a single sentence of prose. These sorts of sub-stubs attract unfavorable attention from those who do not understand or appreciate the notability of college football history. The time has come IMO to impose higher standards. At a minimum, season articles should include a schedule table and prose describing the basics of the team's season, including such things as (i) win-loss record and points for/against, (ii) conference affiliation (and position of finish within the conference), (iii) identity of head coach (and year of service), (iv) identity of the team captain (where available), and (v) players receiving All-American or all-conference honors (where available). Thoughts and suggestions are welcome. For those willing to help clean up the existing sub-stubs, a working list can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Season articles campaign#One-sentence sub-stubs. Cbl62 (talk) 18:19, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

• I think this an excellent proposal. I do want to call out the "unfavorable attention" though - if these are at AfC, many reviewers, even sports fans, won't be able to make a notability determination on a college football season if they're nothing more than a lede, a results table, and a link to the school's athletics history guide, and WP:NSEASONS currently provides terrible guidance specifically for college football seasons. Thoughts:

1. Is there a template for college football seasons anywhere, with all of these improvements listed?
2. Rework WP:NSEASONS with a specific RfC to make it easier for users who aren't familiar with the subject
3. Specifically encourage decade-specific articles like William & Mary Tribe football, 1970–79 for less notable programs (to be fair, that's personal preference, but I think that article does the job really well) SportingFlyer T·C 19:40, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I did not mean the phrase "unfavorable attention" to be a negative comment about those whom might nominate for deletion. I completely agree that someone unfamiliar with the sport would look at an article like 1920 Earlham Quakers football team or 2014 Lindenwood Lions football team and have no idea why they are notable. Frankly, I'm not even sure about those two and some of the others. As for revising WP:NSEASONS, I agree that it's needed but it's so hard to get something passed at WP:NSPORT that I'm reluctant to try it. I am not aware of a template that sets forth expected content for season articles, but would be willing to contribute to one if someone wanted to get that ball rolling. Cbl62 (talk) 20:34, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

@MisterCake: I'm pinging Cake to the discussion as most of the articles under discussion are his creations. Cbl62 (talk) 20:37, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

No worries. I've started discussion for an WP:NSEASONS RfC below as to not hijack this. I know it's difficult to gain consensus but you can't if you don't try! At what point should we be nominating stubs for deletion if we can't rescue them do you think? SportingFlyer T·C 21:02, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I really don't like the decade articles. Think those getting replaced by single season articles only a good thing. Consider, for one, if in one of the years in the decade they did something worthy of a navbox, or anything else specific to one of the years rather than the whole decade. Many of those with old seasons like Earlham are because the program is notable but it needs some season or other with coverage. Cake (talk) 22:02, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

@MisterCake: Most of the candidates at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Season articles campaign#One-sentence sub-stubs are your creations. If you have time to work at improving them, that would go some distance in demonstrating notability and fending off any deletion efforts. Cbl62 (talk) 01:18, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm with Cake on the decade articles. Several years ago, we had many of decade articles for major programs and decided here to break them up into individual year articles. Most of the decade articles are gone, but a few still persist: e.g. Category:Louisiana Tech Bulldogs football seasons. The decade articles tend be list-ish mega-stubs that if properly developed would get unwieldy. Better to have ten neat stubs that can each be developed into nice season articles.

I've been working on cleaning up the infoboxes, schedule tables, and category sorting for season articles. I've made my way through the Ivies aside from Columbia and Brown and through Michigan up to 1935. As we create new season articles or update existing ones, it would helpful if we could all model the formatting in those examples. Patriotsontop, PCN02WPS, Murphanian777, Dmoore5556, and Usaf 1832 have been active of late creating new season articles, so I figure I'll loop them all in here. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:32, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I share the same view as Cake and Jweiss on the decade articles. As Jweiss correctly notes, they tend to be mega-stubs with multiple schedule charts and infoboxes. E.g., Delaware Fightin' Blue Hens football, 1889–99. In particular, they do not lend themselves to the development of prose. As prose content is what we should be aspiring to in the development of the encyclopedia, season articles (which lend themselves more readily to prose development) should be encouraged. Cbl62 (talk) 21:36, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62: The proposal is well-intentioned, but contrary to WP:DELETIONISNOTCLEANUP. I'd propose an article must have multiple sources of significant, independent coverage identified by inline citations. If not, do not prmote the draft. For mainspace, they are fair game for AfD. In the extreme, long-term abusers should be WP:TBANed on creations of these types.—Bagumba (talk) 04:25, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

1947 Bowling Green Falcons football team is IMO a good example of a well-sourced season article stub. That said, we've typically allowed creation of season stubs sourced to a single, reliable source like SR/College Football or College Football Data Warehouse, and I'm not aware of any policy that would mandate more than that at the time of creation. Are you aware of any? I highlighted the one-sentence sub-stubs because they represent the lowest level of stub -- and something that I suspect most everyone believes we should discourage. Cbl62 (talk) 05:20, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps you are suggesting a WikiProject level "best practice", which we'd encourage regular editors to follow. This is distinguished from a one-off page creation by a non-regular of the project.—Bagumba (talk) 05:47, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Precisely. Cbl62 (talk) 05:49, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62: What about this Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Yearly team pages format should that work or is that in need of an update.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 12:37, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Lists of head football coaches improvement drive proposal

I was just browsing through the project's featured lists [19] and it appears to me that with the amount of progress by the Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Season articles campaign, I think that creating well established and well cited lists of football head coaches could be a cinch. Especially considering there are established models to work with. I don't see much reason why we couldn't create/improve/maintain/upgrade these lists of coaches to Featured List status for the Power Five (if not all of FBS) schools.

• As of today the only ones with that status are: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Baylor, Clemson, Colorado, East Carolina, Georgia, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, LSU, Missouri, Navy, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, and Washington & Jefferson. This makes for a grand total of 22, (or 19 of the 64 power five conference schools.) Would anybody be interested in working on an improvement drive?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 12:22, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

PROD FYI

Jeff Tisdel. Eagles 24/7 (C) 16:44, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Eagles247, thanks for the heads up. I reverted the prod and made some improvements. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:27, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

College players in the NFL draft talk page inclusion/declusion discussion

There is a discussion regarding Lists of XYZ College players in the NFL draft at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League#"in the NFL Draft" articles that editors may be interested in discussing.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 14:26, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Removal of non-conference schedules from conference-only schedules for 2020

I'm noticing that some editors are just wholesale removing the cancelled non-conference games from teams in the Big Ten and Pac 12 2020 team articles (as in 2020 Wisconsin Badgers football team#Schedule), which I don't feel is a proper solution; writing about it as text is clumsy, and retaining those games in the schedule grids with strikethrough or red highlighting noting the games were cancelled seems more appropriate. Some consensus needs to be built, because it's likely more game cancellations and/or conference-only schedules are to come (I decided not to return those games to that article so that we can figure out consensus). Nate • (chatter) 02:06, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

• It's an interesting question. Red highlighting usually denotes a loss. I don't know if this is consistent, but Florida's various hurricane cancellations (see for example 2017 Florida Gators football team) are handled as prose. Conversely, the 2018 First Responder Bowl is listed with strikethroughs on 2018 Boston College Eagles football team and 2018 Boise State Broncos football team. The existing schedules are likely to disintegrate completely, assuming a season is even played at all, and keeping the cancelled games in the table might become unwieldy. Mackensen (talk) 02:17, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
  • I think I meant to say dark grey to handle cancelled games, but you're right, it's probably going to have to be case-to-case by conference or program until we understand if the season is going on in a reduced form, gets bumped to spring, or just doesn't happen. It's certainly something we've never really faced, and I'm sure this project has been dreading this week since the spring scrimmage season was cancelled. Nate • (chatter) 02:24, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
    • Consider the example of 1918 Michigan Wolverines football team; games were cancelled because of World War I and because of the flu pandemic. The schedule shows the games that were actually played, while the preseason section discusses, in prose, the effect those two events had on the schedule. That's not a bad model, especially in cases where a new game is scheduled into a slot previously occupied by a cancelled game. It also leaves our options open if conferences adopt some form of flex scheduling. Mackensen (talk) 02:41, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
      • Jpp858 and I talked about this on his talk page; I was originally using strikethroughs with a footnote and Jpp858 replaced these with the prose above the schedule. For the sake of cooperation and being on the same page, I switched over to his method. I would appreciate a project-wide consensus on this, though, so we can take care of this and all be on the same page. I'm fine with either method, though if we go for the strikethrough method the Big Ten and Ivy pages, as well as those of their opponents, will have to be reverted back to match. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 03:48, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I've seen it dealt with in other instances (JFK assassination and others) with "Cancelled" written in the "Result" column. Cbl62 (talk) 04:22, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I had to deal with this for 1969 Holy Cross Crusaders football team, where most of the season was canceled because of a hepatitis outbreak, and that was my solution -- to write "Canceled" instead of the result. For a completed season, this displays nicely, because the fact that those weeks are "still" shown in gray marks them as separate from the green W, red L and yellow T.

For an upcoming season, though, the canceled games would blend in with the "other" scheduled games, at first glance. The strikethrough might be a better solution. But there's one more wrinkle ... with so many schedules in flux, there's a chance that canceled games with nonconference opponents could be replaced with different opponents on the same date. Then the schedules could get massively confusing. _``` t b w i l l i e _{`</sub> $1.25 <sub>`} 16:58, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

• One possibility is showing those games a la North Dakota State in the 2001 Maine Black Bears football team article. SportsGuy789 (talk) 04:31, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

AfD: Alan Gooch

There is an open AfD for a former NCAA D-I FBS head coach that is currently open that members of this project may be interested in, please see here. Thanks, Ejgreen77 (talk) 22:44, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

This discussion could used some more input. Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alan Gooch. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:17, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

AfD: 1921 DePauw Tigers football team

1921 DePauw Tigers football team has been nominated for deletion. Please see the discussion at at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1921 DePauw Tigers football team. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 22:02, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

• Withdrawn by nominator. Cbl62 (talk) 02:05, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Ohio State–Purdue football rivalry

A new user showed up this week and immediately created three new rivalry articles: Ohio State–Purdue football rivalry, Auburn–UAB football rivalry, Middle Tennessee–Vanderbilt football rivalry. Are these real rivalries? Should they be submitted to AfD? Is the new user the latest sock of User:Caleb Hughes? Cbl62 (talk) 05:31, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

@UW Dawgs: Thoughts? Cbl62 (talk) 05:32, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

The "new" user (User:Brycenn) has been indefinitely blocked for various abuses (including vandalism of Nick Saban and personal attacks), but the issue remains as to whether the three "rivalry" articles he created should be deleted. I'd certainly support deleting Auburn/UAB and MT/Vanderbilt, and probably OSU/Purdue as well. Cbl62 (talk) 07:00, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62: I would agree with you on Ohio State-Purdue, considering that only one of the references on that page (1 Not until the 1980s did the two Big Ten rivals begin to meet every season, too) even mention the word "rival" or "rivalry" in reference to OSU-Purdue. I can go ahead and AfD that one if the support would be there. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 15:32, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, these should be AfD'd. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:01, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I'll get Ohio State-Purdue, someone else can take MTSU-Vandy. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 16:15, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

OSU-Purdue nomination can be seen here. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 16:29, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I have speedy deleted two of the articles under WP:CSD G5, as they were created by a sockpuppet of a banned user (CalebHughes). Black Kite has deleted the other one under the same criteria. Per WP:BMB, all edits made by a banned user, regardless of their merits, should be deleted or reverted. Eagles 24/7 (C) 16:43, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Good resolution. Cbl62 (talk) 16:45, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Christian McCaffrey/Headers on page

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League#Headers for seasons regarding article headers for Christian McCaffrey that editors may be interested in. Also, there are also headers for individual college seasons as well.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 13:26, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Toll Booth Willie and Murphanian777

I wish there were a college football barnstar we could award to hard-working new contributors like @Toll Booth Willie: and @Murphanian777:.

Since June 16, Willie has created roughly 235 new season articles with a particular focus on Eastern programs (e.g, 1969 Holy Cross Crusaders football team, 1967 Princeton Tigers football team, and 1951 Columbia Lions football team). Willie has also performed valuable cleanup and expansion work on dozens more, including converting longstanding substubs into well-sourced articles like 1942 Brown Bears football team.

Since April 10, Murphanian has created roughly 212 new college football articles, including List of NC State Wolfpack head football coaches. I've particularly enjoyed their developing articles on little-remembered older programs such as 1941 Carnegie Tech Tartans football team, 1895 Rush-Lake Forest football team, 1903 Wabash football team, and World War II service teams like 1942 Fort Knox Armoraiders football team.

Thanks, Willie and Murph, and keep up the good work. Cbl62 (talk) 18:58, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

@Cbl62: We could always create one in the form of WikiProject award! To me, it seems like our WikiProject could decide on a general design for the barnstar itself and as long as we have community consensus, we'd be good to add it to the list and start awarding it. I quickly drew up a possible design, thoughts? PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 15:19, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

It turns out that there is already such an award (Template:College football barnstar), though I would propose replacing the image on the existing barnstar with the somewhat cleaner image above. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 15:33, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I like your redesign, but it might "pop" more if the star had a different color (maybe green for the color of the gridiron?) for more contrast. Anyone else have suggestions? Cbl62 (talk) 15:04, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Chris Gragg FAR

I have nominated Chris Gragg for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Tonystewart14 (talk) 03:38, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

College football season drafts

Here are a bunch of college football season drafts created by a prolific IP user:

• Draft:1968 Prairie View A&M Panthers football team
• Draft:1969 Northern Iowa Panthers football team (Division I FCS program, now well sourced, moved 9/9 by Cbl62)
• Draft:1970 Northern Iowa Panthers football team
• Draft:1976 Colorado State Rams football team (Division I FBS program, moved 8/2 by Cbl62)
• Draft:1977 Colorado State Rams football team (Division I FBS program, moved 8/2 by Cbl62)
• Draft:1978 Colorado State Rams football team (Division I FBS program, moved 8/2 by Cbl62)
• Draft:1980 Colorado State Rams football team (Division I FBS program, moved 8/2 by Cbl62)
• Draft:1981 Colorado State Rams football team (Division I FBS program, moved 8/2 by Cbl62)
• Draft:1989 Fordham Rams football team (Division I-AA team, additional sourcing and context added, moved 8/7, by Cbl62)
• Draft:1991 James Madison Dukes football team
• Draft:1994 Utah State Aggies football team (Division I FBS program, moved 8/2 by Cbl62)
• Draft:1996 Florida A&M Rattlers football team
• Draft:1996 Maine Black Bears football team
• Draft:1999 Dartmouth Big Green football team

Some of these are FCS team seasons so they may not be notable enough to stand on their own, but there are some FBS team seasons in there too. Eagles 24/7 (C) 19:06, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I moved 1994 Utah State (and the Colorado State seasons) to article space, as noted above. Cbl62 (talk) 20:48, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Sports radio networks - notability guidelines

(Putting here as the most active relevant project talk page.)

We have a series of maybe 30 articles on college sports radio networks, but I question the notability of some of them to have standalone articles.

I'm mulling a set of notability guidelines and have talked with Nathan Obral and we seem to agree that these articles should generally meet two of three criteria:

• History/established record
• More than 6–8 affiliates
• Radio network of a Power 5 team

However, I'd like some additional thoughts from topic editors, so I'm inviting editors from the radio, college football and college basketball projects to weigh in.

A typical example of one of these articles is Virginia Tech Sports Network. We're working to update the affiliate lists and also the names of the networks as the Learfield/IMG College merger was reflected nearly nowhere on the encyclopedia, but we also want to figure out what project standards would be useful. Raymie (t • c) 23:55, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

They need to meet WP:ORG.—Bagumba (talk) 02:46, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

• Bagumba is correct. And Virginia Tech Sports Network is completely unsourced. Is it presented as a good example or a bad example? Cbl62 (talk) 02:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Cbl62: As just a typical example, though at least the affiliate list has been updated. Citations seem to be in real short supply on many of these articles, unfortunately. Raymie (t • c) 05:34, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
• @Cbl62 and Raymie: A better example would be Ohio State Sports Network which has citations, a lede detailing the network operations, a map for affiliates via transmitter coordinates, and a short history stub. (Although it IS in need of expansion, radio broadcasts for Ohio State go back decades and there was no definitive flagship until the early 1970s, with multiple stations around Ohio originating their own broadcasts; WBNS (AM) has been the flagship since 1979.) I'm going to ping Levdr1lp and Vjmlhds on this; Lev pretty much set up that page back in 2014, and both might be able to help further define the notability aspect. Nathan Obral (talk) 15:23, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

• My decision to create the Ohio State & Michigan radio network aricles was largely based on WP:NRADIO, specifically the line: "Notability can be established by either a large audience, established broadcast history, or being the originator of some programming." That, and coverage from reliable sources independent of each subject. I lean towards inclusion here, so long as there's sources to verify the content. A complete lack of sources, such as at the Virginia Tech page, does not necessarily rule out notability, but it also doesn't establish it. Levdr1lp / talk 22:16, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

• Question Do professional sports radio networks have inherent notability or do they have to meet the same standard? Understanding that they have to meet WP:ORG, if some sort of cutoff would be implemented it should be FBS not just P5. But I don't know if they (all) would meet that bar.–UCO2009bluejay (talk) 14:49, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I most certainly believe that radio networks for MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, and NCAA Division 1 (FBS in particular, and especially Power 5) teams are notable, as those are the tippy-top levels of sports, that draw the most ratings, and generate the most money....these are all multi-million/billion dollar plus enterprises...that ain't chump change. Vjmlhds (talk) 17:04, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I doubt that more than a handful of these college athletic radio networks, even at the Power 5 level, pass WP:ORG. In particular, they are unlikely to receive independent and significant coverage beyond local media outlets, as required by the WP:AUD requirement embedded in WP:ORG. I am not a fan of WP:AUD, but it is the governing guideline at this time. Cbl62 (talk) 18:21, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Agree. Not all power 5 networks are notable. Some are, but they must meet ORG. Professional radio networks are generally notable. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 15:22, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

COVID deaths among football community

I'm interested in working on bios of American football players and coaches who have died due to COVID. List of deaths due to COVID-19 includes Tom Dempsey, Dick Lucas (American football), Roy Lester, and Orlando McDaniel. Anyone know of any others? Anyone want to collaborate on improving any of these? Cbl62 (talk) 23:51, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Marv Luster is another one, too. Ejgreen77 (talk) 23:45, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Tootie Robbins is another one, as well. Ejgreen77 (talk) 05:05, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

I've added a bit on Lucas, Luster and Robbins if anyone wants to work on these further. Luster's HOF career in the CFL definitely warrants further development. Cbl62 (talk) 17:55, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

2020 seasons

I think there should be a discussion on what to do about 2020 season articles before they are all redirected as some have started to be. There is still sufficient information in those articles, even if no games were played, that I believe should go somewhere.68.193.46.153 (talk) 14:42, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

• Depends on the team and conference. There's very little to say about the MAC teams, for example, that couldn't be summarized in an article about the 2020 conference itself. If the MAC plays a spring schedule in 2021 then that would be a different matter, but I don't think you could justify a standalone article that would amount to "X would have played these games, with this roster at the start of the season." Mackensen (talk) 15:37, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
• Perhaps a paragraph added to the main fb article for each team about the 2020 season would suffice.68.193.46.153 (talk) 16:26, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
• What I've been doing is redirecting pages of teams that have outright cancelled their season (2020 UConn Huskies football team to UConn Huskies football is the only one I've done so far) and leaving up pages of teams (with notes about cancellation and whatnot in the lead) until they decide whether to outright cancel or push their season to the spring. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 18:55, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

If we have been redirecting or deleting non-played seasons from 1906, during WWI or WWII then 2020 should not stay just because it is recent.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 03:32, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Barring a rationale on why the cancelled season page might have long-term notability, it's not worth keeping a page that is just a listing of a cancelled schedule and rosters which never played.—Bagumba (talk) 06:28, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

• We probably need to see how this plays out. If schools end up postponing their schedules to the spring, the existing articles should be moved with a new naming format. Possibilities include (1) "Spring 2021 Washington Huskies football team", (2) "2020–21 Washington Huskies football team", or (3) "2021 (spring) Washington Huskies football team". If games are played only in the spring, I'd favor the first option. If some games are played in 2020 and others in 2021, the second option makes more sense. Thoughts? Preferences? Cbl62 (talk) 11:20, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

If seasons end up being scrapped altogether, I would favor redirecting FBS season articles upstream to 2020 NCAA Division I FBS football season where the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic already has a detailed discussion. Cbl62 (talk) 11:31, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Assuming the season is cancelled, I would be in favor of redirecting the team/conference articles into the 2020 NCAA season article if: The seasons are not played in spring of 2021. The recruiting sections are shifted to the 2021 (assuming we even have it next fall) season. The individual seasons 2019, 2021 link to each other. e.g. 2014 UAB Blazers football team. The team navbox links are grayed out with no incoming link to 2020. If the season is played in the spring, we should see how the media determines it similar to the 2021 Olympics being referred to as the 2020 Olympics. But if a dab would be necessary I would say "2021 Oklahoma Sooners football team (spring), to keep it similar to bowl games e.g. "Orange Bowl (December/January)."UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:27, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

1934 college football season broke the wiki

See Talk:1934 college football season#Page too big. Please discuss there. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:21, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Module:College color

There is a discussion going on about Module:College color that this project may be interested in; please see Module talk:College color#Proposal:_Migrate_to_Wikidata and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Migrate_college_color_data_to_Wikidata. Thanks, Ejgreen77 (talk) 00:06, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

CfD: Category:Carolinas Conference football

Please see: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 August 27#Carolinas Conference football for the discussion. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 00:56, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Mount Ida coaches

The articles John Pappas (American football) and Mike Landers (American football) could benefit from input, research, and editing.--Paul McDonald (talk) 22:23, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

@Paulmcdonald: You recreated John Papas without any improvement on the article since the AfD resulted in consensus to delete the page, so I've tagged the page for speedy deletion under CSD G4. If you believe there is sufficient additional sources to warrant recreation of the article, you must go through deletion review or build upon the article in your userspace. Eagles 24/7 (C) 19:10, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

@Paulmcdonald: Additionally, when you move an article into mainspace from your userspace, you should avoid cut-and-paste moves so proper attribution can be easily found in the article's history. Eagles 24/7 (C) 19:12, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

I think you'll find the article has been modified. I've asked for help here to make sure that nothing was missed. Hence... this disussion.--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:18, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the article has an updated records table and exactly one additional reference. That is not enough to justify circumventing the AfD process (WP:GAMING) in order to save a low-quality navbox with three total links (Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 August 25#Template:Mount Ida Mustangs football coach navbox). Eagles 24/7 (C) 15:18, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Please see reasoning at Talk:John Papas#Contested deletion. I believe that would be the proper place for opinions on this matter to be expressed.--Paul McDonald (talk) 17:24, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

I have opened a deletion review at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2020_August_29#John_Papas, and frankly I am gravely concerned that you believe the talk page of the article is where a discussion should have taken place. Eagles 24/7 (C) 20:14, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

The page Talk:John Papas#Contested deletion is the location where the template header directed comments. It makes sense to me to have initial discussions about an article page on the article talk page. You can open a discussion wherever you like I suppose.--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:12, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

No American Athletic Conference or Atlantic Coast Conference divisions in 2020

@GolazoGolazo1234:

The 2020 American Athletic Conference football season (link) and 2020 Atlantic Coast Conference football season (link) will be played without East/West and Atlantic/Coastal divisions.

On Tulsa Golden Hurricane football, GolazoGolazo1234 accurately removed the "West" value from the "| ConfDivision = West" infobox. So the Tulsa article no longer displays a "Division" parameter or "West" value pairin the infobox.[20]

Do we like that solution for all of the 2020 American and ACC team articles? Other infobox options include:

1. (show no Division info at all -ala Tulsa edit, shown above)
2. Division West -This option is identical to prior 2019 display, with no callout of 2020 special casing
3. Division (none for 2020)
4. Division (suspended for 2020)
5. Division West (suspended for 2020)
6. Division West (none in 2020)
7. etc

Choosing not to be bold, as better to align on a consensus treatment. Generally, I think displaying the "Division" label paired with some string is preferable, and it should be temporarily populated with text which clarifies the current/2020 status. I like options 5 and 6. UW Dawgs (talk) 19:36, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

It should also be noted that the AAC change to have no divisions is permanent following the departure of UConn and is not related to COVID.Mjs32193 (talk) 19:39, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

If it's permanent, then option 1 appears to be accurate. Cbl62 (talk) 21:19, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree for the American, number 2 for ACC.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 23:37, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Naming of pre-1956 regional independent records templates

There's a discussion concerning the naming of the pre-1956 regional independent records templates at Template talk:1889 Far West college football independents records#Requested move 9 September 2020. This could use some input from more editors. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 22:34, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

10 AfDs pending

With 10 AfDs currently pending, it's a particularly busy time at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/American football. Have a look and weigh if you have a view on any of these. Cbl62 (talk) 05:40, 10 September 2020 (UTC)