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Ordinals

I believe both ordinal (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc) and cardinal (1, 2, 3, etc) numbers are preferred as numerals rather than spelled out (e. g. first-team All-American). However, it seems it has often been practice to spell it in some cases. Which is correct? Cake (talk) 08:05, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Per MOS:NUMERAL, it's not that simple; it's about consistency. You should never start a sentence with numerals. Generally, you have the option of spelling out one and two-digit numbers, but we usually don't use a numeral for a one-digit number in isolation. On the other hand, ages are typically written in numerals; so are statistics. Three-digit and larger numbers, as well as decimals, are always written in numerals. We have spelled out "first-team" and "second-team" honors for consistency, partially because we shouldn't start a line of text with a numeral, even in an infobox. Confused? You betcha. But stick to spelling out first-team and second-team honors; that's how we've consistently formatted infobox honors for both college and NFL players, and a lot of effort has been expended over the years to achieve that level of consistency. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 10:20, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
I somehow neglected to mention I just meant in the navbox. But ok, will keep spelling them out. Thanks for the tip. Cake (talk) 21:23, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

List of national championships by coach?

Do we have a list of national championship by head coach?--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:12, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

This article, College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS, lists all of the MNC coaches after 1900, and some before. I believe that many of the teams did not have paid coaches before 1900. Of course, the concept of a pre-1936 "championship" is really an anachronism, because their was no such thing as a college football "championship" before the advent of the AP Poll, and all of those pre-1936 "championships" were awarded retroactively -- sometimes years after the fact -- by one of the CFB ratings services. But it is, what it is, right? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:36, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Actually, it is not correct to say that all of the pre-1936 championships were awarded retroactively. For example, the Dickinson System began awarding national championships on a current basis starting in 1926. Cbl62 (talk) 01:37, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
Fair enough, Cbl, but the larger point stands. Dickinson awarded MNCs based on a mathematical/statistical formula for 10 years before the 1936 AP Poll; Dickinson also awarded retroactive championships for 1924 and 1925. Among others, Berry (1920–1989), Billingsley (1869–1969), Boand (1919–1929), CFRA (1918–1981), DeVold (1939–1940), Helms (1883–1940), Houlgate (1885–1926), NCF (1869–1979), Poling (1924–1934), Sagarin (1919–1977) and Williamson (1931) awarded retroactive championships (for the seasons shown) several years and even decades after the fact based on proprietary statistical analyses. Setting aside the idea of awarding a sports "championship" based on a statistical analysis/mathematical formula, exactly what statistics do you think were available for CFB teams in 1869 that could be analyzed in 1979? The fact that any CFB program/university would claim one of these retroactive championships is really quite bizarre. Texas A&M just recently discovered two "lost" national championships from 1919 and 1927, which were awarded decades after the fact by a couple of the CFB stats services. And Alabama added a couple more claims from the 1920s, among them retroactive MNCs from Billingsley and Helms. Sad to see historically great programs sink to such silliness. Some folks mocked the Bowl Alliance and BCS because they had the temerity to pick two top-rated teams to actually play for a championship, and as a result we now have the CFP. I give a tip of my hat to the great programs of the past, but claiming a newfound championship 85 or 90 years after the fact is a little wacky. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:19, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
Not to mention the "unclaimed national championships" as well. I don't see a day all that far off when we have a rouge Alabama fan editor that will try to say that Alabama won the 75 national championship, and edit all the pages associated with it, including Bear's when Oklahoma was the consensus pick.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 02:28, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
Apparently I am late to the party [1]UCO2009bluejay (talk) 02:37, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
At the time, Dickinson was considered reputable. With age, it has been the subject of much ridicule. Even before then, there were years where things fell into place and there was an obvious one or two champions, which is unsurprising given the BCS, etc, often banked on the same happening. With tradition to currently name a champion each year, there is an impetus for the historian to pick a champion in years in between. Perhaps the strongest example can involve Texas A&M. In 1917, Georgia Tech is national champ. In 1918, it's Pittsburgh or Michigan with nobody else even close, and Pitt beat Georgia Tech (Pitt was also undefeated in 1917 and declined to play Georgia Tech. However, and though Tech at home and Pitt on the road, they had a common opponent in Eastern school Penn. Pitt won 14 to 6. Tech ran all over Penn 41 to 0). For 1919, there are a handful of teams to make a case for. Of course, one could make a mythical trophy for '17 and 18 – but then it had to go to someone for '19. That said, the will to a total coverage with champions since 1869 with one game seasons and such like is a humorous part of the history, especially if one wishes to treat the subject quantitatively. It seems our expression of Spengler's Western man as Faust in this corner of history. Cake (talk) 03:09, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
I will add that Texas A&M's claim is helped along by the defeat of Centre, though years later, in the 1922 Dixie Classic. Centre and A&M were two established, undefeated programs in 1919, though usually outside the regions of many established powers for one to argue their strength of schedule. In hindsight the defeat of Centre was more a shock than Centre's defeat of Harvard. Cake (talk) 22:24, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
I'd like to interject here regarding 1918 and point out that many sources of the time named Navy as a close second to Pitt. Navy went 4-1 like Pitt, annihilated its four weaker opponents (average of 66-3) and only lost to one of the unbeaten so-called "military superteams" 7-6 in a game that was universally regarded as a fluke (Navy came within about a half-a-foot of a 13-0 shutout). If Navy wasn't the most vastly overlooked team in college football (a controversial remark, I know, but it really is true), it would probably be a slightly-lesser co-champion with Pitt. Which of course just goes to show, yet again, that mythical national championship picks are worth nil. - A Texas Historian (Impromptu collaboration?) 04:12, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I stand corrected (cannot forget Gloomy Gil). However I feel my post's point is not changed much, and would say it's hard for the south to get over Pitt over Tech 32 to 0. That seemed to pass the torch. 78 to 0 is Tech's average outside of the Pitt game. Cake (talk) 05:34, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Definitely. I don't disagree with your points at all. And just while I can, I'd like to point out that it was yet again Navy that had been beating many of the south's best teams since the late 1880s. Actually, the south's occasional successes against Navy would have helped out its standing if anyone in the east had actually considered Navy eastern, which no one really did. But I agree. Pitt's drubbing of Georgia Tech probably set the south back years in terms of getting respect (save Alabama, who has been vastly overrated by retroactive selectors, if they deserve to be called that). - A Texas Historian (Impromptu collaboration?) 05:51, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
I know Georgetown, which seemed to vary in whether it was considered southern, had a series with Navy. The only southern victory which comes to mind is 1893 Virginia and that was tit-for-tat. Maybe I am biased but I would not neglect respect for, say, 1925 Alabama, though I know Alabama is one to claim a 2 loss season. Cake (talk) 06:09, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

2016 CFB season articles (?)

Can someone refresh my memory regarding our policy for creating future CFB season articles? May I assume this 2016 article, 2016 USC Trojans football team, has been created too soon? If so, I plan to send it to AfD per WP:CRYSTAL, etc. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:40, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I've listed it for deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2016 USC Trojans football team. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 09:49, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Please weight in on this discussion please. Jrcla2 (talk) 03:41, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

A question about importance assessment for recognized exceptional regular season games

I'm aware that WikiProject College Football has a chart to help assess importance of various kinds of pages, and generally speaking the chart makes sense. I've noticed however, that MisterCake assessed the 1971 OU-Nebraska game (for many years referred to as The Game of the Century, and the winner considered by many sources the best team ever to play the game) as low, as the chart suggests. However, this game determined the national championship of the 1971 season, the loser ending up ranked second, the team that lost to both #1 and #2 ranked third in the AP poll. IMHO, games listed in the article Game of the Century (college football) might be moved up a notch to mid. I've taken the liberty of changing this single incidence. BusterD (talk) 00:18, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

  • I've recently done many importance assessments with many to go, and with many retreads to better fit the criteria or just plain misreading it. @Dirtlawyer1: suggested a talk in some weeks with, I hope, the intention to hash out the few problems such as these if I can hash out some of the larger problems. I have a handful or two of my own questions which I am keeping with me until then. Included with that consideration is the thought that further edits might change my mind. So, your question might get better consideration with the coming discussion rather than at the moment. However, since you brought it up, I will entertain the idea. Single game articles certainly get treated as "low." It seems one could consider it a sub article of the team-season (usually mid) which is a sub article of the team (usually high) which is a sub article of the national season (top). The exception is BCS bowl games (whether this means in the BCS era only or not I am not sure. Surely you don't want every Fiesta Bowl, but do want most every Rose Bowl.) and other bowls with a meeting of top ten teams (so I guess quite a few Cotton Bowls, for instance. Aside from say the contemporary football playoff championship game). No doubt this leaves questions. What of conference championship games? Are they not sub articles of the conference season (high) and therefore deserve a mid ranking? I am myself aware '71 Nebraska (1899 Sewanee says nanny boo-boo) is considered an all-time great team, perhaps the greatest, and '71 Oklahoma is not far behind, with that game determining the champion. It is hard to disagree with you. But, that said, other "game of the century" articles probably have similar stories, and there is a point to be made for the slippery slope. Say, if 71 Nebraska v. OU, why not 1905 Michigan v. Chicago, or 1921 Centre v. Harvard, or 1922 Princeton v. Chicago? And from there further perhaps, though I cannot say I'd mind if those were 'mid' and was as you say just following the chart as given. So I would on this issue, if it is an issue, mostly remain aloof and give credence to both sides and just hope to see that quality/importance table trend towards something better as many articles, as I found them, seemed to have their importance neglected. Most of all I think the chart needs more parenthetical examples. Cake (talk) 16:09, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, MisterCake. I started to post the above to your personal talk page, but it occurred to me before I clicked save this might be a wider issue. I started my aborted post with "Thanks for your assessment work", so I never meant to discredit your efforts. As I said, generally the chart makes excellent sense. (BTW, 1972 USC Trojans also have a pretty good claim to that title.) The three examples you gave are legendary contests, well-covered many years after the event, all meeting WP:EVENT, and deserving of their own articles. My point is that run of the mill games don't normally deserve their own articles, and those regular season contests that do would normally not rank higher than low in importance. But if the most important bowl games are deserving of mid importance ranking by default, it could reasonably be argued that the most important game of an individual season such as 1971 OU-UN would be equally important, being the decider of the national championship for that season. I realize this may introduce an element of subjectivity into such rankings, but that's why I introduced the criteria of inclusion in the GotC article, which covers regular season contests of similar significance. I'd be interested in what others thought, even if they disagree with my position for one reason or other. BusterD (talk) 21:12, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Oh I did not take it as somehow discrediting the work, just laying out where I am coming from. Or maybe would come from if it's discussed again later. My point was to say many could claim the title, so I could understand the reasoning of your opponents. "But if the most important bowl games are deserving of mid importance ranking by default, it could reasonably be argued that the most important game of an individual season such as 1971 OU-UN would be equally important, being the decider of the national championship for that season." I don't disagree. Were it up to me, one could have say 1922 Princeton v. Chicago as 'mid' (game of the year, unreservedly) with 1922 Michigan v. Vanderbilt and 1922 Alabama v. Penn as 'low' (big deals in the south, and nationally in that Michigan is national champs without that game). As far as all-time greats, for the era I cover most will take the 1917 Georgia Tech Golden Tornado/Yellow Jackets. Had Pitt played them before the war dismantled the team they would probably get pretty high rank even today. I usually see it as 1995 Nebraska vs. 1971 Nebraska, to your point. Cake (talk) 15:55, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Kicks aided by blizzard

Pardon me if this is only my own interest, but I wonder if it would be useful to have all the games with crazy wind conditions to make for long kicks to have a better record of the longest kicks without such aid. I know there is A. H. Douglas's kick, and Pat O'Dea's longest. Are there other such instances? Cake (talk) 16:04, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Seems like kind of an amorphous subject for a discrete article, e.g. List of windy college football games? Jweiss11 (talk) 02:52, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Like any list, it would also need to meet WP:LISTN.—Bagumba (talk) 02:59, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

List of Arizona Wildcats football College Football Playoff rankings and Poll history

FYI this article was recently created. Seems like WP:NOTSTATS and WP:FANCRUFT might apply here. Jrcla2 (talk) 19:29, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Seems like it is mostly covered already in List of Arizona Wildcats football seasons. CFP ranking, which is not a final ranking, is not needed IMO.—Bagumba (talk) 20:54, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
This is pretty much a copy/paste of List of LSU Tigers football College Football Playoff rankings and Poll history. We should get rid of both of these articles. The season lists can cover rankings. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Jweiss is right. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:11, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
I have AfD'd this article. Please comment here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 23:08, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

† on coaching pages

According to the table the † symbol †Indicates Bowl Coalition, Bowl Alliance, Bowl Championship Series (BCS) bowl, or College Football Playoff (CFP) game. The † was on coaches pages who played in New Years six bowls until user:Akatheflake removed that because they were "New Year's Six game, not one of the three CFP games". The non Bowl Coalition, Bowl Alliance, and BCS games that were not part of the National Championship are marked on coaches pages with † so why not New Years Six games? Should we change the table to say New Years Six instead of College Football Playoff? Bsuorangecrush (talk) 23:50, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

That is the pickle because Baylor didn't play in a CFP game but it was under the CFP umbrella. However,"New Years Six" isn't the official title of the games, therefore I think it should have the CFP indicator even though it isn't in the "playoffs".–UCO2009bluejay (talk) 00:06, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
That's what I thought. As far as I'm concerned the New Year's Six bowls have as much importance as the Coalition, Alliance, and BCS games so they should be marked with the †. I would just like to come to a consensus before re-adding it to the coaches pages where it got removed. Bsuorangecrush (talk) 00:21, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Just to clarify for everyone, what we're talking about here is the footer notation in Template:CFB Yearly Record End/footnotes, as primarily instantiated on head coaching record tables on bio articles. Bsuorangecrush, I agree, if we are are marking all Bowl Coalition, Bowl Alliance, and BCS games that were not national title games, which we are, then we should also be marking the three College Football Playoff games that are not actually part of the championship tournament. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:45, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
I understand what everyone is saying, but to me, College Football Playoff game implies that the two teams in that game made the designated four-team playoff and have a chance at the title. The BCS games that were not for the championship were still marketed as and universally considered BCS games because the BCS computers chose those teams and everyone referred to them as BCS games. While the playoff committee determines the "New Year's Six" participants, those games were never referred to by ESPN or any other outlet I saw as "Playoff Games".Akatheflake (talk) 13:12, 27 May 2015 (UTC)Akatheflake
I agree with that. That is why I asked if it would be better if we changed it from saying College Football Playoff (CFP) to saying New Year's Six. Agreed they do not consider other non semifinal games as part of the playoff, the New Year's Six is something they talk about as if it were the BCS. I would say those games need to be marked the way it's been done in the past.Bsuorangecrush (talk) 17:06, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

What if we did this

|- | colspan="9" | †Indicates Bowl Coalition, Bowl Alliance, BCS, or CFP/New Years' Six bowl.
#Rankings from final Coaches Poll.

No reason to have it say Bowl Championship Series and BCS. No reason for it to say College Football Playoff and CFP. If anyone needs to know what the abbreviations mean then they can click the link. And New Years Six does not have its own page so linking it to the CFP is the best option. Anyone have a problem with changing the template to this?Bsuorangecrush (talk) 17:14, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

This seems reasonable to me. It should resolve the ambiguity. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:25, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
I agree, this would be great.Akatheflake (talk) 15:37, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Russ Peterson (American football player) listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Russ Peterson (American football player) to be moved to Russ Peterson (offensive lineman). This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 22:34, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Jake Ryan (American football) listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Jake Ryan (American football) to be moved to Jake Ryan. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 23:17, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Justin Brown (wide receiver) listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Justin Brown (wide receiver) to be moved to Justin Brown. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 23:19, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

All-conference teams

We now have articles on every year's All-Big Ten Conference football team. See Template:All-Big Ten Conference football teams. If anyone wants to collaborate on similar articles for the Pac-12, let me know. Cbl62 (talk) 22:06, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

UAB Reinstated?

I think we need some eyes on UAB articles. Bleacher Report reports UAB football to be reinstated [2].UCO2009bluejay (talk) 00:08, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

We Are Marshall teams

Would someone be willing to collaborate to make pages for the 1971 Marshall Thundering Herd football team. I would just create it outright, but given the sentimental importance of this team I would be remiss not to ask other editors their opinions/help/collaboration on this project.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 05:00, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I'd be willing to help, though I have to confess that I haven't had much on-wiki time recently. - A Texas Historian (Impromptu collaboration?) 05:41, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
Let me know if you need any help, Bluejay. Happy to pitch in with some newspaper sourcing, etc., once you get a draft in progress with the basics in place. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:42, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
I'll pitch in. I'd write the backbone of the article but I'm not positive when I'll have time. Has anyone written the schedule and all that yet? Chuy1530 (talk) 16:45, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
I have here[3] feel free to adjust it as you see fit.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 20:21, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
I think it's more than detailed enough to go live right now. There's more that could be added for sure but I can't find the time to do it and publishing might get more eyes on the article. Chuy1530 (talk) 15:18, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
I submitted the article for review. I decided to do this rather than move it directly into article space because I didn't want to take credit for your contributions.UCO2009bluejay | Y'all want to talk? 22:12, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Appreciated. I've have been fine with a cut/paste move but I know they're frowned upon when multiple people have worked on an article. Hopefully it doesn't sit around in review too long; as far as season articles go it's pretty solid and has room to improve once we get more eyes on it.Chuy1530 (talk) 19:45, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I've moved the article to the article space with a simple move. The edit history is there. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:12, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Persondata has been officially deprecated

Persondata has been deprecated and the template and input data are subject to removal from all bio articles in the near future. For those editors who entered accurate data into the persondata templates of CFB players and other bio subjects, you are advised to manually transfer that data to Wikidata before the impending mass deletion occurs. Here are two examples of Wikidata for former college football players: Dan Marino] and Tim Tebow. If you have any more questions about the persondata removal, Wikidata, etc., please ping me. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 12:29, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

There is an ongoing RfC whether to permit non-Wikipedia links in Wikipedia navboxes @ Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and navigation templates#RFC: Should Sister Project links be included in Navboxes?. Given this WikiProject's ongoing interest in navboxes, some of you may be interested in commenting. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:01, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Importance assessments of team and team season articles

The subject of importance assessments for this project was raised a couple of posts above here. I want to bring up another question about the subject. The existing rubric for importance assessments can be found here: Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Assessment#Importance scale. The current version is largely the work of User:Cmadler from early 2012. User:MisterCake seems to be on a furious kick of implementing importance ratings on the talk pages of article—thanks for your work there, Cake. One thing about the existing assessment scheme that strikes me as odd is that national championship seasons (e.g. 1997 Michigan Wolverines football team) end up being rated as higher importance (Top) than the main article for the respective program (e.g. Michigan Wolverines football), which is rated as only High. I understand that national championship seasons should be considered more important than other seasons, but are those articles really higher priority than the main program articles? Something seems awry here. Thoughts? Jweiss11 (talk) 03:02, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

One solution might be to handle it like the given criteria for the stadia - top if the program has multiple national titles. Cake (talk) 03:25, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
That doesn't solve the problem. How about a program that has only one national title, like Syracuse? Should 1959 Syracuse Orangemen football team be of greater importance than Syracuse Orange football? Or how about program like Purdue with no national titles? Are these national championship season articles really of greater importance than Purdue Boilermakers football? Jweiss11 (talk) 21:38, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
And let's be clear: whatever higher importance rating we may assign to a national championship season article, the championship needs to be a consensus championship, which means AP/Coaches champions, Bowl Coalition/Bowl Alliance/BCS champions, or College Football Playoff champions. We should not be rating season articles as "high" or "top" importance when the championship was that of a single selector retroactively awarding MNCs years after the fact. Let's try to keep it real, guys. The WP:CFB importance ratings should mean something: we should not have 250 "top" importance season articles when we're done with this exercise. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:08, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
Dirtlawyer, College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS suggests that Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) and National Football Foundation (NFF) titles are on the same footing as the aforementioned per the he NCAA's designation as "Consensus National Champions". The national championship teams in question here, "consensus" without an #1 ranking either major poll, are as follows:
And what about before 1936? 1901 Michigan Wolverines football team isn't as important other national championship seasons? Jweiss11 (talk) 22:28, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
According to our Wikipedia article, "The 1901 college football season had no clear-cut champion, with the Official NCAA Division I Football Records Book listing Michigan, Yale, and Harvard as having been selected national champions. Harvard beat Yale 22–0 the last game of the year."
No, with two possible exception, the listed teams are not as important as the consensus national champions that were recognized in those same years. Not at all. Significant "minority" championships, such as those listed above, should be rated one importance level below what the consensus national champions are rated in each of those years:
So, no, JW, '58 Iowa, '60 Ole Miss, '64 Notre Dame, and '70 Ohio State should not be rated at the same importance level as consensus champions '58 LSU and '61 Alabama, or even split-poll champion '70 Nebraska. The '60 Ohio State team has a case, '64 Arkansas team has a better case, especially given '64 Bama's bowl loss, and mutual opponent games against '64 Texas. But you've also selected close calls; most are not. The '58 Hawkeyes vs. '58 LSU Tigers, though? Seriously, not even close.
I don't care much about importance ratings, but it would be arbitrary and inappropriate for one or more editors to impose their subjective view that pre-1936 championships are less important than modern championships. Plain and simple. Cbl62 (talk) 22:45, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
What pre-1936 championships would those be, Cbl? Do you mean the MNCs that were awarded by statisticians, years after the seasons were actually played? LOL@Pre-1936 MNCs. For the sake of historical faireness, let's treat the pre-1936 teams that received a majority of the statisticians' championships as consensus champions; I believe this is exactly what College Football Data Warehouse does. However, there should not be three or four team articles all rated "top" or "high" for the same season. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:50, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

We can holler into the wee hours about who had the better team in 1958 or 1970 or whatever, but the point is we need some clear-cut, consistent, and objective way to treat national championships, even if "objective" really means deferring to the subjectivity of another body, like the NCAA, or College Football Data Warehouse, or whomever. College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS is the most comprehensive treatment of national titles that we have at our disposal, and it clearly implies, on the authority of the NCAA, that Iowa's '58 title is on the same footing at LSU's '58 title, no matter how stupid that might actually be. Whatever we ultimately determine to be a legit national title worthy of "Top" importance should probably have a one-to-one relationship with those legit national titles worthy of a navbox (see: Category:NCAA Division I FBS champions navigational boxes), and worthy of being noted in the infoboxes of season articles (e.g. 1958 college football season), and worthy of citation in bio infoboxes and head coaching record tables (e.g. Forest Evashevski). Jweiss11 (talk) 01:55, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

I think one could argue Syracuse's national championship season deserves more focus than Syracuse football; that 1984 BYU is bigger than BYU or Purdue. I must side with cbl on the national championships. The idea that pre 1936 championships were only claimed retroactively is false. Find anyone to dispute Yale in 1909 or Georgia Tech in 1917. I should also note, probably the greatest Bama team aside from 61 is '34 (Don Hutson and Bear Bryant at ends), and that title is disputed with Minnesota. Cake (talk) 04:02, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Cake, by what rationale can one argue that Syracuse's 1959 title season deserves more focus than the whole of Syracuse football, 1889 to present? Jweiss11 (talk) 04:11, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
  • The same reasoning which would say it for BYU - the prominence of national championship seasons. The same rationale for having Harvard Stadium and 1890 Harvard above Harvard football, as the table necessitates. Syracuse deserves the focus of the 1959 season, but its program does not deserve the focus over many other teams. I think it's true that some team articles (like Harvard's, probably, given the historical significance) should get the bump, but not all. Cake (talk) 04:16, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
  • I've been largely absent from Wikipedia for a little while now, but I happened to notice this discussion and figured I'd jump in. My overriding motivation in creating that importance schema was simply that this was and is a large project, and I felt that it was -- ahem -- important...for us to assess importance. The perfect is sometimes the enemy of the good, and I thought (and still think) that it is more important to have and use a good schema than to strive for an ideal schema and risk ending up with nothing, or with an even worse mess. (Prior to this, it had been suggested that creators of or major contributors to articles could not assess them, and that the Big 8 Conference should be low-importance because it was defunct.) This Wikiproject includes nearly 50,000 pages, and there must be a way to signal to an uninformed editor or a bot that one article is more important than another. Keep in mind that in debating the relative importance of national championship team season articles vs team articles, we're arguing about where within the top 4.5% of articles these should rank.
With all that said, perhaps the solution is to say that teams with multiple national championships are by default one level higher than given (so an FBS team with multiple national championships would default to top-importance). And yes, I do think that Colorado's 1990 season, for example, is a more important topic to cover than Colorado football in general. I do think it's also reasonable for post-1949 championships to limit this to "consensus" national champions, as noted by Jweiss11.
Finally, keep in mind that these are the default, or "starting" importance levels, but right there directly beneath the importance assessment table, it clearly states that with consensus (on an article-by-article basis) any article can be adjusted up or down one level or importance. cmadler (talk) 03:02, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

History of linebacker position

It seems quite a few editors are involved with Michigan Wolverines football. Could anyone help to connect the dots outlined in the history section of the Linebacker article. Much of the later body of the article does not have inline citations as well. Any help is appreciated. Cake (talk) 03:16, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

  • Many claims to be the "first" in football to do this or that tend to be apocryphal. See, e.g. Forward pass#First legal pass. This is often due to the fact that many supposed "inventions" were actually the product of gradual evolution that can be partially credited to multiple persons with a definitive answer being elusive at best. That said, the historic claim of Germany Schulz as the first person to play the linebacker position, during a game in 1904, seems pretty well supported. There are many sources for this, including:
(1) The National Football Foundation, a neutral, reputable, and probably eminent source, recognizes Schulz as the first linebacker. His official biography at the College Football Hall of Fame states: "Before Schulz, centers always played in the line on defense. He dropped back, became a roving center and football's first linebacker." For his contributions to the game, Schulz was one of the inaugural inductees into the CFHOF in 1951. See here.
(2) In 1954, sports columnist Dave Lewis explored the history of the linebacker position, and concluded that Schulz was the "first of the breed". Lewis wrote: "Schulz revolutionized defensive line play being the first to back up the line". Dave Lewis, "Once Over Lightly," The Long Beach Independent, July 29, 1954.
(3) Schulz recalled that the first time he stepped back from the line on defense, Coach Yost was horrified. Yost said, "Dutchman, what are you trying to do?" "Stop 'em", replied Schulz. "But you're supposed to play in the line", Yost insisted. "They'll run over us." "Listen Yost", Schulz claims to have said, "My way is best. If any of 'em gets by me, I'll move back into the line and stay there". Yost eventually saw the wisdom in Schulz's technique, and soon nearly all centers were backing up the line on defense. Malcolm Bingay, "A Little About This and That: How Schulz Entered Michigan Still A Mystery," The Morning Herald, May 1, 1951; ; "Frankly Speaking: Schulz' Great Grid Exploits Reviewed," The Long Beach Press-Telegram, April 17, 1951.
(4) As for the 1904 date, see "First linebacker found," AP story, October 1974, found here.
(5) Article posing the question, "Who was the first recognized linebacker?" with answer being Schulz, found here. Cbl62 (talk) 05:22, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
  • No doubt the (at worst) legend of Schulz deserves its place in the article; hence, for example, why I did not delete his picture on the article. Thank you for the extra sources. So is it 1904 or 1905? Is there a specific game which gets credit? I also wonder why the center. Cake (talk) 06:44, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
  • The source I found says 1904 but doesn't specify a particular game. I assume the center was the natural spot to back off the line as he was located in the middle of the line and could respond to running plays on either side. Cbl62 (talk) 17:04, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

TfD: SEC law schools navbox nominated for deletion

WP:CFB members, here is a navbox within the scope of our project that I have nominated for deletion: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 June 12#Template:Southeastern Conference Law Schools. Given project members' past interest in related navbox subjects, I thought you would want to know, and we invite your participation in the TfD discussion. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:54, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Looks like Template:UAA Business Schools should be TfD'd by the same rationale. Jweiss11 (talk) 11:23, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
Per your suggestion, I have added the UAA Business Schools navbox to the TfD discussion. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 11:52, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

John David Crow died last night

The 1957 winner of the Heisman Trophy, John David Crow, died last night in College Station, Texas. Crow played for Bear Bryant at Texas A&M, and later returned to A&M as its athletic director. He was A&M first and only Heisman winner until Johnny Manziel won 55 years later. If anyone has time to clean up the article today, now would be a good time. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:24, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Dirtlawyer1, thanks for the heads up here. I had done editing on this article in February as I was making a (still unfinished) run though the Heisman Trophy winners to do some formatting and clean-up work. I just expanded the infobox to include Crow's coaching and administrative tenures. I'm not sure if I've formatting things the way they are typically done in Template:Infobox NFL player. Seems there are some less than desirable standard practices with that infobox, e.g. linking of start and end years of tenure to NFL season articles and two sets of parentheticals for coaching tenures to denote year range and position. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:03, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposed new WikiProject College Sports (USA)

The creation of a new WikiProject has been proposed: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Collegiate sports (USA). The proposed purpose of this new WikiProject is

to bring a level of standardization of format to Wikipedia articles concerning college sports in the USA. This would include any articles about specific college sports . . .; those sports' seasons . . . and their championships. . . It would include articles about the several collegiate sports governing associations (National Collegiate Athletic Association, National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, National Christian College Athletic Association, United States Collegiate Athletic Association, National Junior College Athletic Association) and the various college conferences/leagues (i.e. Big Ten Conference, Ivy League, etc.). It would also include the articles concerning the sports programs of the member institutions of the associations . . . any specific single-sport article for said institution (such as SIU Edwardsville Cougars baseball or SIU Edwardsville Cougars softball), and any single-season article for said sports (such as 2014 SIU Edwardsville Cougars softball team). There is currently no standard format for creating and/or maintaining these pages. The major areas of concern have been and continue to be articles describing collegiate conferences and member institutions' athletic programs. Two articles describing two very similar schools or leagues can be a different as night and day, and when efforts have been made to standardize, those changes have often been met with resistance.

I think this needs to be very carefully examined. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:16, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

  • "Two articles describing two very similar schools or leagues can be a different as night and day" Some actual examples would be nice. Cake (talk) 01:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Help needed: All-SEC and All-Pac-12 teams

Cake and I have started templates for the All-SEC and All-Pac-12 teams here: Template:All-SEC football teams and Template:All-Pacific-12 Conference football teams. Help is needed and appreciated to fill out the remaining years. Cbl62 (talk) 15:42, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Cake and Cbl62, thanks for your work here. Now might be a good time to talk about how far we want to take this effort of stand-alone lists for all-conference teams. I presume we probably also want to this for the ACC and the Big 12 and its predecessors, the Big 8 and the Southwest Conference. Is that it? What about the other FBS conferences outside of the big five, like the MAC, Sun Belt, WAC, Mountain West, and Big East? FCS conferences? I'm thinking DII, DIII, and NAIA definitely no. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:17, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Jweiss that this is a discussion worth having. The SEC, Big 10, Pac 12, ACC, Big 12/Big 8/Southwest Conference seem like no-brainers. Conferences like the Big East Conference and the Missouri Valley Conference are oddballs in that there are periods when they were top level conferences, but not so much in their modern iterations. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I think it depends on the level of press coverage received by those all-conference teams.Cbl62 (talk) 16:33, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion: if you want to get a working framework, I would suggest that you do table for each year's all-conference honors, with columns for first team, second team, third team, honorable mention, as applicable, specific to each conference. Ten of those tables could be aggregated by decade for each conference (e.g., All-SEC football teams, 1990–99). If and when someone later has the time to split them into individual years, with substantial text and in-line references, etc., that could be done in the future. I am not excited about the prospect of immediately creating 82 stub articles for SEC honors, though. I also think you are going to have a difficult time finding significant coverage of all-conference honors in multiple, independent, reliable sources for the mid-majors. Reactions? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:54, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

At an earlier discussion, I expressed interested in creating a single list list for all historic All-Pac-12 selections. It may need to be spun out to a list with multiple decades or even a single decade if it got unwieldy. This does not preclude all-conference articles for a single season, if there is consensus. However, for a conference like the Pac-12, which only has one poll (unlike the Big 10), I think it may be sufficient to build the list in the existing season articles e.g. 2014 Pacific-12 Conference football season#All Conference teams, or is there enough material to warrant a spinout to 2014 All-Pacific-12 Conference football team?—Bagumba (talk) 19:40, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
I think a single list ends up being pretty unwieldy. Unlike basketball, where there are only 5 first-team players, there are at least 24 first-team football players each year just for the AP selections. If you factor in second-team selections, there are 48 selections per year just for the AP. And, based on what I've seen so far, there were AP and UPI teams for Pacific Coat team in some years. That means a single list would get quite unwieldy. I've already done the Pac-8/Pac-10 lists for 1962 to 1978 and welcome any help you may want to offer, Bagumba. Cbl62 (talk) 21:13, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
To avoid duplication of effort, I have for now simply linked the all-conference template (Template:All-Pacific-12 Conference football teams) to the relevant sections of the existing Pac-12 conference articles. Cbl62 (talk) 21:15, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
"any help you may want to offer": Most of my recent efforts for monotonous list expansion has been at Parade All-America Boys Basketball Team. I'll put the Pac-12 lists as a secondary option, but my overall activity on WP will be mostly sporadic for the coming weeks. Best of luck.—Bagumba (talk) 21:24, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
Bagumba -- I didn't mean my comment to be snide in the least. Your hard work on college sports articles is up there with the top contributors. I meant that as a sincere invitation and apologize if it came across any other way. Cbl62 (talk) 22:14, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
@Cbl62: I didn't take it as snide, and apologize if my response in any way made it seem that way. Chalk it up to the limitations of written communication. No harm, no foul. Cheers.—Bagumba (talk) 00:22, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
@ Bagumba: The same reason why texting can lead to misunderstandings and why I'm not a fan of that mode of communication. In any event, the more I dig, the more it appears that the Pac-12 isn't so different than the Big 10 in the range of all-conference selectors. See, e.g, 1957 All-Pacific Coast Conference football team (separate teams selected by AP, UP and coaches). Cbl62 (talk) 01:10, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Another question: should we have main articles for each these all-conference teams, analogous to College Football All-America Team?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jweiss11 (talk • contribs) 21:24, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

"I presume we probably also want to this for the ACC and the Big 12 and its predecessors, the Big 8 and the Southwest Conference. Is that it?" Probably, yes. It is certainly worth discussing, for I find the Big East a curiosity. But surely the point of these are to find the best players of a region. East (Northeast; New England. Represented by All-America team, though there were All-Eastern teams), West (Great Lakes; Represented by All-Big Ten), South (Southeast; Deep South & South Atlantic; Represented by All-SEC and All-ACC respectively), Southwest (Represented by All-Southwest), and Pacific Coast (Represented by All-Pac) is a pretty typical way of splitting up football regions historically. The southwest did join up with the Missouri Valley in forming the Big 8/Big 12, and so maybe All-MVIAA or whatever could be justified if it is really an issue. I think the Missouri Valley in this sense might be entirely sustained by Nebraska's football program. The conferences that are haphazard and redundant regionally (like the WAC or Conference USA or whatever), or of the region from Utah to Idaho (like the Mountain West), should be left out. Unless one finds a rich, buried history of All-Mountain teams. The above should provide one with some rough guidelines. Once I finish what I can do with the All-SEC teams and clean up a few of my own articles, aside from non-wiki matters, I will see what I can do to help the All-Pac teams. Maybe find a UP selection when all we have is an AP kind of thing, for that's certainly the kind of struggle with the All-SECs. Cake (talk) 23:56, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
Cake, the more amorphous regionalism you're talking about surely applies to the early days of college football, but when we get to the present day or the last few decades, what's notable is cut along discrete conference lines. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:49, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
No doubt one appeals to a certain history with the regionalism - but such is that from which the conferences and all-regions teams stem. It seems a historical question by necessity. I am not just commenting on coverage of the sport a century ago, but which 'All-X' teams one expects to be notable with some notable, neglected players. Also the major conferences which have usurped the regions are still regional and largely the same even if nothing really stops e. g. Stanford joining the ACC or whatever. Don't really get the point of including e. g. All-WAC teams because Mizzou in the SEC shows regions are meaningless today, any more than still listing the best players of Tulane, Georgia Tech, and Sewanee on All-SEC lists after they have left the SEC since they are still of the region. The fact is conferences are to formalize a region and the major teams there of; and so it seems both the regionalism and the conference membership have to be taken into account, especially when we are speaking of a historical list in the first place and which conferences to exclude. Cake (talk) 12:57, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
A bigger question might be if we include say the ACC, do we then include–as you would with the Big Ten or SEC or Pac-10/12, All-South Atlantic Teams, even when All-Southern teams held sway? Cake (talk) 19:50, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't really care whether we have separate articles or not, per se, as long as all FBS conferences get treated equally, plus historical equivalent FBS conferences (WAC, Big East, etc.). Ejgreen77 (talk) 01:32, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

In the end, it's all governed by WP:GNG. All conferences are not necessarily equal when it comes to the coverage they receive, and so it isn't realistic to say that what's sauce for one is necessarily sauce for another. If All-WAC teams have received the type of coverage that is needed to satisfy WP:GNG, then lists make sense. If the coverage is lacking, then they would be subject to challenge. Cbl62 (talk) 05:05, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
"All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others," eh? Ejgreen77 (talk) 10:46, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
EJ, it's not a question of fairness in deciding what article topics we include, it's a question of significant coverage per WP:GNG. If Wikipedia were about "fairness" in deciding what to include, every college football player would have an article; that's not the way Wikipedia works, nor, frankly, is that the way the media covers sports, athletes and teams in the real world. As I am sure you've heard before, Wikipedia does not exist to right great wrongs. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 12:38, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
The All-PAC teams have been completed for the years 1916 to 1978 (Template:All-Pacific-12 Conference football teams), but I'm presently a bit burned out by the effort. Help would be appreciated from anyone willing to work on the years after 1978. Cbl62 (talk) 23:43, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project

A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These likely copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest.--Lucas559 (talk) 22:29, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Conference membership timeline for school articles

So.... I was bored at 2am and after reading the TCU Horned Frogs article, specifically their conference membership section I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a visual representation since they've changed conferences so many times in the last 20 years. Feel free to take a gander, TCU Horned Frogs#History. Any feedback is appreciated. If anyone else knows of articles that could use something like that please ping me here or on my talk page and I'll try to work on it, if not then that works too I spose. Cheers, —  dainomite   07:11, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

If there is a section on changing conference membership, I don't have a problem with this. However, what about teams that play in different conferences such as Notre Dame football Boise State Wrestling etc.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 21:45, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
I imagine it would be done as per normal with a note at the bottom that X sport isn't in the conference. For instance if one was added to Notre Dame Fighting Irish it would show the Big East and then the ACC because that's the athletic conferences that Notre Dame has belonged to with a note in the prose that the football program doesn't participate in the conference and instead is independent. —  dainomite   03:00, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Ware, end, VPI, c. 1901

If anyone can find me the first name of the end on Virginia Tech (VPI) last name 'Ware' at the turn of the century, they deserve three internet-brownies. Cake (talk) 17:39, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

@MisterCake: It requires a subscription, but this Newspapers.com article states the name J. E. "Joe" Ware. Jrcla2 (talk) 03:45, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Arkansas–Little Rock Trojans → Little Rock Trojans article renaming discussion

There is a discussion at Talk:Arkansas–Little Rock Trojans in which you may be interested, on renaming the school's athletic articles per the school's recent attempt to rebrand the teams. UW Dawgs (talk) 01:39, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Navy Midshipmen football results Should this article be a. Standardized and b. Broken up by individual team or decade?UCO2009bluejay (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Agreed that showing all years on one article is too much. Other options include:

See Category:College football seasons by team for more examples. WP:RECENCY aside, newer seasons tend to have stand-alone articles, while prior years are often bundled to decades or coaches. UW Dawgs (talk) 21:31, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I think that a by decade article would be the most suitable (without consolidating existing articles into it), for the possibility of expansion to single years like the Bama articles. BTW Ala football 1900-09 shouldn't that be AfD because each season has its own page?UCO2009bluejay (talk) 22:01, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
I think they should at least be linked to the individual team year pages on the navbox to prevent other articles from being created. I'll try to do that over the weekend and the discussion can further continue about further splits.....Are there any other teams like this?....Pvmoutside (talk) 22:53, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
Note, there is slightly more season detail in the season article (1900 Alabama Crimson White football team) than the decade article (Alabama Crimson Tide football, 1900–09). So the two articles have overlap, while not being redundant. Much more common is creating all ~100 season articles as redirects to the appropriate decade or coach articles with an anchor link. That looks like this. This solution also allows other articles to immediately point to the redirect 19xx articles, where any 19xx article might ultimately become a stand-alone article instead of a redirect, such as a particular championship year which may be distinctly notable. UW Dawgs (talk) 22:57, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
I tried Navy 2002 in the current format and the redirect to the year wouldn't work because of the format. If everyone is in agreement, I can split the article into decades so it will allow redirects to the given years at the navbox......Pvmoutside (talk) 23:09, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
See WP:ANCHOR on formating. The redirecting 2002 article will have a link, something like "#REDIRECT Navy Midshipmen football results#2002" and the linked article will have a section header, something like "==2002==". #XXXX directly relates to "==XXXX==". IMO, the best way to understand this is opening a working redirect page and linked article page, to understand how the two interact. UW Dawgs (talk) 04:08, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
I think the best solution here would be to delete this article and create individual season articles. I've never been a fan of the decade articles. The decade grouping is arbitrary with respect to the subject. Articles like Alabama Crimson Tide football, 1900–09 are not good models for other reasons as well. That's essentially a legacy article from 2010 and has more or less been deprecated by the individual season articles that were created more recently. That decade article lacks standard formatting for the schedule tables and doesn't link through to the individual season articles. A much better model for an intermediate level of detail between the overall program article and individual season articles is what @Cbl62: has done with History of Michigan Wolverines football in the Yost era and similar articles for Michigan. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:41, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: JW, I hope you have some extra editing time on your hands for the next several months, because there are over 100 no-text sub-stub articles that require your immediate attention. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:47, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
DL, my attention? Jweiss11 (talk) 02:49, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
@Pvmoutside: Over the past day, the article under discussion has been split into single-season articles that consist of literally nothing more than a chart showing the schedule, with no narrative text whatsoever. See, e.g., 1951, 1961, 1971, and 1981 Navy Midshipmen football teams. If yearly article are being created, there should be at least some introductory narrative text. Compare 1991 Navy Midshipmen football team which has at least an infobox, a source, and a bare minimum of text. Cbl62 (talk) 02:38, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
I copied the Navy Midshipmen football results article and split each season into the appropriate year according to the navbox, so now each year has the data from the results article. I've managed to standardize 2002 and plan to do each year as time allows over the next couple of months or so......Feel free if anyone wants to chip in. On another note, an editor has nominated 1887 Navy Midshipmen football team for deletion. Feel free to comment. I'll now nominate Navy Midshipmen football results for deletion as it was suggested to do so because of it's unwieldy size and that it is dislike any other results article on the wiki.....Pvmoutside (talk) 14:17, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Gentlemen, I'm sorry that I have not commented on this topic sooner. Articles that have no prose/text are subject to being deleted at AfD. It was a mistake to create single-season articles with no text, and it would be an even bigger mistake for WP:CFB to initiate AFD fights with the third-party editors to keep single-season articles. PVM has two choices: (1) quickly create some prose for each of these single-season articles -- and it should be more substantive than the example of a single introductory sentence linked by Cbl above; or (2) combine them into decades or other logical combinations. While Jweiss11 states the ideal of having a stand-alone single-season article for every season of every Division I FBS football team, we have neither the editor manpower nor the reliable references to build out every season of every Division I team in the same manner as Cbl, Jweiss and others have done for the Michigan Wolverine football seasons -- which has required the concerted efforts of several editors over several years. My advice: if you don't have the time and multiple, independent, reliable references to create proper single-season articles with enough text to put the season records table, etc., into proper context, don't create/split them. Creating no-text articles does nothing but put the WikiProject in the position of having to defend no-substance articles that should not be defended from AfD deletion nominations. Long-time editors know this already, and we should not be trying to fudge the universal notability and suitability standards for stand-alone articles. Bottom line: no prose, no article. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:31, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Dirtlawyer that we absolutely should not have articles with no prose whatsoever. The creation of multiple, single-season articles for the Navy football team, all done yesterday, was a mistake IMO. These articles should have been created with a bit more care. One such article has already been AfD'd at: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1887 Navy Midshipmen football team. That being said, single-season articles on the major college football programs have become a fairly standard practice for the major college football programs. Navy remains a top-level program in the modern era and was an even more important program historically. See, e.g., Navy's 1926 national championship team. Rather than delete, I have added some basic prose, an infobox, and a citation. I urge @Pvmoutside: to do the same for the remaining articles created yesterday. If anyone else is willing to help, hopefully this incident can be put to rest quickly. Cbl62 (talk) 15:20, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

AfD

All, please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Navy Midshipmen football results. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 02:58, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Heisman shift

  • This could be addressed in say the articles in need of attention section, but it seems to get better attention here. John Heisman's article is by no means poor, but has significant gaps for someone looming as large as Heisman. For one, I think one needs an article on shifts (cf Motion). Heisman and Alexander both used a "jump shift" offense I wish I knew more about. In simplest terms, one gets at least two backs shifting to the point of attack as lead blockers.Cake (talk) 16:33, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Article needs attention

The List of defunct college football teams needs some serious attention. It looks like someone started to put the whole thing in a table and stopped after one record. Prior versions are even messier. We can do better, but I think we should have at least some brief collaboration first.--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:46, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Accessibility of Template:Infobox gridiron football person

There has recently been a discussion at the talk page of the WikiProject on Accessibility regarding Template:Infobox gridiron football person. In the past, the template only had a single set of parameters for playing_years and playing_teams. This caused editors to create lists using <br>. This violates Wikipedia's policies regarding accessibility (see WP:VLIST). To correct this issue, the template has been edited to include numbered parameters playing_years1/playing_team1 through playing_years20/playing_year20 (and similar for coaching, administrating, etc). Eventually, the parameters playing_years and playing_teams will likely be removed from the template and all articles will need to use the new parameters, in order to prevent future issues with accessibility. This template should generally not be in use in articles primarily related to this project, but in practice, many articles that this project will be interested in use it.

There is further discussion ongoing about whether these changes should be done manually or with a bot. You can read and contribute to the discussion at the talk page. ~ RobTalk 21:45, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Kentucky/Transylvania

There is a discussion I've started which I felt best posted to Talk:Battle On Broadway. The Kentucky Wildcats used to be known as Kentucky State, while Transylvania was called Kentucky, which can lead to some confusion. I hope to clear that up. Any help is appreciated. Cake (talk) 03:30, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Standings Templates alert

Why have all of these templates become left aligned instead of aligned center, see Template:2014 Big 12 football standings?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 02:45, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

It also happens to the team's records on single game articles, see 1921 Centre vs. Harvard football game. Cake (talk) 22:27, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
I just noticed that this is also happening on Bowl game articles from Template:Infobox NCAA football yearly game. See 2015 Outback Bowl for an example. Random bits of the template seem to be left-aligned now. Not sure what happened. —  dainomite   19:49, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
@Frietjes: when you have a chance can you look at this issue? Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 04:06, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
@MisterCake, Dainomite, and Jweiss11: there were changes made in MediaWiki:Common.css to make the default text alignment = left in <th>...</th>. it's a long story, but before you would see something different in Internet Explorer vs. other browsers, but now the appearance is the same. I can fix the issues as you find them, but I may miss something, so just remind me (ping) if you still see a problem. Frietjes (talk) 13:27, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Frietjes, thank you for making the needed fixes here! Jweiss11 (talk) 15:29, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Bill Arnsparger dead?

An IP added a date of death to the Bill Arnsparger article. This may be correct, and there may just be a delay in national media reports, but I cannot find any online confirmation in reliable sources that the coach has died today. I would be grateful if other editors would keep an eye on this situation and periodically run internet searches for something more definitive. A death date should not be added to the article without confirmation by a reliable source. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:03, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

  • Confirmed: now reported in Times-Picayune and Daily Advocate. Article updated to reflect death. If any of you are LSU or Miami Dolphins fans, you may want to update the article as information from his various obituaries becomes available. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:48, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

AfD for UConn/UCF football "rivalry"

There is a pending Articles for Deletion (AfD) discussion regarding the purported 2-game rivalry between UConn and UCF: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Civil Conflict (college football game). CFB editors who have participated in previous AfD discussions for CFB "rivalry" articles may be interested in participating in this discussion as well. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:41, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Onside kicks

Pardon taking up so much space here with my (potentially) inane questions. I research the likes of Dan McGugin and there are quite a few Michigan buffs here. The onside kick rules we see today were formalized in 1923. See here. Before this, there were "onside punts" returned by the offense for touchdowns (Vandy tied Georgia this way in 1921), and other such anomalies. Would anybody be able to post the pre-1923 rules concerning onside kicks? Yost and McGugin were both known to teach punting/kicking to the detriment of other fundamentals. Many books will say McGugin's main innovations were pulling guards and pre-1923 onside kicks. Cake (talk) 13:15, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Prior to 1923, the official rules (as well as a summary of that year's rule changes) were published each year in the Spalding Guides. You can find many of these linked in the annual College Football All-America team articles (the Spalding Guides are a good resource for that as well). For example, you will find the 1913 1914 Spalding Guide here. See p. 94 for that year's rule changes and p. 97 forward for the official rules. Cbl62 (talk) 14:48, 22 July 2015 (UTC) Of interest to you, Cake, each year's guide includes summaries of the football season in each region and a summary of the significant all-regional teams. For example, see pp. 85-91 of the linked volume. Cbl62 (talk) 14:55, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Though I thank you for the source, I am aware of Spalding's Football Guides; used them often for All-Southern teams. There were also just rule books published. Perhaps I get exhausted before I find it, but I've trouble finding the rules of onside kicks. I think that's part of the reason for the 1923 rules in the first place. Note the source saying it was "particularly difficult to rule upon." However, I hope somewhere someone has published something to explain just how, say, an onside-punt-from-scrimmage worked.Cake (talk) 16:23, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Any help in parsing this (the first question)? It seems it may help, but something about it is hieroglyphics to me. Cake (talk) 17:51, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Alex Moffat

Recent research looking into the likes of Tillie Lamar and Eugene V. Baker and previous research of the drop kick has me wonder; and though I could do an exhaustive filing to find out, I hope one can get a quicker answer here: is Alex Moffat the oldest non-Camp fellow in the hall of fame or of note? It seems rough going for pre-Moffat/Lamar Princeton squads (cf. J. T. Haxall). Let me know if there are any others who have a notable early-1880s-or-before player.Cake (talk) 06:39, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Justin Fuente Pic

Is the Infobox picture for Justin Fuente really acceptable. It is a screenshot of a tv. I think it is of poor quality and could have Copyright issues. Any thoughts?UCO2009bluejay (talk) 04:56, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

It is not ok. I removed it from the article. Cbl62 (talk) 05:32, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Accessibility issue in Infobox NFL player

There exists a prevalent accessibility issue in Template:Infobox NFL player caused by the use of small text to denote whether a player was on a team during the regular season or just during the offseason or on the practice roster. WP:FONTSIZE disallows the use of text smaller than 11px, and specifically states to avoid use of small text in infoboxes. Please see the relevant discussion at the template's talk page regarding the possible removal of the small tags from this text. ~ RobTalk 06:15, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

conference navbox up for deletion

Template:United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association (USCSA) is up for deletion if anybody would like to participate in the discussion.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 02:34, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

UCO2009bluejay, thanks for heads up on this. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:32, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Football in Kentucky

I've recently started such articles as the 1903 Kentucky University Pioneers football team and the 1909 Kentucky State College Blue and White football team. Part of the motivation for this is to clear up the naming confusion (the latter is the Wildcats, not the former; can get confusing fast if you see simply "Kentucky" mentioned in an old football article). However, my knowledge of Kentucky is limited, in no small part because it was something of a border state (you'll find Centre listed as a southern school or midwest school depending. Places like Cincy and Indiana have Kentucky rivalries. Some organizations define the south as below Louisville rather than the Mason-Dixon). So, if there are any Kentuckians among us or just those who might know a thing or two; I will appreciate any and all help. Cake (talk) 10:13, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

State titles

How do we feel about putting the old, claimed state titles into the season navbox with "champions" as one does the nation or conference? Some still do it now (I think FSU recently declared itself Florida champions when it beat Miami and UF) but one means more the turn of the 20th century. It's what is referenced by "first championship of any kind" in the 1914 Tennessee Volunteers football team article for instance. I am probably not very clear but others involved in old football articles should know of what I am speaking. Cake (talk) 10:46, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Washington University Bears rename proposal

There is a move request here [4] to rename Washington University Bears the Washington Bears if anybody has any opinions on the topic.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 01:56, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

FCS STATS Poll

The FCS Sports Network poll has been replaced this season with the STATS poll. Anyway to get the infobox changed so it says STATS poll instead of Sports Network? Bsuorangecrush (talk) 14:48, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Single-season articles - proposed campaign

The recent controversy over the creation of single-season articles for Navy football teams highlights an issue that needs work by any willing project participants. Season articles for the major football programs are IMO among the most important articles within the scope of this project. Yet, many of the most successful programs still lack such articles. Several of the major programs are fully built out with at least stubs of single-season articles (Alabama, Michigan, Nebraska, Tennessee), but the following is a Top 10 list of examples that ought to be among the highest priority where, remarkably, single-season articles still have not yet been created, even as stubs:

  1. Penn State Nittany Lions football is one of the top 10 winningest programs in college football history. In the biggest surprise of all, there are no Penn State single-season articles prior to 2002. Instead, the history of this legendary program is relegated to unwieldy and bare-bones lists by coaching tenure. See, e.g., Penn State Nittany Lions football under Joe Paterno (as an Independent) and Penn State Nittany Lions football under Rip Engle.
  2. USC Trojans football is another of the legendary programs, yet there are only a handful of single-season articles prior to 2001. Instead, and like Penn State, there is reliance on unwieldy and bare-bones lists by coaching tenure. See, e.g., USC Trojans football under John McKay and USC Trojans football under Larry Smith. (except for 1910 and earlier, which are probably fine as is)
  3. Notre Dame football is another of the winningest programs in college football history, yet there are no articles covering the period from 1888-1923 (including key years in the Rockne era), 1925-1928, 1930-1942, 1944-1945, and reliance on bare bones decades charts for 1950s and 1960s. See Notre Dame Fighting Irish football (1950–59) and Notre Dame Fighting Irish football (1960–69).
  4. Texas Longhorns football is the fourth winningest program in college football history, yet no articles prior to 1939, bare bones decades charts for 1940s and 1950s (e.g., Texas Longhorns football (1950–59), and articles missing for 1960-1962, 1966-1968.
  5. Georgia Bulldogs football is among the 15 winningest programs in history yet there are no single-season articles before 2005. Instead, like Penn State and USC, it is relegated to unwieldy and bare-bones lists by coaching tenure. See Georgia Bulldogs football under Vince Dooley. (except for 1934-1937)
  6. Oklahoma Sooners football is the seventh winningest program in college football history, yet: only one single-season article (1946) prior to 1950, just bare bones decades charts. See., e.g., Oklahoma Sooners football, 1940–49. (except for 1900-1919)
  7. West Virginia Mountaineers football is another of the top 20 programs in wins, yet there are only a handful or articles for seasons prior to 1966.
  8. Washington Huskies football ranks 26th in wins, yet there are only two single-season articles prior to 2005. Instead, there are simply bare-bones decades lists. See Washington Huskies football, 1990–99.
  9. Arkansas Razorbacks football ranks 28th in wins, yet there are no articles for these seasons prior to 2000. Instead, there is reliance on bare-bones decades lists. See, e.g., Arkansas Razorbacks football, 1990–99.
  10. LSU Tigers football is another team that ranks in the top 20 all time in wins. Yet, there are no article for the following seasons: 1962-1967, 1969-1972, and 1974-1985. Also, reliance on bare-bones decades articles prior to 1920.

There are plenty of other programs that are in similarly bad shape, but these ones are among the most important in the history of the sport. We ought to be able to whip these into shape this summer if a number of active editors were each willing to volunteer to take responsibility for one of these listed programs (or any other of their choosing). I personally think this is one of the highest priority tasks our project could band together to undertake. Differing opinions or volunteering efforts are welcome. Cbl62 (talk) 18:18, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Cbl62, thanks for kicking off this discussion. Ohio State Buckeyes football needs some attention as well. There are season articles for all years except 16 prior to WWI, but many of these are very stubby, lack any inline citations, and need formatting clean-up. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:27, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Question @Cbl62: And what will be the minimum standards for stand-alone, single-season CFB articles, Cbl? I've reviewed several dozen of the major CFB programs in the last 72 hours, and those that you list above are not the only ones that are in a "messy" state, and that includes many program that have complete histories of single-season articles. If the creation of such single-season articles represents a significant improvement over existing content, I will support such an effort. If, however, the article creation represents a simple split of existing decade articles, perhaps with the addition of an added sentence or two of text, I think our project's collective efforts could be better spent cleaning up and improving existing articles, instead of engaging in mass stub creation. Taking one 10-season, minimal-text, minimal-sources article and splitting it into 10 one-season, minimal-text, minimal-sources articles is simply re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Perhaps we should review the present state of our existing single-season articles, compile some statistics on their present state, before we create another 1,000 of them. I might also mention that many, if not most of such "core" articles as the main football team articles are also complete messes, too. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:37, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
IMO opinion these are core articles of the highest order. So long as there's an infobox, some brief introductory text, and a citation to one or two reliable sources (e.g., College Football Data Warehouse), that's enough to create a viable stub. Of course, more narrative text is preferable IMO, but the proposal I've made would represent a vast improvement on the current chaotic state of affairs. You have made your views well known, and if you choose not to participate in the proposal, that's fine. If you do choose to participate, that's even better! :-) Cbl62 (talk) 18:54, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
The current state of affairs is "chaotic" because the WikiProject has never cared enough to adopt minimum standards for season articles, and because of the creation and maintenance of such articles has been largely left to editors who are fans of the particular teams. Failing to adopt minimum standards to which we can refer in the future simply perpetuates that error/omission. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:16, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
There is a conflict that articles are not deleted if they are WP:UGLY but the subject is notable, but copycats will use it as carte blanche to churn articles for programs that may be notable enough for a high level article, but not on a per-season basis.—Bagumba (talk) 19:35, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
I understand your point Bagumba, but that should not deter us from creating appropriate encyclopedic treatment for the major programs. If someone starts creating single-season articles for a low-tier program, the notability of those seasons could be subject to challenge if they don't pass muster with adequate coverage to satisfy WP:GNG. The simple reality when it comes to press coverage is that the majors get more coverage and there's a spectrum. Using the State of Indiana for purposes of illustration, Notre Dame > Indiana > Ball State > Wabash. At some point on that spectrum, the coverage may not satisfy WP:GNG. Cbl62 (talk) 19:51, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
No problem. I was only stating a current dilemma, not proposing a solution. Creating stubs is consistent with WP:NODEADLINE. The side effects are just a byproduct.—Bagumba (talk) 19:58, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
@Dirtlawyer1: Lets not forget about Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Yearly team pages format by no means am I implying that this is a standard, or anything more than a guide. However, I think that this could potentially be a starting point for discussion.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 04:22, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Cake. Cbl62 (talk) 19:26, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
No problem. Also, Minnesota has a ton of history and few single season articles. What to do with the prior articles once a coach's tenure is covered? Cake (talk) 20:23, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Another way to deal with the old "by coach" articles is to keep them and simply have hatnotes directing to each season. That's what I did with Minnesota Golden Gophers football under Bernie Bierman. This may make more sense for the long "by coach" articles. Cbl62 (talk) 01:13, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
Yes, that's the problem with these "by coach" articles, they're either way too long (like the Paterno ones) or way too short (like this Crisler one). That's why I've always felt that if we're going to combine seasons together, it should be done by decade, to keep the articles at a manageable length. Ejgreen77 (talk) 22:49, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for this. It seems a swell practice, and I've done the same with Georgia Bulldogs football under Herman Stegeman, though I must remember to get better with edit summaries. Cake (talk) 22:58, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
The edit summaries are particularly important in this case, so that we don't eliminate the record of the original contributor's work. Cbl62 (talk)
  • We may want to make a team or two the Wikiproject College football article of the month. If coordinated properly, it may be fun working together, and the project seem not as daunting. We could pick a few, vote on them, with the top one or two teams getting the attention before moving to another team next month......Pvmoutside (talk) 23:22, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
    • We could turn it into a competition/drive, with a master list of teams that need to be done and then individuals "sign up", or whatever, to tackle certain stuff and after x period 1st, 2nd, 3rd place winners get some wikilove from the Project, thus giving the competition/drive some incentive... just an idea. Or we could ad hoc it like we're doing now with "I'm working on this". I guess it depends on how much extra work we want to do. —  dainomite   03:30, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
    • @Pvmoutside: I quite like this idea, though no reason to restrict it to teams. One could, say, find articles of top to high importance of a C to stub class. Even the college football season articles could use a good bit of work. As well as the likes of, say, John Heisman. Cake (talk) 14:58, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
  • I think it is important to note that some of these "season" articles actually redirect to the main program page see 1986 Texas Longhorns football team, 1892 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team or any of the Appalachian State pages.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 02:53, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
@UCO2009bluejay: I started 1920 Oklahoma Sooners football team as a form for what seems to me to be a reasonable amount of starter information, including season summary, infobox, schedule, and listing of players who won All-American or all-conference honors. Cbl62 (talk) 11:12, 20 July 2015 (UTC) Oklahoma articles are now complete from 1920 to 1949. Cbl62 (talk) 16:06, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
Thank you Cbl62, right now is the earliest I was able to start creating these and you got them done already I'll begin work on the pre 1920 ones.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:12, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
  • We now have a complete run of single-season articles, stubs at a minimum, from 1896 to the present for the Michigan State Spartans football program. Cbl62 (talk) 19:12, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Div II/III/NAIA I think there is a threshold where a season article for a program can be drawn. In the past, I've worked on conference season articles for several NAIA conferences and that seems to be more acceptable from a notability standpoint.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:56, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
  • We now have a complete run of single-season articles for the USC Trojans for every year after 1910. Cbl62 (talk)
  • We have a complete run of single-season articles for the Georgia football program. Working on LSU piecemeal for those years without any article; already fixed prior to 1920. Cake (talk) 13:06, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
May I also note the lack of any single-season articles for the Columbia Lions football program before 2011 aside from 1875. This is the team of e. g. Bill Morley and Harold Weekes. Cake (talk) 23:51, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
* Excellent. Thanks, Pvmoutside! Cbl62 (talk) 19:20, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

2 David Archers

There is a page for David Archer, who played at ISU NFL and the CFL, and a page for David Archer (American football), the Current head coach at Cornell. I imagine that the former is the Primary Topic, but is the latter pate properly named?–UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:48, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The former should probably be David Archer (American football) and the latter David Archer (coach), unless there are other players with the name. That's how it's done with, for example, William Alexander (coach) or Pat Patterson (coach). Cake (talk) 16:58, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
In my estimation, neither of these guys are exactly household words in 2015, so I'm not sure either qualifies as the "primary topic." In any event, there should probably be a "David Archer" disambiguation page and/or hatnotes on top of both articles. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:03, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Discussion re inclusion of "all colleges attended" within the pro football Infobox

There is a discussion in which you may be interested on including "all colleges attended" in the pro football player Infobox, at Template talk:Infobox NFL player#Including "all" colleges attended in Infobox?. UW Dawgs (talk) 00:52, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Infobox college coach does not seem to accommodate NFL draftee parameters

While checking up on recent edits to Rod Payne, I noticed that {{Infobox college coach}} does not seem to accommodate NFL draftee parameters.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:10, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

  • @TonyTheTiger: In reviewing the Rod Payne article, the choice of infobox is one of multiple problems I see with the article, and it needs a complete re-write to re-emphasize those elements of college and NFL careers for which he is primarily notable. Regarding the infobox, the first question I would ask is why is this article not using Template:Infobox NFL player? Payne appears to be most notable for having played in 6 regular season games for the Bengals in 1998. I assume that you know enough of his Michigan Wolverines college career to improve that section to your own standards. His coaching career, which appears to have have consisted of two single-season stints as a high school head coach, and three seasons as a college assistant, is most definitely only of secondary noteworthiness, and the article seems to emphasize his post-college, post-NFL career at the expense of those playing career elements for which Payne is actually notable. This article seems seriously unbalanced in its present form, including the lead -- which mentions his present employment as a personal trainer at a local gym. If this guy's claim to notability were based solely on his coaching career, he would not survive GNG scrutiny at AfD.
As for Template:Infobox college coach, it's not an accident that the infobox omits parameters for NFL Draft information. Good infobox design is about making choices, not including every possible parameter in the template. An infobox is supposed to summarize the most important datapoints regarding a particular subject, not duplicate every datapoint mentioned in the main body text of the article. Infoboxes that have more than 12 or 15 individual datapoints are usually a mess. Remember what WP:INFOBOX 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 (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored). The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance."
If a former athlete is primarily notable as a college coach, then the infobox should provide a minimum of information about his playing career, and emphasize his coaching career. And the reverse is true for an assistant college coach who is primarily notable for his college or pro playing career -- in those cases, the article should use either Template:Infobox college football player or Template:Infobox NFL player, as applicable, and the infobox should emphasize his playing career. In the case of Rod Payne, I would strongly suggest that the article is using the wrong infobox. If you want example articles for former NFL players who became high school coaches, I'm happy to provide several. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 23:53, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Yes the whole article could use some work, but I am curious about the infobox at this point.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:01, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Master team table question

User:Pvmoutside, User:MisterCake, and I have been updating the Master team table. I was wondering if we should add all (D-II D-III NAIA) football programs and the status of each? This would point out whether the team has an article, a parent sports article, or a football coaches navbox (or applicable redirects). Or should a team not be added unless either the football program article, a coach navbox, or the article for the current head coach has been created? FYI, thus far I haven't been adding teams unless they have met one applicable criteria.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 01:52, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

I didn't even know this master table existed. Very useful tool. Thanks for pulling it together. (I have no strong view either way on the specific question, can see points to be made both ways.) Cbl62 (talk) 04:06, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
I'd say include all active programs. It would be helpful to know which programs lack even that basic coverage. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:09, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, that is what I thought to do Jweiss but I thought I would ask before I added them (I don't know the framework that led to this). Now for a follow up question: Should I remove the year column? Years ago this may have appeared like a useful addition but now with FBS and FCS teams getting yearly articles since 2010 and add to it that all of the programs have navboxes now. Having a column for this IMO is rather redundant and adding them here could make the columns and table way too large quite fast (not to mention would be hell trying to keep up to date).-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 04:24, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
Comment - Master team table: Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Master team table. UW Dawgs (talk) 22:06, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

All-time All-Southerns

How should I address the all-time teams on the College Football All-Southern Team article? It seems right to spin them into their own article. But then, of the 3 posted, into 3 separate articles? 1 article? Keep 1 and spin the other 2 into their own articles? and so forth. The article could use a bit of copyediting too, and I would greatly appreciate that, but my first concern is the above. Cake (talk) 01:02, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Master team table proposal

For anybody who is observing contributing to the update of Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Master team table there is a proposal I have under Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Master team table#Format updating proposal. If anyone else would care to participate please do so.–UCO2009bluejay (talk) 17:28, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Update on single-season articles campaign

In the two weeks since we started the campaign to create single-season articles on the most important historic football programs, we've made some great progress -- over 540 new single-season articles created. Here's a progress report:

  • Navy - This is where the campaign started. User:Pvmoutside created single-season articles for the 116 years of Navy football from 1887 to 2002. This led to discussion about whether stubs lacking narrative are sufficient, and with a team effort from User:Jweiss11, User:Paulmcdonald, User:A Texas Historian, and myself, we whipped these into respectable shape as reasonable starter stubs. Next up if anyone wants to chip in: continuing to expand and add references to the newly-created articles.
  • Georgia - User:MisterCake has created single-season articles for the 113 (!) years from 1892 to 2004. Suggestion: I am skeptical as to whether the articles for the 1917 and 1918 teams should be kept, since Georgia did not field a team during those years. Next up: adding at least one reliable source to each article.
  • Penn State - User:Pvmoutside has created single-season articles covering the 53 years from 1949 to 2001. Next up if anyone want to chip in: converting Penn State Nittany Lions football under Bob Higgins, Penn State Nittany Lions football under Hugo Bezdek, under Harlow, under Hollenback, under Fennell, etc.. Penn State now has individual season articles for all football seasons, including the game from 1881........Next is to reference and clean up a bit before moving to Notre DamePvmoutside (talk) 19:07, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
  • LSU - User:MisterCake has created single-season articles for the 27 years from 1893 to 1919. Suggestion: I am skeptical as to whether the article for the 1918 team should be kept, since LSU did not field a team that year. Next up: 1962-1967, 1969-1972, and 1974-1985.
  • Oklahoma - User:UCO2009bluejay has created single-season articles for the 15 years 1895 to 1909. I did it for the 30 year 1920 to 1949. Next up if anyone wants to chip in: 1910-19.
  • USC - User:Jweiss11 and I have now built single-season articles covering the 88 years from 1914 to 2001. Next up if anyone wants to chip in: USC Methodists football, 1888–1910.
  • Michigan State - With some cleanup help from Jweiss, I created single-season article for most of the 91 years from 1896 to 1986 (a handful of those years already existed). Next up if anyone is willing to help: creating schedule charts for these articles.
  • Minnesota - I created single-season articles for most of the 114 years from 1890 to 2003. Next up: continuing to expand and improve the new articles.
  • Clemson - User:MisterCake created a single-season article for 1900. Next up: Clemson Tigers football, 1896–99, 1901-09, 1910-19, 1920-29, 1930-39, 1940-49, 1950-59, 1960-69, 1970-79, 1980-89, 1990-99, 2000-04.

There remain a number of other top programs that still need major work. If anyone wants to claim one of these and plug away at it, that would be great. Some of the most important programs in need of attention are:

  • Arkansas - there are no articles for seasons prior to 2000. Instead, there is reliance on bare-bones decades lists. See, e.g., Arkansas Cardinals football, 1894–98,1899, 1900-09, Arkansas Razorbacks football, 1910–19, 1920-29, 1930-39, 1940-49, 1950-59, 1960-69, 1970-79, 1980-89, 1990-99. (After looking into it, I don't think that the 1894-1898 seasons merit single-season articles. Most of the games before 1899 were against local high schools. It wasn't until 1899 that Arkansas began playing what can creditably called true inter-collegiate football.)
  • Army - one of the most important programs in the history of the game (37 consensus All-Americans, three Heisman winners), yet there are no articles for the vast majority of years. Currently over 85 years missing: 1882-1911, 1913-24, 1926-27, 1930-43, 1954-57, 1959-63, 1965-68, 1970-71, 1973-74, 1978, 1980-84, and 1986-2004.
  • Florida State - no single-season articles for the pre-Bobby Bowden era. See Florida State Seminoles football, 1947–75
  • Illinois - the team of Red Grange and Dick Butkus, five national championships, and 24 consensus All-Americans, yet there are no articles whatsoever for about 90 years as follows: 1892-1945 (including the Grange years), 1947-63, 1966-82, 1984-88, 1990, 1992-93. 1914, 1919, 1923, 1924, 1927
  • Miami (FL) - no articles whatsoever for about 50 years as follows: 1926-61, 1963-65, and 1967-78.
  • Notre Dame - there are no articles covering the period from 1888-1923 (including key years in the Rockne era), 1925-1928, 1930-1942, 1944-1945, and reliance on bare bones decades charts for 1950s and 1960s. See Notre Dame Fighting Irish football (1950–59), Notre Dame Fighting Irish football (1960–69), Notre Dame Fighting Irish football (1980–89), Notre Dame Fighting Irish football (1990–99), and Notre Dame Fighting Irish football under Bob Davie.
  • Ohio State - missing articles for 1895-1898, 1900-1903, 1905-1912.
  • Pitt - despite having won 9 national titles and with 50 consensus All-Americans, Pitt lacks articles for approximately 70 of its seasons. Missing seasons are: 1890-1914, 1919-1928, 1930, 1932-1933, 1935, 1938-1954, 1957-1959, 1961-1962, 1964-1970.
  • Oregon - no articles whatsoever for about 50 years as follows: 1917-18, 1920-26, 1928-32, 1934-38, 1940-47, 1949-62, 1965-67.
  • Texas - no articles prior to 1900, 1904, 1910, 1920-1923 1939, bare bones decades charts for 1940s and 1950s (e.g., Texas Longhorns football (1950–59), and articles missing for 1960-1962, 1966-1968.
  • UCLA - no articles whatsoever for about 50 years as follows: 1923-37, 1939, 1942-50, 1952, 1955-64, and 1966-70. Also, reliance on a bare-bones decades list for the 80s: UCLA Bruins football, 1980–89.
  • Washington - there are only two single-season articles prior to 2005. Instead, there are simply bare-bones decades lists. See Washington Huskies football, 1990–99.

Anyone willing to help in this effort (even taking on one or a few seasons) will be the recipient of kudos from this project. Cbl62 (talk) 15:24, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

  • LSU is in (slow) progress. I created single season articles for 1900, 1902, and 1903 Clemson (their good years under Heisman). 1903 seemed the one needed most. Hard for me to add more to it except maybe the Stumpy Banks years. I still submit someone more in tune with Eastern football should create a few articles for the Columbia Lions football program. For example, in 1901 they've a hall of fame coach and two All-Americans in the backfield. Can see some great images of the team on the sources for 1901 Carlisle Indians football team. Dartmouth is another school of great historical significance with few articles. Not sure about keeping the WW1-era articles either, but the decade articles had them already. I did at least grey-out the years on the infobox. If can find the sources, can at least give some minor help to the 1927 Michigan State Spartans. Aside from my being a Hellenophile; beating Michigan State was Jack McDowall's biggest win. Cake (talk) 16:21, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
  • LSU is finished now. You say Army is "one of the most important programs in the history of the game." I defer to you and believe it is, but know little aside from Doc Blanchard. Aside from being an Eastern power, what is it they did? Cake (talk) 00:46, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
Cake, Army won three consecutive national titles from 1944 to 1946, has had three Heisman Trophy winners, and played one of the most famous college football games ever against Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:51, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
Army today is not a major power. My reference was historical. From 1890 to 1960, Army won five national titles (1914, 1916, 1944, 1945, 1946) and has to rank among the 20 (maybe even 10) most important programs from the sport's first century. With 24 players inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, Army ranks fifth in that category -- having more inductees than Alabama, Nebraska and Penn State. Aside from the five national titles, three Heisman winners, 37 consensus All-Americans, and 24 Hall of Fame inductees, there is the lore and legacy of the Army Mules and the Army–Navy Game. From 1890 up through the 1950s, Army-Navy was one of the most publicized and covered sporting events in the country, with Presidents regularly attending. Famous players also include some folks with great stories, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Robert Neyland, Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., Paul Bunker, Elmer Oliphant. Cbl62 (talk) 03:11, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Kansas State -I know this is contrary to the goal of this assignment but I found links to decade articles ranging from 1896-1909 that weren't linked to the navbox (albeit 1908 and 1909 were inaccurate and copied from OU) and created redirects for these articles that linked to the decade articles. I will likely start on some of these. I have created the article for the 1908 and I plan to immediately begin 1909.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 23:55, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree with what you've done. Unless and until the single-season articles have been created, links to the decade articles are better than red-links. Cbl62 (talk) 00:18, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
I looked through the category of lists of college football seasons by team and linked all the period lists I could find, including standardizing 1 UCLA, and 1 Bethune-Cookman. (not aTm) in the 50s that is a mess.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 01:34, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Wish I knew more of Pitt to help; it needs a few articles. What do we think of applying this project to Auburn? They have most of their seasons except the period from 1925 to 1943, for some reason. Also, some help with Georgia Tech would be appreciated. They and Bama were the two most prominent southern football programs as the sport became less regional c. 1930 or so. I've already created articles for 1915-1922, their period of real dominance, as well as the title years of 27 and 28. But it would be nice for someone not yet so exhausted with it to fill in, say, the rest of the Heisman years (1904-1914). Can certainly offer my help expanding them , e. g. Lob Brown was Tech's most prominent player in the first years of Heisman. Cake (talk) 04:36, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Auburn and Georgia Tech are certainly worth of being included in the campaign. Looks like Georgia Tech is missing about 80 years as follows: 1892-1926, 1929-1951, 1953-1989, and 1991-1995. Auburn is in better shape with only 18 years missing as follows: 1925-1930, 1933-1943. Cbl62 (talk) 05:16, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
With my focus on Michigan, the Georgia Tech team that I'm most familiar with is the 1934 team under coach Alexander that refused to take the field unless Michigan benched its African-American star. I've summarized the controversy here: Willis Ward#1934 Georgia Tech game. Cbl62 (talk) 05:23, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Some of this might be useful for expanding Bill Alexander's article as well. Hard to imagine Yost was still around then; and never knew this of Ford's team. What happened between 33 and 34 for Michigan? That's an all-time first-to-worst. It looks like they may have needed some ugly motivation just to win. Tech was a cellar dweller that year too; have to wonder if that made things even worse. '34 is also the same year as arguably Alabama's greatest team, certainly the greatest one before the 60s, so would be nice for a Tech article the same year due to the aforementioned; i.e. coverage of the era/region. Bama's Bear Bryant is a little known but crafty end on that team under Frank Thomas, overshadowed by Don Hutson. Tech's Bill Alexander was much the same in his time under Heisman. Cake (talk) 05:43, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Did the best I could for the seasons before Heisman. There is significant confusion surrounding it though. Compare Mercer's claim of a game in 1903 which might well be imaginary, as well as the differences between the coaches as in the list of seasons and as in the navbox. Cake (talk) 11:04, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
I have been picking off the AU seasons when I have some free time and would welcome any help in finishing them off. In addition to the missing years, many of the early years need to be cleaned up as they are poorly formatted. Another issue that may also warrant discussion is whether or not the early seasons should be titled Auburn, Alabama Poly or API Tigers. I have no dog in this race and would love someone more familiar with the early years of AU football to weigh in. Patriarca12 (talk) 11:54, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Patriarca. Auburn kind of falls off in the 20s but they are back by the 30s. Both Virginia Tech and Auburn were known as "VPI" and "Alabama Polytechnic" respectively for most of their early years. In Auburn's case I'm pretty sure it was their official name at least into the 50s; and in the "Golden Age" of the 20s they were only called Auburn as a kind of shorthand to mean "the college in that city." Don't know whether that's something cared about – but I've wondered myself. I could say the same about early nicknames; say whether I call the 1905 Alabama team the "Crimson Tide" or the "Crimson and White" or the "Thin Red Line" or whatever. One sees the abbreviated VPI way more than API; maybe due to the rivalry with VMI, but I'm speculating. Cake (talk) 13:44, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
Wouldn't this be a case of WP:Commonname? I know there is a big difference in Middle Tennessee (State), or Cal-State Fresno vs Fresno State, and this but don't forget we don't name articles Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Hokies football heck the universities page is "Virginia Tech"UCO2009bluejay (talk) 20:38, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
That's true, but if this were decades ago it would not be "Virginia Tech". So, when one makes an article about the team decades ago, there is that question of anachronism. For example, you wouldn't call the 1891 Trinity Blue and White football team the Duke Blue Devils, as that was meaningless then. Cake (talk) 23:58, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Cake and Bluejay, you can do an old newspaper search, but I think you're going to find that Alabama Polytechnic/Alabama Poly/API was commonly referred to as "Auburn" (the town's name) for decades before the university was officially renamed in the early 1960s, in the same way that the U.S. Military Academy continues to be commonly called "West Point". The real question is whether the Tigers football team was most commonly called the "Alabama Poly Tigers," "API Tigers" or "Auburn Tigers" in any given era of the football program. Please note you have a similar problem with Mississippi State, which was called "Mississippi A&M" for the first third of the 20th Century. Once you figure out what the team names should be, take a look at the Stanford Cardinal football teams, which have had several distinct names over the 100+ years of the Stanford program -- someone smarter than me has already figured out how to use the correct names for each season and implement the proper coding to maintain links (via redirects, etc.) between season articles, infoboxes, navboxes, etc., from year to year. (And there are other examples if you need them.) Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:13, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
I think West Point is quite a good analogy. Only difference is Army isn't consistently called West Point today, and I don't know that I've ever seen "West Point Cadets" or something like it as a team header. I was going from memory on the 50s - didn't see the article said when it changed. Good to know. Mississippi A&M is an easier case - not a soul would call them Mississippi State in say the 20s. There is definitely a time when Alabama Polytechnic is more common even than Auburn, e. g. here or here or here. Also, any listings of the members of the SIAA won't say Auburn. Perhaps, aside from old pages being renamed, something like an intermediate period where Alabama Polytechnic redirects to Auburn is in order, since as you note it was called such before an official change. Similar to how one deals with multiple team nicknames like say Georgia Tech being the Golden Tornado, Yellow Jackets, or Engineers; or Furman being the Hornets, Purple Hurricane, or Paladins. And yes I've seen how Stanford was Stanford/the Indians/the Cardinal/that silly tree. Also, Alabama Polytechnic/Auburn were "the Plainsmen" as long if not longer than they were the Tigers, though the university's official publications seem to malign this fact. E. g. here or here or here. Cake (talk) 11:34, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Some fundamentals to keep in mind

Thanks to everyone who has been chipping in with this effort on the single-season articles. We are now closing in on 50,000 articles, files, and other elements tagged for this WikiProject as a whole. I want to remind everyone about a couple fundamentals.

  • When creating or editing schedule tables, please make use of Template:Cfb link. This template keeps team links pointing to the most specific relevant article available while avoiding red links for season articles that have not yet been created. See 1936 Northwestern Wildcats football team for an example in use. If an article is created for 1936 Illinois Fighting Illini football team, the 1936 Northwestern article will start pointing to the new 1936 Illinois article, and soon after a bot will make an edit to hard code the link to the new Illinois article.
  • When redirecting an article for a decade or other block of seasons once that content has been dispersed into individual season articles, please remember to update the class of that article on the talk page to "Redirect", cf. Talk:Arkansas Razorbacks football, 1940–49.

Jweiss11 (talk) 02:00, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I.B. Hale

@Cbl62: @Jweiss11: I'm wondering if you might fact check my recent edits in 1937 College Football All-America Team and 1938 College Football All-America Team that link to I. B. Hale. I don't have access to the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia but they may have his name as "J. B. Hale". Various sources due confirm that I. B. Hale was an All-American for TCU at that time (e.g. [5]). Thanks! - Location (talk) 22:03, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

  • I hope I do not get in the way of those you asked, but I can confirm the '37 selection here. Also added an infobox. Looks like that Frogs team was loaded. Given my area of research and not knowing of the FBI connection with O'Brien; have to wonder if Hale or O'Brien ever knew Ty Rauber. Cake (talk) 23:11, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback! (I pinged the others only because I perceived that they were the most involved in editing those articles.) Although Rauber was ten years older, it appears he was in charge of the Portland office around the same time Hale was in charge of the Dallas office. - Location (talk) 00:27, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
No problem. The Portland office eh? From DC, works in Portland, dies in Guam. A well traveled American. Cake (talk) 07:17, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Category:Future-Class college football articles

There are 264 college football articles rated as Future class: Category:Future-Class college football articles. The vast majority of them, the regular season articles, should be re-rated as Current class in the next few days. Anyone want to pitch in? Jweiss11 (talk) 16:50, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Given I've done some 10,000 or whatever importance rankings, probably more, I figured I would help. Cake (talk) 21:51, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Cake and Corky, thanks for knocking this out. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:43, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Future Schedules

I'm about half way thru eliminating 2015 games (finished thru M's), (and updating any future games not already listed) for all the FBS teams...anyone want to help, it would be appreciated.....Pvmoutside (talk) 13:25, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Duplicate Bio?

I found these two articles: George Dygert and George B. Dygart. I believe they are the same person but I having trouble finding any sources to make the connection. Note one of the last names has an "A" the other has an "E". I have found during this era newspaper articles, university publications, etc. has trouble with spelling of unusual names. Other than the vowel in the last name, they are very close down to middle initial. George B. Dygart coached at Illinois State in 1895 and George Dygert players at Michigan in 1894 and played professionally for a team in Montana in 1896. So the dates work. Any help would be appreciated. 09er (talk) 12:37, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

This is likely the same person. I am pretty sure Dygert is the correct spelling, though. Numerous sources refer to him as such from his time at Michigan. I can do some further digging over the next few days. Cbl62 (talk) 15:56, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
It would be a truly remarkable coincidence if they weren't the same person, given the way their respective CVs fit together chronologically. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:16, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
There is something up here. George Dygert supposedly played on the 1894 Michigan Wolverines football team and also coached Ohio Wesleyan University that same year. OWU's media guide lists their schedule as such:

1894 Ohio Wesleyan Schedule

DateOpponentSiteResult
October 20at OtterbeinWesterville, OHL 6–16
November 3WittenbergDelaware, OHL 0–24
November 17DenisonDelaware, OHL 6-12
November 29at CincinnatiCincinnati, OHW 16–4

Source:"2014 Ohio Wesleyan Media Guide" (PDF). Ohio Wesleyan University. Retrieved August 24, 2015. Pertinent Michigan

DateTimeOpponentSiteResultAttendance
October 17, 1894Olivet
  • Regents Field
  • Ann Arbor, MI
W 48–0
October 21, 1894Michigan Military Academy
  • Regents Field
  • Ann Arbor, MI
W 40–6
November 3, 1894at CornellIthaca, NYL 0–22
November 17, 1894Oberlin
  • Regents Field
  • Ann Arbor, MI
W 14–62,200
November 29, 189411:00 a.m.at Chicago
W 6–46,000

I conclude this may even be someone else entirely if not a misspelling of the ISU coach.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:58, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

@UCO2009bluejay: -- Hmm, there certainly is something unusual about Dygert having coached Ohio Wesleyan in 1894 (sourced here) and played for Michigan in the same year (sourced here), but it is not impossible. First, rules were lax and/or irregularly enforced in the 1894. Second, Delaware, Ohio, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, are about 150 miles apart -- a distance that could be traversed without extraordinar difficulty. Third, a spot check of games played on the same day shows the following: on Thanksgiving Day 1894, OWU played Cincinnati, and Dygert played left halfback for OWU (see here). Michigan played Chicago on the same date, and Dygert wasn't in the lineup for the Wolverines (see here). Cbl62 (talk) 15:00, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

For those interested, Leroy Mercer had a duplicate article for his Olympic accolades as Eugene Mercer, so I redirected it. Cake (talk) 15:17, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I found duplicate articles for an Olympic swimmer silver medalist last week; one for her as swimmer under her maiden name, and second for her as a college professor under her married name. It happens more than we realize. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:54, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
My sense is that those credited as head coaches in the late 1800s and early 1900s weren't necessarily on the sidelines for every game. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:52, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Pop Warner would be a perfect example of that; if memory serves, there was a single season when Warner was listed as the head coach for three different teams. This is somewhat different, however, since Dygert/Dygart is listed as a player for one college team and coach for another (assuming the records are accurate). I can cite examples where old-time guys became head coaches straight out of undergraduate school, but nothing like this. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:50, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
I had confusion over the identity Theron Lyman before, who apparently did coach and player/coach at two different schools at the same time. Cake (talk) 08:33, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
In 1885 C. K. Fauver also played and coached in the same year. He played for Oberlin the same year he coached at Miami University. He spent 3 weeks at Miami and even played in several games. During this era, coaches were not full time position. He may only be on campus a short time. He helped the team get organized, learn the rules and help them learn some basic strategy. He most likely had several of the players never played the game. Also, I wouldn’t try to match dates because a lot of times coaches was not on the sidelines during the game. During this era, the captain was probably more important during the game than coaches .09er (talk) 20:11, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
Though I believe 09er, before this exchange I did not know with any confidence "he may only be on campus a short time. He helped the team get organized, learn the rules and help them learn some basic strategy;" but have read many times how in those days the captains were really more important. Eugene V. Baker, supposedly, was the first captain so dedicated he was like a modern coach. The lore tries to treat Walter Camp, his teammate, as the inventor of the football player (and the rules) and Baker of the coach. Cake (talk) 07:27, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Three more examples of guys coaching in the 1890s before graduating and completing their college playing days: D. M. Balliet, William A. Reynolds, and Ignatius M. Duffy. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:03, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

AfD: History of Major College Football National Championship

I have nominated History of Major College Football National Championship for deletion. Please comment here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 14:04, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Questionable edits

What does everyone think of this edit? Someone has gone through and put stuff like this all over the CFB season articles. Ejgreen77 (talk) 01:29, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Revert all such edits to season schedule and results tables. The addition of the "FCS" is just one more unnecessary element to these tables; anyone who needs such information can get it by clicking on the team link. As I have repeatedly said like a broken record, we need to focus on core data. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:15, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
I have noticed on some 1980s Idaho and some FCS teams that when they play lower division opponents they are listed as the division as well. One quick question what if a team is ranked in the top 25 of the FCS should they be listed as such or not?UCO2009bluejay (talk) 05:16, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Intercollegiate football 1869-1934 by Christy Walsh

Any of you guys have this book? It appears to have some great old images. Cake (talk) 17:52, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

That's one I don't have. It can be purchased for $35 used on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Walsh-Christy-&-Glenn-Whittle-with-H-A-Peace./e/B00N4KCFRO/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1442003541&sr=8-1 Cbl62 (talk) 20:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Game box scores

With 2015 starting soon, is there any consensus on which box score templates to use for team season articles? 2014 Ohio State Buckeyes football team used {{AFB game box start}}, while 2014 Oregon Ducks football team used {{Americanfootballbox}}. Maybe it's a pipe dream, but if we could agree on a common format, a single template for each game could also be created, with each team's article sharing the template instead of maintaining two copies of the same box score. For example, the 2012 Olympics had game templates like {{2012 Summer Olympics men's basketball game E2}}, with the game's box score being shared among multiple articles.—Bagumba (talk) 23:58, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

I am prepared for my comment to be shot down if I am wrong but, I think historically the AFB game box was predominantly used up until 2013. It was in 2014 when many articles switched to the American football box. I think the Americanfootball box is mainly an NFL item though. (If I am wrong feel free to correct me?)-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 05:38, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
I've always used the AFB game box one though I mostly deal with teams a century ago. I suppose the other one is prettier but sheesh that's gigantic. For my taste, I would only use that one if I wanted to detail with time stamps the scoring plays. Cake (talk)
They both seem to support timestamps from scoring plays. The difference seems to be that {{Americanfootballbox}} supports inclusion of individual stats leaders for each team.—Bagumba (talk) 16:48, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
These two templates should certainly be merged. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:23, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
It depends. {{Americanfootballbox}} is certainly the better looking of the two. But, if no one working on the article is willing to go through and put in the scoring plays, it's probably better to use {{AFB game box start}}. Ejgreen77 (talk) 03:17, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
They both support scoring plays, and they appear to be optional in both. So that should not be a distinguishing factor in choosing which one to use.—Bagumba (talk) 04:04, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
What I mean is if you're not going to put in the scoring plays, you really don't need a box as wide & massive as {{Americanfootballbox}}. On the other hand, if you do put the scoring plays into {{AFB game box start}}, you need a magnifying glass in order to actually be able to read them. In general, though, I would say that {{Americanfootballbox}} is probably the better of the two. Ejgreen77 (talk) 14:44, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Here's the problem, sports fans: one box (American football) is ridiculously too big, and the other box (AFB game box) is slightly too small. As a general rule, more compact is better, with less unused interior white/empty space, assuming that it does not lead to unnecessary line-wrapping. Here's the solution: widen the second one (AFB game box) to accommodate "Attendance" on a single line of text, including a six-number figure (e.g., 100,000), after deleting the unnecessary/redundant word "Game" from the "Game attendance" field label. We do not need a box score that stretches the entire width of the page and contributes to the gratuitous over-use of team colors in our season articles. Box scores are meant to be game summaries in brief, not a blow-by-blow retelling of every element of minutiae. If individual scoring plays are included in the box score, they should be a single succinct phrase, e.g., "John Smith, 10-yard touchdown reception from Paul Jones," "Billy Bob Bemis, 55-yard touchdown run," "Guillermo Perez, point-after-touchdown kick," or "Jan Huskerdu, 35-yard field goal." Recounting individual scoring plays in descriptive detail is the purpose of the main body text, not the box score. This is sports-writing 101, guys, and these are basic rules of thumb used by every major sports media outlet in America. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:14, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Holy Buckeye

Just discovered this article for the 2002 Ohio State–Purdue game: Holy Buckeye. Do we need this as a stand-alone article? Jweiss11 (talk) 04:46, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Red Smith (American football/baseball)

What does everyone think of the parenthetical disambiguation for Red Smith (American football/baseball)? Would "sportsperson" be better here? Jweiss11 (talk) 16:48, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

"athlete" or "coach" are other options.Cake (talk) 06:26, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
"sportsperson" probably sums it up best. Cbl62 (talk) 20:40, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

All-conference teams

In addition to the season/team articles, we've made tremendous progress this year in creating annual articles on the annual all-conference teams for the major conferences. Here's an update on the progress:

  • SEC: We have articles covering every year from the conference's creation in 1933 through 2014.
  • Big Ten: We have coverage from 1914 through 2014. Still needed: If anyone cares to do so, they could search for All-Big Ten (aka Western Conference) teams prior to 1914.
  • Pac 12: We have coverage from 1916 to 1993 and 2005 to 2014. Still needed: 1994 to 2004.
  • ACC: We have coverage for 1953-1959. Still needed: 1960 forward.
  • Big 12: No coverage. Need articles from the conference's inception in 1996 forward.
  • Big East: No coverage. Concerns have been expressed previously as to whether annual all-conference teams beyond the Power Five conferences would satisfy notability requirements. The Big East is a case in point. Thoughts on that welcome as well.

If anyone is willing to adopt a conference, that would be great. Cbl62 (talk) 19:59, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Akin to the problem of whether to include the Big East, the more historically inclined will have to discuss whether to include All-Eastern teams or if All-America is enough. That is, "all Northeast" or "all Ivy League" out of which came most of the football powers. One side could rightly argue it would be unnerving if, say, one had the All-South Atlantic teams (All-ACC before All-ACC, and already inferior to All-Southern) but no All-East. The other just as well that anybody familiar with All-America teams knows for many years an All-East team is redundant. Cake (talk) 23:28, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
In the days of Walter Camp, the All-America teams were for the most part All-Ivy League / All-Eastern ″teams. Cbl62 (talk) 23:38, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Indeed. Yet, "All-Eastern" teams were published separately. They have (or had) as much if not more notability than many of those articles which have come or are coming. Are they penalized for having the region considered supreme? One might argue "for the most part" is important too. Cake (talk)
I don't doubt that "All-Eastern" teams from the early 20th century would pass muster under WP:GNG. My focus in this post was on all-conference teams rather than all-regional teams. If someone wants to create All-Eastern team articles, I see no problem with it. Cbl62 (talk) 22:33, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
As a historical footnote, we may add:
  • All-Southern (see SIAA and SoCon): We have articles covering 1895 and 1898 through 1917 and 1919 through 1932. If anyone cares to do so, they could search for "All-Southern" teams from 1896, 1897, 1918, or before 1895.
  • All-Western: We have articles covering 1898 through 1917 and 1919 through 1923, 1925 and 1927. Still needed: 1924, 1926. If anyone cares to do so, they could search for "All-Western" teams from after 1927, before 1898, or 1918.
"All-Eastern" or "All Pacific Coast" and other all-regional teams may also need addressing. Also, I have tried to mimic the All-Conference team tables in conference season articles for the All-America teams on those seasons for which I know some other statistical achievement, e. g. 1915. Cake (talk) 22:25, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Redirects

Processing a report at WP:RFPP. Can editors here figure out what to do with these redirects please? --NeilN talk to me 20:40, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I think they should be deleted and the pages salted, unless someone wants to write a brief article explaining that "Running back U" is a phrase used to refer to a college football program that seems to produce a lot of NFL running backs. (Lots and lots of candidates for this title, and no consensus that I can find to name one of them supreme.) But that seems almost like a Wiktionary page to me. JohnInDC (talk) 21:07, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Agree with JohnInDC. Cbl62 (talk) 02:20, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Listed for deletion here. JohnInDC (talk) 13:57, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Notable?

Joe Magliolo (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Someone has taken a good deal of care in constructing this article but to me it seems to fall short somehow. Soliciting thoughts. Thanks. JohnInDC (talk) 18:58, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

He played professional football in the All-America Football Conference and is therefore presumptively notable under WP:NGRIDIRON. Cbl62 (talk) 19:21, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. Glad I asked - JohnInDC (talk) 19:51, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Texas folks really like that infobox. Cake (talk) 21:07, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
It's one Texas folk, really, User:Volcycle. That whole run of Texas QBs could use some cleanup, if anyone is interested. And those navboxes should probably be converted to Infobox college football player or something else more appropriate. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:40, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Yeah sorry about that. I found an example article and just emulated it. Apparently, it was a mistake.Volcycle (talk) 20:13, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
This might be a good time to ask for the best infobox for Semp Russ. As he played both tennis and football, one option is the ncaa athlete one. Cake (talk) 20:36, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Page moved

The Play has been moved to The Play (Stanford vs. California). There is a discussion started (posthumously) at Talk:Play.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:52, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Help requested

User:Mdann52 moved Buffalo Bulls football to Buffalo Bulls (American Football) (a non-standard naming convention), and also proposed File:MAC-Uniform-UB.png for deletion for some reason. At first blush, it appears like we are dealing with a user with little to no American football experience, here. Unfortunately, I don't have time to address this right now, but could someone with a strong knowledge of WP:CFB standards (Dirtlawyer1? Cbl62? Jweiss11? Paulmcdonald? Anyone?) please do me a big favor and try to straighten this all out? It looks like this may be a problem going forward. Many thanks, in advance. Ejgreen77 (talk) 22:41, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I have moved the page back to its standard name, and have left a note Mdann52's talk page. Perhaps it is just a misunderstanding. I don't know about the image though. I would still hope those editors would be interested in this discussion.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 22:59, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
E.J. you may be correct in your assumption, "kit" see here [6].UCO2009bluejay (talk) 23:03, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
Looks like we have we two separate issues. As for the name change of the article, uh, no. Just no, overlooking the incorrect capitalization. There was an incident way back in July 2007, I believe, where an editor moved a whole bunch of college football articles to include the word "American", e.g. Michigan Wolverines American football, which was ridiculous. As for the uniform image, I'm not sure what the issue is there. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:52, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
We can worry about the need for internationally recognized disambiguation when American universities start playing association football (as opposed to playing the same sport and calling it soccer), Australian rules football, and Gaelic football at the varsity intercollegiate level. In the mean time -- no conflict, no problem, no need for disambiguation. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:27, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Would they all play on the same pitch? Would their kits be the same color? Would all the codes be shown on the tele? Would the games be accessible by the tube? Jweiss11 (talk) 04:24, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
I think he was acting in WP:good faith but I have to get this jab in. You forgot it would be distinguished between women's and men's futbol, once men start playing it. All rise for our new fight song.[7]–UCO2009bluejay (talk) 21:35, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, guys. I think the issue with the image is that it's no longer 100% accurate. And, yes, while it is a little old, and some of the details are no longer 100% accurate, you know what? It's pretty darn close to what UB is wearing today (with the main difference being the whole "New York" shtick on the front of the jerseys). Plus, it's a non-free image, so if the image isn't used in the article, it'll be deleted and lost forever. So, I say go ahead and keep it there, at least until we have a newer image to replace it with. Having a slightly outdated image there is better than having no image at all, IMHO. Ejgreen77 (talk) 21:43, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

As to the whole naming issues and American vs. international stuff, does anyone think it would be helpful or worthwhile to, say, go ahead and slap some Template:American English tags on the talk pages of CFB program articles? Ejgreen77 (talk) 18:53, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

EJ, the presence or absence of an American English template on the talk page should not make any difference in whether a disambiguated title is used, and hopefully no one thinks it's appropriate to use British/Commonwealth English (or British-style DMY dates) in articles about American college football. If they do, they need a good trout-slapping. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:10, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Is this needed?

Good edit or overdoing it?[8]-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 23:21, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

These sorts of the categorizations are fairly common on college football articles. See Michigan Wolverines football or any of the Michigan season articles. Perhaps, you should ask for some feedback at Wikipedia:WikiProject Years?
I'll take you word for it.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 02:16, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Ty Isaac 2011 Chicago Sun-Times Football Player of the Year?

I am a little concerned that I am unable to find the proper link from the Chicago Sun-Times regarding Ty Isaac's recognition as the 2011 Chicago Sun-Times Football Player of the Year. If anyone can help me find the original feature article on this subject, leave a note at Talk:Ty_Isaac#2011_Chicago_Sun-Times_Football_Player_of_the_Year.3F.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:53, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of South Carolina–Tennessee football rivalry for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article South Carolina–Tennessee football rivalry is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/South Carolina–Tennessee football rivalry until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:58, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Category:College football all-time series records

Please take a look at the articles found in Category:College football all-time series records. These are lists of various programs records by opponent. Do we need these articles? If so, the current naming scheme ("series records") does not seem optimal. Thoughts? Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 04:16, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Seems like a lot of unnecessary updating to me....Pvmoutside (talk) 12:54, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
I believe WP:NOTSTATS clearly applies to these lists/articles. Nominate for AfD. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:59, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
Personally, I don't have a problem with them, as long as they're being updated on a yearly basis. To use a football metaphor, we don't want to "outkick our coverage," so to speak. Are there any of them out there that haven't been touched for 2-3+ years? Ejgreen77 (talk) 10:53, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
I concur with Dirtlawyer1, WP:NOTSTATS seems to apply here. One could argue that the stats could be included in the team article I suppose but then it could quickly become unwieldy. The real issue I see is that this information can be found on other websites such as Michigan Records by Team at the College Football Data Warehouse. A Wikipedia article (or even a list) should really not be just a copy of something that already exists on the web without supportive reasoning behind it. If the list had to be assembled from multiple sources, I could see it. But since it exists and is maintained someplace else, we're really just "copying" the info of another website. WP:COPYVIO comes to mined also. It would be better to just have the referenced page listed under "External links" for each article in question.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:27, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
Ejgreen77, most of these look they've been updated at least since the end of last season. But if we leave these be, we're likely to see more get created, for less and less prestigious programs, and then I think we'll be in a situation where we have a lot of dated content. But that may be beside the point given the NOTSTATS argument here, which I think is pretty relevant. I'm leaning toward a group AfD for these. If these are to stay, the naming scheme need to change. "...all-time series records" seems pretty vague. Ideas for a better name? Jweiss11 (talk) 02:07, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
JW, the big problem I have with NOTSTATS is that it could just as easily be applied to the CFB list of season articles, list of head coaches articles, or, really, any type of list article. To me, if we're not going to apply NOTSTATS in cases where it clearly should be applied, I have a hard time arguing to apply it in other cases that are far more fuzzy. Frankly, I worry about opening a potential Pandora's box, given the way the deletionists typically operate. Ejgreen77 (talk) 02:27, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
A number of editors (including some deletionists) have incorrectly interpreted NOTSTATS. Its purpose, as I understand it, is to require context for stats and to avoid pure data dumps. If there is a statistical list that is notable, NOTSTATS suggests that any such listing should have contextual narrative text and citations. The introductory sentence of WP:NOTSTATS emphasizes precisely this: "To provide encyclopedic value, data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources." If the stats aren't notable, on the other hand, WP:GNG is the proper basis for deleting. As Ejgreen notes, if NOTSTATS was a valid basis for deleting statistical listings regardless of notability, it could be used to support deletion of highly notable statistical lists such as: List of college football coaches with 200 wins, List of NCAA football records, List of NCAA Division I FBS running backs with at least 5,000 rushing yards, List of NCAA Division I FBS quarterbacks with at least 12,000 career passing yards, etc. IMO, the real issue is whether or not the "lists of college football all-time series records" pass WP:GNG (something as to which I have my doubts), not whether they are precluded under NOTSTATS. Cbl62 (talk) 03:35, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
I see the list of seasons articles as acceptable because they also serve as navigational aides for the articles for each season. There can also be commentary about the list of seasons (x national championships, y undefeated seasons, z tie games, ...)--Paul McDonald (talk) 11:30, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Future football opponents

We could make a rationale to delete future football opponents from the football team main pages as well. The primary source is [9]. I just updated all for this year, but it is a lot of work with half the teams not current before I updated. Games get added constantly.....Pvmoutside (talk) 13:42, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Pvmoutside, I think the future non-conference opponents info is useful and appropriate for inclusion, and thus, worth keeping and maintaining. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:09, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
If the primary topic of an article is notable per the guidelines, then subtopics within the article do not also have to satisfy the notability guidelines. What subtopics are included are matters for the WikiProject and article-level editors to decide, with their sound editorial discretion. Like all included lists, editors should question their relevance to the primary subject and the appropriate length and depth of such subtopics relative to the rest of the article, and reasonable decisions should be made on that basis. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 05:26, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
So moving forward, if they become out of date, then they should be deleted?....Pvmoutside (talk) 12:00, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
No, if they become out of date, they should be updated, unless you're talking about once-future schedules that are now in the past. Yes, those should be deleted from the future opponents sections. Jweiss11 (talk) 12:11, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

AfD: Alabama Crimson Tide football, 1900–09

Please see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alabama Crimson Tide football, 1900–09. Thanks, Ejgreen77 (talk) 18:55, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

@Ejgreen77: Thanks for notifying the WP:CFB crew about this AfD. The nominator did not use the standard AfD header template on the AfD discussion page, nor did he add the AfD to the Articles for Deletion log at the time when he created the AFD discussion page on September 15, so the AfD has been "lost" for the last 18 days. BTW, how did you find this? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:45, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
Through Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Article alerts. Ejgreen77 (talk) 21:04, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
Nice catch, chief. I usually just check the AfD lists for American football and Sports-related topics a couple of times a week, but it wasn't listed at either because this AfD was not properly formed. Good to know that if we have tagged an article talk page with a WP:CFB banner that a malformed AfD for the article will still pop up on our CFB Article alerts list. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:29, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Date formats in CFB articles

It has recently come to my attention that some WP:CFB editors are using British/international style dates (e.g., 21 October 2014) in articles about American football players and other American college athletes, written in American English. When Wikipedia article subjects are American in character, and the article text is written in American English, the articles should uniformly use the American-style MDY date format (e.g., October 21, 2014). This applies to birth dates and death dates in the lead, main body text and infobox; contract signing and game dates; and reference publication dates, as well as online reference retrieval dates in the article footnotes. Please do not use British-style DMY dates in articles about American college sports teams and American athletes -- it looks goofy. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:51, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

There are situations where they would be correct however, players born in countries where that is the date format for example. Granted not alot of players in the college football fall into that category but there are some. Canadians can go either way because in numerical format they tend to use British ordering but when writing it out in words usually use American ordering. -DJSasso (talk) 03:57, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
DJ, the percentage of non-American-born athletes playing American college football is remarkably small, and many, if not most of them eventually became U.S. citizens before their college careers. As for Canadians playing American college football, that is again a remarkably small group, and the overwhelming majority of English language newspapers and magazines in Canada do in fact use American-style MDY dates, rather than British/Commonwealth/international-style DMY dates. (I know: I personally checked the 25 largest Canadian dailies for an MOS discussion several months ago.) The small number of exceptions that properly use DMY dates in CFB bio articles can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and such exceptions should be properly coded and notated with hidden templates and hidden text message. The problem I raise here, however, is one of drive-by editors and others who prefer the international and computer format dates and use them anyway, knowing that they are not appropriate in 99.9% of all articles written in American English about American sports subjects. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:02, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
I was just pointing out that the opposite can happen, that editors start assuming because they are NFL players they must use American English and that isn't true. The standard across subjects is that you match the style for people to their birth place. So I just wanted to make sure after your note here that people didn't race out and start changing those player articles. I know the likelihood that people would is small, but I have seen it before. As for the Canadian thing, I am Canadian so I can tell you we are taught to use both, as I mentioned when doing a date in numbers its always DMY. We are taught it is supposed to be smallest to largest. However, when we use words we use MDY as you saw in newspapers. That is why I said we use a mix. -DJSasso (talk) 23:52, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Andy Mooradian

Per this newspaper article, Andy Mooradian was an assistant varsity football coach at New Hampshire for 14 seasons (1951 through 1964) before becoming head coach in 1965. I tried formatting his infobox, but I have no clue how to do it with the new infobox coach parameters. Can someone assist? Jrcla2 (talk) 02:23, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

There you go Jrcla2. I learned by struggling similarly on my first go with the new parameters and Joe Holsinger's various positions. Cake (talk) 02:40, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Improper page move for Bob Vogel (American football)

There was an improper page move made on October 2 on Bob Vogel (American football) to facilitate disambiguation. Instead of a proper page move, the article was recreated under the new name. The prior edit history of the article was cleaved off and resides at Bob Vogel, the article's old page name, which is now the disambiguation page. Does anyone know how to remedy this? I assume this will require an administrator to get involved. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 08:28, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Reverted manually (with ~5 days of interim edits).
In hindsight, Wikipedia:Requests for history merge would have been preferrable. To the extent a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC discussion may ensue, the footballer seems to be clear PT (hence the DAB location). UW Dawgs (talk) 13:31, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of Ole Miss–Tennessee football rivalry for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Ole Miss–Tennessee football rivalry is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia as a stand-alone article according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ole Miss–Tennessee football rivalry until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The AfD nomination explains the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence of notability and our applicable policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the AfD discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, please do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article while the AfD discussion is still pending. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:06, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of Georgia Southern–Georgia State football rivalry for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Georgia Southern–Georgia State football rivalry is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Georgia Southern–Georgia State football rivalry until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 10:57, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Spurrier, most wins at two schools

The lead of Steve Spurrier notes that "Spurrier is the winningest coach in both Florida Gators and South Carolina Gamecocks history, one of the few coaches to top the wins list at two power-conference schools." Spurrier indeed has the most wins of any coach in the history of those two programs, but the second clause of that sentence is problematic. By "power-conference" do we mean the Power Five conferences? And who are there other coaches to top the list at two schools? Are there any others to accomplish this feat considering all the schools in FCS or even all of Division I? Jweiss11 (talk) 03:35, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Okay, Bear Bryant is another. Most wins at Kentucky and Alabama. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:42, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
And Gary Pinkel as the most wins at Missouri and Toledo. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:46, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
Good question. Now that the Evil Genius belongs to the ages, I did a fairly extensive clean-up and re-write of the article lead last night. I left the "power conference" reference, but I have no particular reference for it (I probably should not have). I think it's more than enough to say that he is the winningest coach in the history of the Florida and South Carolina football programs, and there are already too many of these unsourced fancruft claims in our CFB articles. If no one objects, I would like to delete it from the Spurrier article.
Beat me to the punch on Bear Bryant, all-time wins leader at Alabama and Kentucky (and in the SEC). Last time I checked, however, the Mid-American Conference is a mid-major, not a "power conference" by any definition. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:48, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm aware the MAC is not a power conference. I was just noted any instances I came across. Don't think I have the motivation to investigate this thoroughly right now, but if anyone else wants to look into it, please do. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:53, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
Note: "Everyone talks about the greatest coach at Kentucky being Bear Bryant. No, the greatest coach at Alabama was Bear Bryant. The great coach at Kentucky was Fran Curci." - Scot Brantley Cake (talk) 16:52, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
George Welsh is #1 at Virginia and was #1 Navy until Ken Niumatalolo passed him last year. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:56, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
I was in attendance at Welsh's first home game in Charlottesville in 1982, a humiliating loss to James Madison. Scott Stadium, with seating capacity of about 35,000, was only about two thirds full at kickoff. Welsh's first 25 wins at UVa were much harder than those of Spurrier at either Florida or South Carolina -- and probably Duke, too. If Welsh could win at Navy and Virginia, he could have won anywhere, and he did so with half of the talent Spurrier had. Old school coaching. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:17, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
You should start a blog or a YouTube channel called "Southern Football Stories with Dirtlawyer". I'd subscribe. :) Jweiss11 (talk) 06:34, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
Yeah, with you and a couple hundred thousand other paying subscribers, it would almost be a living after expenses. Sadly, I'm no Furman Bisher, Tom McEwen or Tony Barnhart. Plus it's tough to compete with the guys at Every Day Should Be Saturday, who give it all away for free. Selah. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 09:45, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Inclusion of international college football

Is there a reason why not to include international college football? I've been researching college football in Japan and I don't see why it can't fall within the scope of of this project. Why must college football only be limited to the US and not include college football from other countries? rick lay95 (talk)

This is a very good question. Everyone, please refer to Wikipedia:WikiProject College football#Scope, particularly "This project is limited to college football in the United States under the umbrella of the NCAA and the NAIA...." Under this definition, junior college football would not fall in the scope either, but Category:Junior college football in the United States and much of its contents have been tagged for this project. Now might be a good time to revisit this project's scope. Thoughts? Jweiss11 (talk) 23:28, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
Granted, I'm not familiar with Japan at all, but I can't imagine that gridiron football is played on universities there at anything more than a club level. In fact, I would be extremely surprised to find that any universities in any other countries except the US and Canada would have varsity gridiron football teams. And, on that related note, what about Canadian college football? Do we cover it here, attempt to split it up and cooperate with WikiProject Canadian football, or leave it entirely up to them? (for the record, they don't appear to cover CIS football very much, if at all, that project appears to be mainly concerned with the professional CFL). The Juco issue I would assume was just an oversight when this project was being set up, I presume? Ejgreen77 (talk) 23:59, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
An interesting conversation to which I can offer little as far as support one way or the other; but I want to note one particular Canadian institution, the McGill Redmen football team, has a significant historical overlap with Harvard. Cake (talk) 00:04, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Canadian football states all Canadian football including CIS is in that project's scope. And CIS articles are generally tagged for the project. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:10, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
They certainly don't cover it very actively, then, most of the activity on that project is all CFL-related. At any rate, it would probably be a good idea to put it somewhere in the scope that this project covers varsity football only, which we could then use to help eliminate all types of cruft. Ejgreen77 (talk) 00:20, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
College football here in Japan is a little complex in understanding how it works and what is club level and what is not. Officially, most of the football programs are listed as club activities by the universities. However, there is no official athletics page on Japanese university websites in the same way that it is here in the US. Pretty much all sports at any university are considered club level. But, I've seen the facilities of many teams and I've seen FBS quality weight rooms and facilities. I worked at a school that was an FCS powerhouse, and the Japanese "club" teams have better everything than we did. So while you may call it club, every university sport is club and there is no NCAA equivalent, all sports are typically regulated by a sports league and not a body that governs all college sports. Additionally, the top team in Japan (which utilizes a TRUE playoff) plays the champions of the X-League, Japan's NFL. So the teams are legitimized, in my understanding, by being able to play the top professional teams in the country. Certainly, I can go on and on, but that is the bare minimum of understating of Japanese college football and I think it makes a good case to be part of this Wikiproject. (And just as an FYI, I'm living in Japan so most of what I'm telling you is based of first hand accounts from coaches, players, and my own experience.)rick lay95 (talk)
Rick, I'm well aware that the entire concept of "varsity athletics" is very much a North American phenomenon that simply doesn't exist in other parts of the world. But, quite frankly, the same thing could be said about gridiron football, too. My experience has been that most gridiron football leagues outside of the US and Canada (even supposedly "high-level" ones) are strictly amatuer-level stuff. Funny story: I had a relative who went over to Europe to live in Finland for an extended period of time, and while he was over there, he was asked to join the Finland national American football team (despite being 5'8", 170 pounds dripping wet, and having never played a down of organized football in his life). His response was, basically, "Huh?" to which they responded, "Hey, if you actually know the rules, you'll automatically be one of the better players on the team by default!" My concern here (and, again, I'm speaking in generalities here, as I know nothing specific about Japan) is that even international leagues like "Japan's NFL" are still probably fifth-rate football leagues, with a lower level of play then Juco ball (or even high school ball). Ejgreen77 (talk) 02:52, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
There's another question about notability of Japanese college football. How decked out their facilities are don't mean anything toward that. What means something is the coverage in reliable third-party sources. But the right question here is for whatever is notable, do we want that to be covered by this project, or should it remain in Wikipedia:WikiProject American football, which is for central concepts about the game and anything about leagues, teams, players, coaches, etc that isn't covered by one of three more-focused American football projects, this one, Wikipedia:WikiProject National Football League, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Arena Football League. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:02, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
I was using the facilities as an example to prove that college teams in Japan are not bush league semi-pro teams, but rather on the same level as USC, Alabama, and Michigan when it comes to funds provided to the program and how they operate. And if you are looking for reliable third-party sources, then be prepared to learn Japanese or get a translator because not many, if any, American news outlets follow this. Heck, even the mighty ESPN could care less about Princeton playing the top team in Japan last March. rick lay95 (talk)
But, are the facilities football-specific? Or are they general University athletic facilities that are used by other athletes, too. (BTW, I agree with JW that facilities don't mean squat in the grand scheme of things, I'm just interested for my own information). Ejgreen77 (talk) 03:19, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
At Ritsumeikan University they have a four story building specifically for football, with three artificial turf practice fields. rick lay95 (talk)

This is an interesting meeting of Japanese and American college football: Legacy Bowl. The game seems to have gotten some decent coverage. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:13, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

I felt the coverage was lacking. ESPN never mentioned it, nor did any other sports network, most of what you can find is from the Princeton website and blogs, but you can't even find a video of the game or the stats. Plus, it was never broadcasted in the US at all to my knowledge (and I called ESPN and Princeton asking about it). rick lay95 (talk)
I found the 2015 game result with a little bit of googling: [10]. Nobody even bothered to update the Legacy Bowl article after it was actually played. From the article, it appears to have ended in a scoreless tie. It did not; Princeton defeated the Japanese host team 37–6. That really tells you all you need to know about the competitiveness of Japanese college football. Princeton, despite the pregame hype on the Legacy Bowl website hasn't been nationally relevant in American college football since at least the early 1950s, arguably earlier. The modern Ivy League plays a Division I FCS schedule, but does not participate in the FCS playoff. One can only imagine the outcome of any modern Ivy League team playing a top-25 team -- heck, even a top-50 team -- from one of the Division I FBS "power conferences". In modern parlance, the Ivy League programs aren't even legitimate "mid-majors". Where does that leave the best Japanese college team that just got stomped 37–6 by Princeton? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:52, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

I seriously doubt whether Japanese media coverage of Japanese college football rises to that of American college football in the United States, or even to the much lower level of Canadian media coverage of CIS college football in Canada. I also doubt that WP:CFB (whose members are almost all Americans based in North America, have either the familiarity, the interest, or the Japanese language skills to competently write articles on the subject) is the correct venue for such an expansion of Wikipedia coverage, assuming such an expansion of coverage is even appropriate. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:35, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

@Jweiss11: Hahahaha. For all the money they spend, to look like this. . . Hmm, reminds me of a few B1G programs I could name. . . Ejgreen77 (talk) 03:40, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
@Dirtlawyer1: According to the B1G, an Ivy League team did play against a "power conference" team in 2014 - and won! Ejgreen77 (talk) 04:00, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
It's been a long time since Army fielded a nationally competitive team. Navy went to the Cotton Bowl with Roger Staubach in the early 1960s, had a revival under George Welsh in the late '70s/early '80s, and again under Charlie Weatherbie in the '90s, and has been competitive in the new millennium. Army remains mired at a lower level; maybe AAC membership will inspire a turnaround. As for the Big Ten's treatment of the AAC as a "power conference," well, Maryland, Rutgers, Indiana and Purdue want to get to 6 FBS wins for bowl eligibility too. Gee whiz, is that Nebraska I see at the bottom of the B10 division -- how did that happen? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:24, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Except that Army isn't going to the AAC - only Navy is, Army is staying indy. And, the B1G isn't counting all AAC teams as "power" teams only certain select ones - you know like 2–10 Uconn. Oh, and they're counting Air Force, too. Crazy. Ejgreen77 (talk) 04:48, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't think we need to derisively mock the Japanese college teams, but we should simply acknowledge that the quality of Japanese college play is not on par with American college football. And why should it be? It's relatively new, it is not a traditional Japanese sport, and the best Japanese athletes are attracted to other sports like baseball, sumo, and swimming. I applaud the effort, but that does not change the present reality. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:03, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
All right, all right! I'll < / trolling > for the night. But, yeah, when you look that under-sized and slow against Princeton, of all teams, you know you're in trouble! Ejgreen77 (talk) 04:08, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
In terms of the Legacy Bowl, I don't see how Princeton won that game, but now that I have footage I can look at it. To be honest the win by Princeton was an anomaly, based on a number of factors. Regardless, the Legacy Bowl didn't get the attention it deserved. What I'm not hearing is why can't Japanese football (being an example) be part of the college football wikiproject? If we rule out the fact that the game is played in Japan and not the US, then what is the difference exactly between Princeton and Ritsumeikan or Kobe and Carroll College or Kinki and Montana State? What exactly makes them different to the point that they should not be under the project? Other than being played outside of the US? rick lay95 (talk)
Rick, please feel free to adopt the Legacy Bowl series as its "steward"; as long as it includes an American college team, it's within the scope of WP:CFB, and we should recognize that. God knows someone needs to adopt Princeton football on-wiki too. It has a proud history, but most of it was before 1950. When the Ivy League decided to forego bowl games, that was pretty much the end of big-time Ivy League football. I respect the league's choice to emphasize academics over big-time college sports, and they are clearly playing the sport at a different level in 2015. That's not to say Ivy League football doesn't have rabid fans and a national following, but the Columbia Lions are never going to play for a national championship in my lifetime. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:17, 15 October 2015 (UTC)


Occidental–Whittier football rivalry

I created this rivalry earlier this week. Last night, another user alleged that the rivalry is not notable. Though it is a D-3 rivalry, it has been played over 100 times, and there is a trophy between the two schools. pbp 15:46, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Cake for cake

Over the past year, User:MisterCake has started hundreds of new season articles, significantly increasing the scope of this project's coverage. Cake's efforts include some 70 All-SEC, 44 LSU, 38 Georgia Tech, 38 SIAA/Southern Conference, 36 All-Southern, 34 Sewanee, 23 All-PAC 10/12, 14 Kentucky, 11 Texas, 9 Georgetown, 9 Stetson, 8 Notre Dame, 8 Ole Miss, 8 Mississippi A&M, 5 Illinois, 3 Columbia, 3 Duke, and 3 Cumberland team/season articles. For his efforts, the Wikipedia baker is making some cake for Cake. Thanks for your passion for college football, Cake! Cbl62 (talk) 14:51, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

How sweet; why thank you cbl. A good looking cake too. I don't see poppy seeds or red velvet or any tricks for a fussy eater. I do my best to research football in the Southeast before there was a Southeastern Conference, but will also offer my help to any severely lacking history, such as Rockne's Irish. I got a bit exhausted trying to finish the All-PAC teams, but that is still on the back burner. If I may call attention to the most notable of the above region and era, any help with the 1917 Georgia Tech Golden Tornado football team is much appreciated. The war made it so the Bulldogs did not play, and as a result Tech had the full force of the state. Plus for whatever reason Heisman really got things going since 1915. The '17 backfield made things almost unfair. Cake (talk) 19:32, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Amazing, amazing effort. Can't believe the dedication! As I trudge through Notre Dame's missing season articles, I am more in awe as I see the effort it takes to create 1 season, let alone what Cake has done......Maybe candles should be added to your Cake, Cbl. I don't think there is room, however!...Pvmoutside (talk) 12:38, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Yesterday's Michigan–Michigan State

There are now two different fledgling articles for yesterday's Michigan–Michigan State game: Michigan State Miracle and 2015 Michigan State vs Michigan football game. Both have been AfD'd in a single discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 03:43, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Arkansas–Little Rock Trojans categories

Talk:Arkansas–Little Rock Trojans covers the outcome of multiple page move requests related to the university's rebranding campaign. Broadly, Arkansas–Little Rock Trojans foo → Little Rock Trojans foo was proposed, but the Arkansas–Little Rock format was preserved per WP:COMMONNAME.

With that context, could someone please review or comment on Category:Little Rock Trojans? Appears there are multiple instances of Little Rock Trojans foo which should(?) be Arkansas–Little Rock Trojans foo. Cheers. UW Dawgs (talk) 12:09, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, what we have here is re-categorization that goes against the consensus in that proposed move. It should all be reverted. Jweiss11 (talk) 15:14, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Attempted complete fix. Possibility of errors due to the quantity of changes. UW Dawgs (talk) 16:41, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Update 2.0 re season articles campaign

It's now been a month since we started the campaign to create season articles on the most important historic football programs, we've made some great progress -- almost 950 new season articles created, including the following:

  • Arkansas - Season articles created by cbl62 for 81 years from 1899 to 1979 . Still needed: 1980-89, 1990-99
  • Army - Season articles created by cbl62 for 76 years from 1890-1978 (schedule tables still needed). Still needed: 1980-84, 1986-2004
  • Auburn - Season articles created by Patriarca for 1925-28. Still needed: 1929-30, 1933-43
  • Georgia - Season articles created by Cake for 113 years from 1892-2004
  • Ga. Tech - Season articles created by Cake for 1892-26. Still needed: 1929-32, 1933-51, 1953-89, 1991-95
  • Illinois - Season articles created by Cake for 1914, 1919, 1923-24, 1927. Still needed: 1892-1913, 1915-18, 1920-22, 1925-26, 1928-45, 1947-63, 1966-82, 1984-88, 1990, 1992-93
  • Indiana - Season article created for 1945. Still needed: 1887-1929, 1930-95
  • Kansas - Season article created for 1899. Still needed: 1891-98, 1900-60, 1962-63, 1965-77, 1979-87
  • Kansas State - Season articles created by UCO2009bluejay for 1908-10. Still needed: 1896-1907, 1911-21, 1923-31,
  • LSU - Season articles created by Cake for 27 years from 1893-1919 and for 12 other missing years
  • Michigan State - Season articles created by cbl62 for 91 years from 1896 to 1986 (schedule tables still needed)
  • Minnesota - Season articles created by cbl62 for most of the 114 years from 1890 to 2003
  • Navy - Season articles created by Pvmoutside for 116 years from 1887 to 2002
  • Notre Dame - Season articles created by Pvmoutside for 1997-2001. Still needed: 1888-1910, 1911-1923, 1925-28, 1930, 1931-42, 1944-45, 1951-63, 1965, 1967-69, 1980-81, 1983-86, 1989-96.
  • Oklahoma - Season articles created by UCO2009bluejay and cbl62 for 55 years from 1895-1949
  • Penn State - Season articles created by Pvmoutside for 116 years from 1881 to 2001
  • Purdue - Season article created for 1892, 1929, 1943. Still needed: 1887-91, 1893-1928, 1930, 1931, 1932-42, 1944-59, 1962-64, 1967
  • Texas - Season articles created by Cake for 1900, 1904, 1910, 1920-23. Still needed: 1893-30, 1931-38, 1940-68
  • USC - Season articles created by cbl62 for 88 years from 1914 to 2001

Programs still in serious need of a volunteer/sponsor include:

  • Florida State - no single-season articles for the pre-Bobby Bowden era. See Florida State Seminoles football, 1947–75
  • Miami (FL) - no articles whatsoever for about 50 years as follows: 1926-61, 1963-65, and 1967-78.
  • Ohio State - missing articles for 1895-1898, 1900-1903, 1905-1911.1912
  • Pitt - missing seasons are: 1890-1914, 1919-1928, 1930, 1932-1933, 1935, 1938-1954, 1957-1959, 1961-1962, 1964-1970.
  • Oregon - no articles whatsoever for about 50 years as follows: 1917-18, 1920-26, 1928-32, 1934-38, 1940-47, 1949-62, 1965-67. 1929
  • UCLA - no articles whatsoever for about 50 years as follows: 1923-37, 1939, 1942-50, 1952, 1955-64, and 1966-70. Also, reliance on a bare-bones decades list for the 80s: UCLA Bruins football, 1980–89.
  • Washington - there are only two single-season articles prior to 2005. Instead, there are simply bare-bones decades lists. See Washington Huskies football, 1990–99.
Penn State sure was completed quietly. Well done. If I may, I submit these programs for consideration due to their pre-WW2 significance; which also means they should not require nearly as much effort as some of the above:
  • Carlisle - Season articles made by myself a bit ago for 1893, 1894, 1895-97, 1898, 1899-1901, 1902 1903, 1904-05, 1906-07, 1908, 1911-14.
  • Chicago - Season articles made by myself for title years of 1905 and 1913. Other than those, no articles prior to 2014.1892, 1894, 1898-1899, 1922
  • Columbia - Prior to 2011, a single article for 1875. 1870-1872, 1901
  • Cornell - Prior to 2011, 1915, 1921-23, 1939
  • Dartmouth - Prior to 2011, 1895-99, and a single article for 1925. 1908, 1913
Cake, these Dartmouth articles are mis-titled, prior to 1974, the WP:COMMONNAME for Dartmouth athletic teams was the "Dartmouth Indians." Ejgreen77 (talk) 23:09, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Oh shoot. Didn't even know that. Good catch. Cake (talk) 20:28, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
Also, Harvard is missing lots of schedules. Cake (talk) 20:06, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Note for anyone willing to do articles on Chicago: when Clark Shaughnessy is called "father of the (modern) T formation," it refers to his time after Tulane, when he is hired at Chicago and he and George Halas have a brainstorming session. It then peaks with his time at Stanford. Cake (talk) 20:28, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Indiana - We have a new contributor (User: ZCash1104) who has recently been working on Indiana season articles. Since September, he/she has created articles on the following Indiana seasons: 1954-1963, 1965-1966, 1968-1972, 1974, 1976-1978, 1980-1986, 1990, 1992-1995. Words of encouragement needed for this new contributor. 21:19, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Well done, and with the draftees too (I am often lazy about those). Given he is now such a face of the sport, it is good to have Lee Corso's career covered. If ZCash is a fan of the school, Bo McMillin certainly falls under my research interests. If one were to ask any southern writer who they take at QB during his era, they would take McMillin. Cake (talk) 22:13, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
@Cbl62: I don't mean to make the project bloated, but how about Syracuse or Baylor or TCU? Cake (talk) 04:13, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

This is handy, there's already a topic covering a question I was coming to ask. I noticed 1917 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football team in the GAN queue and it's a nice article, but I was a bit confused to see the title ("Yellow Jackets") different to what the article actually used ("Golden Tornado"). Should the article be renamed to 1917 Georgia Tech Golden Tornado football team? I note that above Dartmouth uses "Indians" prior to 1974 and another article in the GAN queue which is closely related to college football, 1938–39 Oregon Webfoots men's basketball team, also uses the non-current moniker. Jenks24 (talk) 19:29, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I research the era and region in which 1917 Georgia Tech was the capstone. Some of the naming conventions can be confusing. I've been told Dartmouth was officially the Indians then; though the newspapers still call them the "Big Green." Georgia Tech can be called the Yellow Jackets, Golden Tornado, or Engineers (see 1916 Cumberland vs. Georgia Tech football game). In the old days they were called the Golden Tornado even more than the Yellow Jackets, but they use the Yellow Jackets exclusively today. You can also see the article on the 1928 team. Here is a pennant from the 30s with both the Jackets and the Tornado, and here is a typical photo showing why I went with "Golden Tornado" with the early teams. Furman was known as the Hornets, Purple Hurricane, and today the Paladins. The Ole Miss Rebels used to be the "Mississippi Flood;" the Arkansas Razorbacks the "Arkansas Cardinals" and so on. Also, my understanding was Oregon was officially the Webfoots and not the Ducks in the old days. Cake (talk) 19:51, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps 1917 Georgia Tech football team then? I'll take your word for it about the common and official names, but the current set-up of titling the article with a name that is never used in the article doesn't seem right. I don't want to be pushy about it though, obviously you have put the work in and I am not even a member of this project. Jenks24 (talk) 06:24, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
I don't take it personally. For consistency's sake, I don't think it is wise to use just "1917 Georgia Tech football team". We usually do that only if the team had no name then, e. g. 1896 Lafayette football team, 1896 Stanford football team. The problem is that for pages, infoboxes, etc made for the team in general, it makes the utmost sense to use the name used today, e. g. Duke Blue Devils football; but for articles on specific past times, there is no reason to have it filled with anachronism, e. g. 1891 Trinity Blue and White football team ("Duke Blue Devils" would be meaningless in 1891). We usually have the name change with time, e. g. 1922 Stanford football team, 1933 Stanford Indians football team, 1980 Stanford Cardinals football team, 1990 Stanford Cardinal football team. I can understand the worry of confusing readers with cases like Georgia Tech or Furman, where there are really multiple nicknames. Maybe one can add an "or" operator as one might for a person, e. g. "William Jefferson "Bill" or "Billy" Clinton" (mere example; idk he's ever called Billy), "1917 Georgia Tech Golden Tornado or Yellow Jackets football team;" if that is even any less confusing. I appreciate your interest in the subject. Before 1917 Tech; 1899 Sewanee and 1906 Vandy loomed largest in the memory of southerners. Before 1934 Bama, nobody was really close to 1917 Tech outside of maybe 1922 Vandy and 1925 Bama. Cake (talk) 18:00, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
@MisterCake: Sorry I didn't follow up on this too quickly. I see you've moved all the pre-1928 articles already. Thanks! I think it now makes a lot more sense, especially for the lay reader. Thanks also for your explanations here and notes on the history. It is interesting to me some of the early powerhouses have continued in that vein (Alabama), some like Georgia Tech are still strong but not exactly what I would call a powerhouse (I could be wrong though), and some appear to have fallen off the face of the Earth (Sewanee). Jenks24 (talk) 13:13, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
Bama has had many great coaches. The team was in the dumps when Bear Bryant was hired. Georgia Tech, Pitt, and Minnesota are included on a short list of those programs with some of the greatest history who recently have done very little. I am surprised every year when those programs don't get some money together for a big-time head coach. The tragedy of the intra-European conflict of the World Wars killed off many idling sports programs as well as men, unfortunately. Sewanee is among these. They still play on the same field since their very first year – I would love to see it one day. Transylvania still sells "Transylvania Football - Undefeated since 1941" T-shirts. Cake (talk) 18:23, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

"Football pool"

We have an article at football pool about soccer, but the fantasy sports page is located at Fantasy football (association). There doesn't seem to be a football pool page, unlike Fantasy football (American). Shouldn't there be a football football pool article? -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 03:58, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

College colors

FYI

You are invited to join the discussion at Module talk:College color/data#Improve redundancy and verifiability regarding the maintenance of college colors used on pages related to this project.—Bagumba (talk) 06:36, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Question about an edit.

On the 2015 Temple Owls football team this edit[11] added a "tool tip" to underline with a "?" the date of non-Saturday games. Is this needed or is this a way to rehash a former problem on another page?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 01:21, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

COI issue at Fred Biletnikoff Award article

An editor with a probable conflict of interest has added and re-added material to Fred Biletnikoff Award with promotional language and excessive detail, all sourced to the Belitnikov Award website. Can others take a look here? Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 23:22, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

I reverted the content. Aside from potential COI, the re-added material language is a copyvio copied largely from this site: http://biletnikoffaward.com/fredbiletnikoff and http://biletnikoffaward.com/about_award. Cbl62 (talk) 07:14, 24 October 2015 (UTC) I also let a warning on the user's talk page: User talk:Biletnikoffaward. Cbl62 (talk) 07:24, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
Cbl62, thanks for jumping on this. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:59, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Michigan State Miracle

There is currently a discussion going on here in regards to Michigan State's miraculous win over rival school Michigan University on 10/17/15. Anyone who would like to participate and share their opinion is welcome, but please make haste because the AFD is already about a week old! If you wish to simply view the article itself, the link has been included in the title of this section. Kind regards, Stubbleboy 04:01, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ron Schipper

An AfD has been opened that may be of interest to members of this project. It concerns College Football Hall of Fame inductee Ron Schipper. Anyone wishing to participate in the discussion, on either side, can find the AfD discussion here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ron Schipper. Cbl62 (talk) 14:07, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Some merges

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:1890 Kansas Jayhawks football team and also to help me with what to do to the running interference page. Cake (talk) 15:04, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Naming question

information Note: You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Long Beach State Dirtbags baseball#Official vs. Common nickname regarding the name of the article. Thanks! Corkythehornetfan 20:09, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Template:San Jose State Spartans athletic director navbox

Template:San Jose State Spartans athletic director navbox has been nominated for deletion. Please see the discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 06:05, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

"Miracle on Techwood Drive"

If the article "Michigan State Miracle" was deleted, it's likely that the newly created article Miracle on Techwood Drive should be deleted too. I would nominate it myself, but I'm unregistered. 2602:30A:2EFE:F050:6C6F:3B3D:9F18:9068 (talk) 23:17, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I was just about to post on this same issue. Anyone want to take the lead on an AfD? Jweiss11 (talk) 19:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
I'm still being called a mean bastard for having commented on the last one. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:13, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
Prod'ed it. Let's see if it takes. JohnInDC (talk) 15:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
If not, nominate it for AfD with the usual rationale for newly created stand-alone articles for just-played regular season games: not notable per WP:EVENT, WP:CONTINUEDCOVERAGE and WP:TOOSOON, with alternate outlets for content in season and rivalry articles unless and until continuing coverage is established. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:09, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. (Boy, are you one mean bastard.) JohnInDC (talk) 15:17, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, John. I've been contemplating changing my user name to "MeanOldBastard1". Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:37, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Okay, PROD didn't do the trick. Now at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2015 Florida State vs. Georgia Tech football game. JohnInDC (talk) 20:07, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Cart before the horse?

See Category:2016 Southeastern Conference football season. Ejgreen77 (talk) 03:54, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Yup. We generally wait until the end of the current season before creating this next year's season articles. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 05:58, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Positional succession boxes

I noticed that someone has created succession boxes for "Ohio State Buckeyes Starting Tailbacks" and "Ohio State Buckeyes Football Season MVPs". See, e.g., Derek Combs. Figured I'd post here in case anyone wants to take this on. Cbl62 (talk) 20:55, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

  • Whack! These need to be removed per long-standing consensus that we would not create CFB starting position succession boxes or navboxes for any position other than quarterback. I suggest gently informing the template creator of same before they create a whole family of the damn things. As I recall, we deleted a bunch of these four or five years ago. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:33, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
  • I think we're a little late on this, the editor who added these did so in 2006 lol [12] [13]. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:39, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Apparently so, WO-9. I remember the editor now: he was adamant about keeping those damn succession boxes for Ohio State players. He hasn't edited since 2010. I just deleted a bunch of the succession boxes. Feel free to do likewise. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 05:57, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
Yes, I have removed similar succession boxes from many college football bio articles in recent years. Everyone, please feel free to "whack" these as you come across them. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:25, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

**Coach navbox tenure years being changed**

All – a user is mass-"fixing" college baseball coach navboxes to be XXXX–XX year formats, even though all college and professional sports' WikiProject consensus is to use the XXXX–XXXX when referring to playing and coaching year spans. I could use some help reverting the changes back to their original state, the edits on them can be found here. Please assist, it is hundreds of incorrect reversions. Jrcla2 (talk) 14:18, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Important to remember that the eight-digit format is now part of WP:MOS and in fact some recent discussions have advocated eliminating all cases of the 6-digit format. Rikster2 (talk) 14:27, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
@Jrcla2 and Rikster2: Please link to an example and/or provide the name of the editor making these edits. With recent changes to MOS, this should be a settled formatting matter with regard to all multi-year tenures in infoboxes and navboxes for athletes and coaches. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:30, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
@Dirtlawyer1: The link I provided above is the editing history of the user in question. Jrcla2 (talk) 14:32, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
Got it. Missed that. Looks like it's under control now. When a gnomer gets several dozen of their edits reverted, and then receives a couple of talk page messages with links to the guidelines, that usually sends a message. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:50, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
I just reverted all of the baseball coach navboxes but the help of User:Pvmoutside, and Rikster2 took care of the professional baseball manager navboxes. I think that should do it, given the volume of reversion and numerous editors telling User:Colonies Chris about the date format. Jrcla2 (talk) 15:17, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
Question In reviewing the edits posted above, wouldn't this be a case of misusing AWB? Ejgreen77 (talk) 22:21, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
Probably not, EJ. The usual AWB/auto-editor prohibition that gets some gnomers in trouble is the one against making auto-edits that do not manifest visual changes, like replacing the HTML ndash with the ASCII character ndash. Those types of changes may only be made using an auto-editor when the user is making other substantive changes. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:31, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

My changes were in line with the guidance at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Chronological_items

Ranges

  • A pure year–year range is written using an en dash and the range's end year is usually abbreviated to two digits:
  • Periods straddling two different years, including sports seasons, are generally written with the range notation (2005–06).
  • A date range may appear in 2005–2010 format if it is a range of sports seasons.
(extracts)

Firstly, the MoS only says may use 8-digit format if it is a range of sports seasons - not must. Secondly, are these ranges really sports seasons? - managers can come and go at any time, not necessarily coinciding with specific sports seasons. Thirdly, space is at a premium in templates, so where there is no ambiguity, why not abbreviate to 2 digits? Fourthly, please provide a link to the discussion where this consensus was reached; this (obviously) is not something I was aware of. Colonies Chris (talk) 09:45, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Colonies Chris, yes, these ranges really are sport seasons. Mid-season coaching changes are fairly common, but even in these cases we are still talking about a range of seasons, cf. Template:South Carolina Gamecocks football coach navbox, where Steve Spurrier's tenure starts in the 2005 season and extends into the 2015 season, even though it has ended before the completion of this current season. The MoS does say may and not must, but whatever the case, all of these navboxes ought to follow the same formatting standard. The consensus here extends seems to extend to all American college sports and major North American pro sports leagues such as the NFL, CFL, NBA, and MLB. Can anyone locate the discussions about this? Jweiss11 (talk) 18:35, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
Relevant history in a nutshell - The final discussion was here, which ended in a formal determination of consensus per the linked RfC. User:Rikster2 played lead on the RfC, in order to clarify a perceived ambiguity regarding the preferred 8-digit format for multiple sports seasons included within a single coach or player tenure (e.g., 1995–2014). There were previous discussions on this point, as well as an earlier determination of consensus regarding the use of the 6-digit format for a single sports season straddling two calendar years (e.g., "the 2015–16 season"), as often happens in basketball and other winter sports in the northern hemisphere. I think this is very much a settled matter, especially in light of Rikster's RfC on point. The may vs. must digression is a red herring; virtually no guideline in the MOS is characterized as "must". The strongest language used is "should". "May" is used in this case to distinguish 8-digit sports tenure usage from the more generalized 6-digit rule for other tenures. The basic idea behind the sports tenure exception was to visually distinguish and clarify the difference between a single sports season that straddled two calendar years and a multi-year coach or player tenure. I hope this helps. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:09, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for the link DL. I remember this MOS debate came close to having numerous college sports' Wikipedia contributors quit (thankfully for all of us, they didn't). Jrcla2 (talk) 06:11, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Strategy and concepts

I have been making some additions and changes to the strategy template and concept template. It seems one of the most neglected areas of these parts of the wiki, so I would appreciate any help. Most difficult might be the line between concept and strategy. Cake (talk) 02:22, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Redundancy, 101

Apparently, we have Kansas–Kansas State football rivalry, Sunflower Showdown, Kansas–Kansas State football all-time results, and Kansas – Kansas State men's basketball all-time results. Do we really need all of these articles? Ejgreen77 (talk) 02:04, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I suggest we AfD the All time results pages as redundant. Consolidate the football and basketball pages into one for each sport.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 04:00, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
Excellent ideas, guys. Just link to the pages where you want me to vote! Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:26, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

New articles - help appreciated

These are new articles on which help and/or opinions would be appreciated:

Cbl62 (talk) 00:01, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Cbl, thanks for your work here, as always. First thought: the tables are sorted improperly. They should be sort chronologically ascending, not descending. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:30, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
Originally, I had the rushing one oldest first, but then I switched 'cause it looked better that way. OK with me either way. Cbl62 (talk) 07:01, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
Also, these look like the leaders in the FBS and historical equivalents, not all college football. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:32, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
NCAA official records are limited to "major" colleges, which I have tried to follow. If there are errors, happy to discuss. Do not think these charts should be cluttered with stats or minor colleges. Cbl62 (talk) 07:01, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Stand-alone lists suggests that chronologically descending lists are improper. Also, Featured List examples of college football lists, e.g. List of Heisman Trophy winners and List of Alabama Crimson Tide head football coaches, are sorted in ascending order. My latter point above was not that there were errors nor that we should include lower division leaders here, but that the articles are mistitled. List of college football yearly rushing leaders should be named List of NCAA Division I FBS football yearly rushing leaders or maybe List of majir college football yearly rushing leaders. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:55, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: I took your advice in renaming all three articles. I have also re-ordered the receivers article to reflect the oldest first system. Will re-order the other two as time permits. Thanks for your input. Additional thoughts welcome. Cbl62 (talk) 21:13, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
All 3 articles have now been re-ordered as suggested. I have also started two additional "yearly leaders" lists as follows:
There need to be limits on how many such lists we have. Any others that folks here think would be appropriate? The NCAA record book includes annual leaders for tackles (total, solo, tackles for loss, sacks) and pass defense (INTs, passes defended). Cbl62 (talk) 01:32, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
Once upon a time the kicking and punting stats were much heralded as well (e. g. Buck Flowers, Bill Fincher, Red Weaver, Pat O'Dea). Cake (talk) 01:55, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
Good point. Cbl62 (talk) 05:26, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

2014 Georgia Bulldogs

I am new around here, but I have been a longtime reader of Wikipedia's articles in all subjects. I recently noticed the 2014 Georgia Bulldogs football team article claims Georgia had all its 2014 wins vacated as a result of NCAA violations. However, no sources are cited for this claim, and I can find no evidence of this when I did my own research. Can a source be provided to support these assertions? If not, then those references should be removed from the article. I just wanted to help the Wikipedia community out by bringing this to their attention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.55.207.212 (talk) 12:25, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing attention to this. The edits have been reverted and the account who added them has been notified. Welcome! ~ Richmond96 T • C 18:19, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Funny issue with categories

I recently created Category:NAIA football navigational boxes, but I don't see it in either of its two parent categories Category:American college football navigational boxes and Category:NAIA football. Have others had this sort of issue? Any idea what's going on? Jweiss11 (talk) 21:39, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

College football statistical leaders

We discussed these pages a year or two ago: Lists of Michigan Wolverines football statistical leaders, Mississippi State Bulldogs football statistical leaders, Alabama Crimson Tide football statistical leaders, etc. The consensus was they don't violate Wikipedia:NOTSTATSBOOK. However, one editor, rather than posing the question here if he wanted to reopen the discussion, has just decided to put deletion notices en masse across the pages. Thoughts? Jhn31 (talk) 21:39, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

You are violating WP:Canvassing. Notices must be neutral....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 21:47, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
WilliamJE, it's seem pretty nitpicky, if not outright false, to make an accusation of canvassing about a post to a relevant WikiProject that assumes support for a previous consensus reached at that WikiProject. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:53, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
For anyone interested in the discussion, the issue is now at AfD here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tulane Green Wave football statistical leaders. Cbl62 (talk) 22:03, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

TfDs

There are two templates for college football teams (Providence Friars football and Long Beach State 49ers) that are up for deletion. If you have interest in such things, the discussions can be found here: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 November 4. Cbl62 (talk) 14:06, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

I went ahead and created some stub articles for Template:Long Beach State 49ers football navbox and Template:Pacific Tigers football navbox, so there are now at least 6 active links in both of them (5 articles, plus the main program article). Unfortunately, CFDW doesn't have any information for Milwaukee or Providence. Does anyone have any type of sources for the season schedules of those two programs? Ejgreen77 (talk) 05:33, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Chic Harley and "Script Ohio"

I just removed an unreferenced claim that a tribute to Chic Harley was the only time that The Ohio State University Marching Band changed its "Script Ohio" formation to spell "Chic" instead. The claim had been a part of the article since it was first written in 2006, but I didn't see one of the original references supporting it. If someone else can find a source that supports it, help would be appreciated. Huon (talk) 01:41, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Huon, according to the official OSU website, the OSU band performed the script Chic on "several occasions," including a Michigan game where harley was in attendance: [14]. Google search: "Chic Harley" script Ohio. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:11, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Louisville–West Virginia rivalry

Louisville–West Virginia rivalry was just recreated. The article was deleted in 2012. Thoughts? Jweiss11 (talk) 04:54, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

  • Sure, JW, I have several thoughts: it was a weak "rivalry" in the real world, with little history or tradition, and it failed to demonstrate that it was a notable subject with significant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources pursuant to WP:GNG at AfD. I slapped a WP:G4 speedy delete request on the article, and notified the AfD closing administrator. That should take care of the problem some time in the next 24 hours. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 05:17, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
  • This article is worthy of deletion it was never a major rivalry and the teams are no longer in the same conference or currently play each other — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bc5297 (talk • contribs) 00:15, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
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