Template:Did you know nominations/Sam Salz (American football)

Sam Salz (American football)

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• ... that a wide receiver on the Texas A&M Aggies football team never played organized football?

• Source: The five-foot-five, 155-pound wideout never played a down of organized football before being invited to join the SEC powerhouse last year

• ALT1: ... that a wide receiver on the Texas A&M Aggies football team may never be able to play in a game because of his religious beliefs? Source: Sabbath runs from sun down on Friday to an hour past sundown on Saturday which means Sam can only compete in Saturday night games for the Aggies.
• ALT2: ... that football player Sam Salz wears the jersey number 39 and a Chabad "A&M” kippah under his football helmet? Source: donning a “Chabad A&M” kippah under his helmet while wearing the number “39” to symbolize the 39 tasks and items that are avoided during Sabbath, known in Hebrew as lamed tet melachot.
• ALT3: ... that by rule Sam Salz could not even try out for the Texas A&M Aggies football team but he is on the team? Source: the rule was that to try out for the team, it was required to play high school football on a varsity level which Salz didn’t do. So, he got creative. Getting on the team There was a field right next to the Aggies’ training facility, and Salz, an obser- vant Jew, went there every daytotrain,asidefromShab- bat. He worked on taking hand-offs, catching, and doing footwork.
• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Cosmic Ray (film)
• Comment: There may be other hooks in there. I avoided the claim of first or only orthodox Jewish football player in NCAA Division I because of verifiability.

Moved to mainspace by Bruxton (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 152 past nominations.

Bruxton (talk) 19:39, 23 June 2024 (UTC).

• This is only a preliminary review for now as the article needs a copyedit when it comes to wording and missing punctuation. However, the article does seem long enough and is adequately sourced and a QPQ has been done. My preferred hook is ALT1, but it doesn't exactly match the article or the source so it might fail at WT:DYK or ERRORS. ALT0 could probably be modified to say he never played organized football before signing up as the current wording might be too vague. ALT2 might need additional context especially for readers from countries where Judaism is not a common religion: my suggestion would be to propose a new hook that explains his 39 jersey and how it related to the Sabbath. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 13:37, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: Thank you for checking out this nomination.. I did some copyediting but it is hard for me to find my own errors so I would appreciate you calling them out. For hook ideas I prefer that someone click the article to discover rather than getting in the weeds with specificity in the hook. For fifth and sixth hook ideas:

ALT4: ... that a wide receiver on the Texas A&M Aggies football team wears number 39 to symbolize the tasks or items which Jews should avoid during the Sabbath?

ALT5: ... that American football player Sam Salz wears number 39 to remind him of "lamed tet melachot"?

Bruxton (talk) 15:10, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

ALT4 sounds good to me. The article is improved but the wording still seems a bit weird (for example, "As a young boy Salz never watched college football because it is played on the Shabbat and he is an observant orthodox Jew." and "He was not invited to join the football team so he practiced by himself within sight of the football team and eventually earned a roster spot.") I don't have access to the NYT source; is 2003 mentioned in that article? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 23:18, 28 June 2024 (UTC)