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Changes to Coach templates

I am proposing some changes to the coach templates that exist for every school. So, before I go off and do what may be unpopular, I thought I should ask first. You can see an example of the changes with Template:BuffaloesCoach and how it is different on pages like Willis Keinholz. First, the change would add the vde links to the template header and show/hide capability (don't ask me why there are 2 show/hides, I think it may be a bug). Also, reducing the width of the templates to 90% of the screen width to make it more inline with other templates that may be used on the page. 90% is a fairly standard sizing. Lastly, I propose putting the Category for each school "football coach" into this template. This means we could remove all the categories from the bottom of pages where this template is used. However, it would require the use of DEFAULTSORT: (See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-01-02/Technology report) on these pages, because it would be impossible to include the name in the category for which this defaultsort fixes. The changes to the templates are fairly minor and would take maybe a few minutes for each so they could all be changed in 1 day. However, adding the defaultsort to each coach page and removing the duplicated templates would be a lengthy process. There is no problem I know of from the duplicated category listing. It hasn't caused a problem with the Colorado category yet. If you do know that this causes a problem, please say so. Otherwise, does anyone have a problem with these changes? In whole or in part? --MECU≈talk 17:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Strong support, especially for the use of DEFAULTSORT - for the number of categories most of these coaches find themselves being added to, not having to worry about whether or not we're putting them in correctly (LastName, FirstName) is a definite advantage. Using Firefoxz I only see one of the show/hide links. I'm not really clear on what advantage there is in adding those links, since the template is so small, but it's becoming more and more standard, apparently, to use {{Dynamic navigation box}}, and the added v/d/e links will help when creating new coach articles (off-topic: I wish there was some sort of Javascript tool that would add v/d/e functionality to all templates in an article via right-click or something). Just let us know when to start making these changes! -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 18:08, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Do you know if it's possible to change the color of the v/d/e and show/hide links in addition to the title of the navbox? For example, for {{NittanyLionsCoach}}, the dark blue bgcolor obscures the default normal blue of the links. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 18:13, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Dissent - I'm sorry, but I don't like the way that it looks. Maybe... and I mean MAYBE something at the bottom. But it just adds clutter to a simple navigational tool. CJC47 18:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't mind the clutter. In fact, I went ahead and added added v/d/e links to and reduced the size of a similar template: {{GeorgiaFootballSeasons}}. My only reservation is the variation in sizes of navigational templates where you have pages with several. Will a page like Steve Spurrier wind up with boxes of three different widths? (succession boxes, coach boxes, SEC coaches box).--Tlmclain | Talk 18:45, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Width variance is a good point, but also consider that each of the instances you mentioned have their own "standard" wdith - all succession boxes are a certain width, all coaches boxes will be, etc. So, it's not really as much of a concern looking at different types of boxes, just making sure all boxes of the same type are the same width. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 19:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Question about the DEFAULTSORT. Do we then need to delete the content after the pipe in the categories? Does the DEFAULTSORT override what is already listed? For instance, if we have the DEFAULTSORT on the Paterno article and then there is a cat that is [[Cat:People|Joe Paterno]], does the DEFAULTSORT override it and do we need to delete the |Joe Paterno?--NMajdan•talk 18:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Defaultsort does not override anything. If there is a |lastname, firstname after an item, it will use that. (I believe it says that in the link I provided above? I'm too lazy to look). My proposal isn't to just change 1 or 2 of these. It's to change ALL 119 (or so) of these templates. Thus, on the page I showed the Buffs example above, all 5 of those would look alike. I didn't think about controlling the colors of the vde/show/hide links. That's a good point. For those with dark background this may be a problem. I don't think we can easilly do it, but we could certainly make a copy of the template for our uses and do it that way. such that the font colors would be just another variable and could control all of those. --MECU≈talk 18:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
        • I'd hesitate to create our own version of the template just so we can hack the v-d-e and show/edit links - I imagine that if there was enough discussion about it on the template's talk page, there may be someone who can modify that template to allow for specifying a link color. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 19:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
          • True, but if we did we could simply move them down off the colored bar into the whitespace too. I'm still not clear exactly what CJC47's complaint was. Cluttered where and at what at the bottom of what? --MECU≈talk 19:16, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
      • and to actually answer your question, you don't have to remove it, but if it's not any different to default sort, there's no reason for it. --MECU≈talk 18:57, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Are you proposing only making this change to college coaches or to all football coaches? Because if we left the NFL navboxes alone, then Tlmclain's concern about size variation is valid, especially when you consider an article like the one for Pete Carroll, who has boxes for two NFL teams and one college team. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 19:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - It should be noted that the templates will all be hidden by default when 4 or more of them appear on the page (and I'm not sure of a way to make them be shown by default). An example of them being hidden can be seen at the bottom of my userpage. VegaDark 20:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Okay, so I'm fine with not making them 90% of the with, that's fine. The we'll still match the NFL ones. We can force them to be open regardless of the state of how many other templates, but I think we should almost force them closed so they don't take up space and if someone wants to see it great, if not, there's less clutter.... --MECU≈talk 02:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
  • As a solution to the vde show/hide color problem on dark backgrounds, we could subst: it in those cases and manually change the font colors for those links. We would keep the non subst: in commented out code in case there is an update we could re subst: it easily then. I've asked for the optional field to control the vde show/hide links on the templates talk page, so we'll see how far that goes. If not, the subst: is an option. --MECU≈talk 18:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
    • The response at the navigation template was it can't be done with that template and that we should create our own project meta template. I think this is a good idea as we would also be able to standardize some of the other settings, such as where the titlebar links to, what the text on it says and other such items as allowing color codes easier with the vde and show/hide. I tried using the rugby solution and couldn't get it to work to change the link color. With the template coders we have here in the project, and even the help of the user that replied, we should be able to get this done quite easily. Are there any other features or items that folks think should be included in these templates? Is there anyone still really opposed to adding the vde, hide/show or creating our own project template for this? The same template could be used on the season navigation template and other such templates that are likely to start popping up soon (starting quarterbacks, etc). --MECU≈talk 16:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I've started a template to work on this to see if it's even feasible. Template:CFB navbox. Help is greatly appreciated, especially if you're good with CSS/style/font coloring. --MECU≈talk 18:43, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
      • So the collapseable doesn't seem possible with dark backgrounds, at least, to make it look semi-okay (it's added by javascript after rendering so it's hard to control, and would require getting the javascript changed, I think). So, do we still want the VDE links? Changing to use that and the other category solution (inclusion, requiring DEFAULTSORT) would still be a benefit, I think. --MECU≈talk 19:49, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Any thoughts about Template:CardinalsCoach. The colors (I think) are Black and Red, but someone (I forget who now) complained that black text on red background was hard to read, so they changed it to white. Later, someone changed it to white text on a black background, so now we have black, white and red and it looks, well, ugly (I think). Anyone know the real colors? Anyone else think it's ugly? Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? Maybe make it black background with red text? --MECU≈talk 01:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Yeah, that's pretty awful looking. I'm of the opinion that having the different-colored navboxes is not a great idea simply because of the problems that occur when you put multiple boxes on one page. But, barring that, I would say just make it white text on red background, as red on black will not contrast enough to be usable. It's not really necessary that every single team color is represented in these navboxes, just sufficient enough to differentiate between multiple ones (which, I guess, was the original intent). PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 03:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
{{CFB navbox}} is updated and ready for use with the changes as above and I believe agreed upon solution (both technically and otherwise). Unless anyone objects, I'll apply all the changes across the board to all the coach templates over the next week -- Monday at the earliest. --MECU≈talk 20:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

BCS National Championship Game article

I just noticed that at article was created for next year's BCS NC game. I believe it is too early, but that's not why I'm starting this discussion. The name of the new article is 2008 BCS National Championship Game but the name of this year's article is BCS National Championship Game 2007. One has the year before the game title and one, after. Naturally, these need to be uniform. Before I made any change, I was wondering what the thinking was in having the year after the title as this year's does.--NMajdan•talk 21:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I did a quick check and for all prior years that I saw, the style was <BCS National Championship Game 200X>. So, for the sake of consistency, BCS National Championship Game 2008 would seem to be appropriate. However, we seem to have been using a different format for other bowl games: 2006 Rose Bowl, 2007 Rose Bowl, 2007 Orange Bowl. Perhaps we should use a standard form for all bowls. If we do, putting the date first may be the better solution.--Tlmclain | Talk 21:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
The games are generally known as the 200X ???? Bowl game. The article should list the year first. General125 22:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I actually prefer "<Year> BCS National Championship Game" because it agrees with the rest of the bowl games and it just seems more natural. But I think there was a discussion about this before and they decided to put it after, but I can't remember why. At the least, "<Year> BCS National Championship Game" should be created as a redirect to "BCS National Championship Game <Year>". --MECU≈talk 22:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm going to be bold and move this year's BCS article to the <Year> Bowl format.--NMajdan•talk 22:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
As a side note, it is WAY too early to be making the 2008 page. For all we know they will switch to playoffs this offseason. VegaDark 00:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
It's pretty safe to assume the BCS will last as long as one cycle through the 4 BCS Bowls. Next year, I believe the Sugar Bowl will host the game. I do agree the first BCS National Champ game should be played first before a new article is made. General125 04:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I was considering deleting the two future BCS Championship articles, but then I decided against it. The information contained in the article does not have anything past where the game will be held. If there is a rough consensus to delete, I'll delete it. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 05:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Barnstar

I have created a barnstar - {{subst:College football barnstar|message ~~~~}} - to use for rewarding those who have done substantial work on improving college football articles. The image doesn't look spectacular ... if you are more artistically gifted than I, please be bold and improve the image. I have nominated this barnstar for official sanction at the award proposals page. Please participate there if you would like to see the barnstar added to the "official" registry of barnstars. (Regardless of the outcome of that process, it can be used within our Wikiproject - it just can't be listed on the awards registry.) --BigDT 21:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

What about this image? CJC47 15:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Not bad.--Tlmclain | Talk 15:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Can you do it without the background or antialiasing the barnstar? --BigDT 00:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Changed it... does that work?CJC47 02:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I like it ... I have added it for consideration at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals. --BigDT 05:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Article Quality

Does anyone want to review Tennessee Volunteers football and change the quality ranking? It has gone through a lot of changes, but most of it is my work, so its best that someone else do this. CJC47 16:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

The Assessment Department is setup to handle requests like this. --MECU≈talk 16:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Template Section, new template system idea

I've created a subpage to be the location to go for all templates related to this project. See Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Templates. Please add to the lists as I know I've missed some that I can't remember currently.

Also, I was thinking that maybe a template system, similar to the new CFB Coaching Record system that would be used for stats. It would contain all the categories for each position, such as QB, Punter, Kicker, RB, Defense, etc, but only the appropriate ones would be used, thus keeping it down. But, by having all of them in a single template system, if a QB had a punting stat, or a RB got a QB stat, one could just "turn on" that part of the templates and then add the stats. I would like to keep it non CFB specific so that when a player goes to the NFL it could still be used. Specifically, adding by year and team would be possible with sub-year and sub-team capability. For example, Tom Rouen played for 3 teams in 2002. So I'd like to design it with that in mind. Does anyone know of anything like this that exists? Even if it's just for the QB stats? Any thoughts or ideas before I get started would be appreciated. --MECU≈talk 16:38, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know of any, but I just did a bunch of stats on 2006 Georgia Bulldogs football team. That may give you some ideas.--Tlmclain | Talk 23:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Premature content fork

User:Jordanrschroeder posted the following to the Project page today as a new article:

2007 Florida vs. Ohio State BCS National Championship Game - This is similar to the other 2007 BCS article, but this one gives SPECIFICS about the two teams or will. The other one is a general one that WikiProject sets up every year. This one, as it gets larger, will have information about the coaches, team and what led up to the event. I don't think it should be deleted, it will just be a seperate (DIFFERENT) article. Anyone can help? That would be great.

I am very much opposed to a content fork on this topic at this time. Especially since this is a game that has not even been played. How can a content fork possibly be needed? I am contacting the author of this article on thier talk page. Johntex\talk 18:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I've gone on and made the redirect. This is a brand new article that is largely a copy/paste. Copy/paste moves cause GFDL problems because we can't reliably credit all of the authors. Unless I'm missing something, I don't see any reason not to just be WP:BOLD and do it. --BigDT 20:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree. Why should there be two versions of the same article, with on supposibly going to have "detailed" information and the other not. We're not talking about a Template:main usage. This is just ridiculous. --MECU≈talk 21:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not that worried about it ... it was created by an inexperienced user ... none of us knew exactly what we were doing when we were new. --BigDT 21:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Big Ten

Hi. I am starting up a new WikiProject, the Big Ten WikiProject, and was wondering if anyone in this one was interested. I figured I' ask here since College Football is one of the major things about the conference. Plus, the many college football articles that encompass the Big Ten could probably use some improvement, and we could always combine to try and improve them. If there's no interest my apologies, but hopefully there is. --Wizardman 17:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Small form templates and banners on talk pages

If anybody starts running into talk pages with too many templates and banners at the top, please add the following to the template code:

| small=yes

So the code will now look like:

{{WikiProject College football|class=B|importance=Low|small=yes}}

This replaces the large banners with smaller ones and places them on the right side of the screen. For me details on this, see this page. For an example of this parameter in action, see Talk:Jim Thorpe. I've made all the required code changes to our WikiProject banner. If for some reason you encounter a banner that doesn't have the small form capability, please feel free to make the change yourself (the instructions are in the link above) or you can put a request on my talk page and I'll take care of it.--NMajdan•talk 18:04, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure it worked properly. Everything is small and on the right side, but all the comments are still pushed down and rhere is a big chunk of white space before the table of contents. VegaDark 21:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
What page are you referring to?--NMajdan•talk 21:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Talk:Jim Thorpe. Is there a way to make all the boxes off to the right go alongside the text instead of pusing it down? VegaDark 21:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
It is. On my screen (Firefox 2.0), the templates are aligned on the right and the actual Talk text is directly left of it, much like our WPCFB template above.--NMajdan•talk 21:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm using Internet Explorer, and both on the Jim Thorpe talk page and this talk page there is a big, annoying white space before the TOC. VegaDark 21:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Easy fix: Use Firefox. --MECU≈talk 23:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

NCAA Resource on Infractions

I came across this website at the NCAA [1] where you can search for the major infractions of a program. I searched for "COLORADO" and under sport selected "Football" and it gave me all 4 reports on major infractions Colorado has had. This could be very useful for articles going for FA like Oklahoma. Hope it helps. --MECU≈talk 22:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a good find. I'll try to incorporate some of those findings in the Oklahoma Sooners football article. There's nothing on the current OU investigation as of now.--NMajdan•talk 23:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

AFD of 2010 BCS National Championship Game

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2010 BCS National Championship Game. --MECU≈talk 20:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I nominated the 2009 article as well for the same reasons as the 2010 article.--NMajdan•talk 16:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you both for pointing these out. Consensus seemed clear. Therefore, I redirected both articles to BCS National Championship Game. I put a note on their Talk pages saying they should be created after the previous year's game is played, or as substantial new material becomes available. Johntex\talk 18:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I would like to see some discussion around whether bowl games should be named to include the sponsor name in the title of the bowl. The discussion is at Talk:NCAA football bowl games, 2006-07#Sponsor_names. Johntex\talk 07:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Coaching history template

I'm working on a template for a coach's year-by-year record and need some feedback - would it be better to have a column for the coach's team and conference (especially for multiple coaches) or to have a sub-header? -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 01:20, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you talking about something different that [2]? I'm not really clear what you're talking about. Can you show us your working project? --MECU≈talk 02:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
No, that's the template I'm working on. Sorry for the confusion - I'm going to resume work on the template after I finish watching the Sugar Bowl and I'll post what I have so far after that. My basic premise is that if a coach has coached for multiple teams, there needs to be a way, within the table, to differentiate between each team coached, and I'm looking to determine which way is more effective - having a row spanning the entire table that sections the table by teams, or having a column for each year to specify the team. Like I said, I'll post examples as well as a 'working' template later tonight. Thanks! -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 03:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've got a very rough working template up at User:PSUMark2006/Sandbox. Feedback is welcome. Basically, every column is optional except for Year and Overall. The rows indicating team coached and record for that team are also optional. I'll work on documentation and usage for the individual template parts tomorrow. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 07:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

That looks fantastic! I'd like to see it with some longer-tenured coaches, just to make sure, but great work thus far. Thanks! --SuperNova |T|C| 08:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Your template uses the AP Poll. That should be optional or changeable. As a WikiProject, I still say we should stick with the Coaches. Also, when you start getting into older seasons, who is to say what poll to use? What if I put this template on Fielding Yost's page? I may want to use Helm's. But overall, a very good start.--NMajdan•talk 13:05, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
The footer template now has an added parameter to specify a poll source (or "no" to remove that footnote altogether). -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 15:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Wow. That does look awesome. Nice work. Though you should remove the "NA" from the rankings. It was agreed upon when discussing the schedule table that "NA" wouldn't be used if there was no ranking. I also don't know if I like that orange color, but we could change that latter since it's a template. But I like everyone else generally! --MECU≈talk 14:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I just took the information straight from the existing table for Jim Tressel, but I'll make that change on the 'sample.' -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 15:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I added the template to Bob Stoops looks good. However, with the 'championship' variable, you have 'national' and 'undefeated'. What if they are both, are many national champions are undefeated. I'm assuming national trumps undefeated but was wondering your reasoning with having undefeated at all.--NMajdan•talk 15:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I had seen notation on other similar tables (can't seem to recall at the moment where) that indicated undefeated seasons, but, you're right, it doesn't seem like there would be many undefeated teams who are not either conference or national champions. I'll remove it for now. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 15:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I also added the template to Mark Richt and it looks good. But now I have a question. With regard to conference championship games, how do they impact conference records? Is the conference record reported in the template the record before the championship or after? For example, during the regular season, Georgia was 6-2 in the SEC. They won the SEC championship that year so, would Richt's conference record be 6-2 or 7-2? I know its a dumb question, but I could see either result.--Tlmclain | Talk 16:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

You shouldn't be making that decision, it should be from another source. The whole WP:NOR issue there. The College Football data warehouse would be a good source, or ESPN if it's current. Also, I put this on Dan Hawkins (coach) and it looks good. I copied the template usages from the sandbox page, and I'm wondering why there are the bgcolor and fontcolor for the start template, because they don't seem to be used. But it looks good and is easy to use. Good work. --MECU≈talk 17:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry for the confusion - I had originally planned to have the ability to change the coloring for the team sub-header, but decided against it. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 17:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
No problem. Could we add an option to Template:CFB Coaching Record End that makes the BCS symbol optional? I put the schedule on Homer H. Norton and it seems silly to have BCS on it since he was a coach until 1947 and the BCS wasn't invented for another 50 years. I'd like something like "BCS=no", and otherwise it would add it. I know having negatives in a template is difficult, but it'd be the best I think. Also, please add the blank forms for all the templates, it would make it easier for new people to the template to use. Still, I'm impressed by this template. --MECU≈talk 20:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I added a parameter in {{CFB Coaching Record End}} to remove the BCS footnote. I also added blanks for each of the templates and started a page within the WikiProject at Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Using the career coaching record template to demonstrate various uses of the templates. I am working on ways to allow for the removal of the "optional" columns (team, conference, bowls, etc.) without "breaking" the rest of the table that presently has hard-coded colspans, but for now the only way for everything to work correctly is to use all of the available columns. I'll add examples when I get a chance to figure out the best way to give editors more flexibility over this. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 21:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I think that subpage would be better served either on one of the template pages or on a subpage of one of the template pages (such as Template:CFB Coaching Record Start/Using the career coaching record template. And why is the 'Team' column optional? I would think that should be required. I mean, the coach will always have a team, correct?--NMajdan•talk 21:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough, I'll make that move. I felt that if an editor is going to use the {{CFB Coaching Record Team}} template, it would be redundant to also list the team on each subsequent row. I'm more than happy to keep that column as required, however, if others disagree. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 21:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Ahhhh.....ok, that is why you were making it optional. I guess you could do whatever you want. I see what you're saying about only listing the school on the first occurrence then leaving it blank until the end or at the beginning of a new school, but my personal preference would be to always have the school. But again, thats my personal preference, do whatever you think is best for the template. Or let's get some more opinions.--NMajdan•talk 22:05, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
(reset)I put it on Rick Neuheisel. Can we make the "endyear=" in Template:CFB Coaching Record Team optional? Or make it not default to "present"? Colorado switched conferences at the end of Neuheisel's first year so I covered that by reusing the Template:CFB Coaching Record Team. But having 1995-1995 looks silly and if I leave it blank it says 1995-present. Maybe something so that "endyear=single" or "endyear=none" would then not put the - and second year? Otherwise, it's still working awesome! --MECU≈talk 01:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I updated {{CFB Coaching Record Team}} to accept "single" as a parameter for "endyear" which will permit display of the value for "startyear" only. I also updated the Rick Neuheisel article to demonstrate usage. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 04:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
On Mark Richt, it is listing his conference record (confrecord parameter) as his overall record at Georgia, when his record at Georgia should be the same as his overall overall, since he's only ever worked there. It's not printing anything for conference record. Bob Stoops does the same thing. I don't know anything about editing templates, or I'd look into it myself, but I'll just report it here instead. Thanks for the excellent work so far though. --SuperNova |T|C| 02:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry about that - it should be fixed now. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 04:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
With a few changes, this template system could be used also for year-by-year results for a team, by replacing the team column with coach column, the team entry "<team> (<conf>) (Year-Year)" to just empty or "<Conference>" and the "at <team>" end closure to "Under <Coach>". Would probably need to make new templates for easiness (or reworking the existing ones for a variable to switch to this style). This way, all the data on tables could easily be added, cut and paste practically, to team articles to improve them. I hope I was clear enough, if not I can give more examples and explain in more details what I mean. --MECU≈talk 21:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I think that's a great idea. Before I get to work on it, though, one thought - if we're going to expand the use of the template as you described, are we going to want to rename it either now or in the future? "CFB Coaching Record" doesn't really describe your intended use on team pages - maybe we need to change it to "CFB Yearly Record"? -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 22:03, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Does it have to be CFB? Whynot just "Football Yearly Record"? See Chuck Fairbanks it would be very useful to be able to have some NFL entries on this. I will limit myself to football stuff, we don't need to have every sport played under this (though that would be awesome!). Then the NFL folks could use it as well. --MECU≈talk 23:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Given the Bowl Game columns, yeah, I'd say it's pretty college football specific.
Actually, that's one of my few issues with what is a generally kick-ass template; the weight given to bowl games. There are three separate columns to cover the bowl name, opponent and result - are all those really that important in a summary table? Can they be consolidated somehow? Of the three, opponent could be pretty easily dropped IMHO; let people click through to the bowl's article to find out the detail.
Something I'd really like to see is a final free-form Notes column to cover random items of note, like Division Champion, Walter Camp Coach of the Year, or SEC Coach of the Year, or whatever random stuff that is notable.
Finally, a pet peeve for me is that the column widths are being driven by the header (label) width rather than the data width, resulting in a lot of wasted space. I'd love to see some effort at either reducing the header label on Final Ranking especially, or changing to two lines of header text (less preferable) to fix those issues. Thanks! --AUTiger ʃ talk/work 23:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
All great points. I'll look into consolidating the Bowl columns - namely, probably a note on the template page suggesting that the editor truncate the bowl name (for example, Fiesta instead of Fiesta Bowl) - and removing the opponent name. I think we'd be fine reducing Final Ranking to Rank, especially since we have the explanatory footnote. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:12, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for listening and for your hard work. AUTiger ʃ talk/work 05:39, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
While you template gurus are at it, how about something year by year for rivalry games? Templates for games like those in the Bedlam Series or The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party could be handy, particularly if they could be designed with color so that you could tell at a glance who won in a particular year. Could be a challenge though - some rivalries alternate years and others are at neutral sites.--Tlmclain | Talk 23:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Are you thinking adding a column for a team's yearly record to indicate the outcome of that team's big rivalry game each year (as was the case on the old table for Jim Tressel's OSU record) or are you thinking about a new template altogether just for the series history of a rivalry game? -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:32, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I was headed off down the tangent path mentioned by MECU when he said that this template system could be used also for year-by-year results for a team. I don't think I would list the year-by-year results of a team in a team article (to me, the XXXX XXXX football Team should be a little more summary in nature), but I would be interested in creating a year by year table showing the results of rivalry games. However, since I think it might look best if it were color coded to the winning team's colors, a template may not be the way to go. On the other hand, when you start mixing team colors, the resulting blend of colors could get hideous. I don't know - just a thought.--Tlmclain | Talk 23:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't know, it's certainly possible to add that functionality to the yearly template - we would just have to add a 'rivalry' parameter of some sort that would strip out all of the other columns like bowl/ranking, etc. Are there other columns besides year, coach, outcome, and (possibly) location that would be useful? I'll also consider adding two parameters for the color of each team. Hopefully I'll have something after I get back from watching the title game tonight. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 00:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Right now, all I can think of is designating the home & away team (even the neutral site games tend to alternate home & away teams), year, coach, location, score. You'd have to come up with something for ties (maybe just leave it with a white background). Optional fields might include ranks (for more recent games). Some folks might want to include the records of the teams and/or the running totals, steaks or maybe just a note field. I think the best thing to do is to start with something with the basics and then add to it if others have ideas.--Tlmclain | Talk 00:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

While I'm working on this, I had a thought - how should we work in a coach's record if, for example Nick Saban or Charlie Weis, they had both CFB and NFL coaching stints? -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd say have two separate tables - college table in a college coaching career section and NFL table in an NFL section. AUTiger ʃ talk/work 05:39, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Makes sense. I noticed that WikiProject National Football League doesn't have any sort of standardized format, either. It might be worth suggesting over there in the near future, once both of our seasons wrap up and we have more time to devote to cleaning up and maintaining. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 05:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I put the NFL years into this template on Chuck Fairbanks and I think it looks okay. Though "Bowl" doesn't apply. If he hadn't gone CFB->NFL->CFB, I think splitting them is just fine. --MECU≈talk 17:17, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

New coaching history suggestion

Since the final rankings in the AP Poll and the Coaches Poll sometime differ, it would be nice to have the option to include both in records after 1949. That way, the table could show split #1 votes; situations were the team was ranked in one poll, but not the other; and other discrepancies. For full functionality through the years, each ranking column and associated footnote would have to be optional (you could list 0, 1 or 2 polls). What do you think?--Tlmclain | Talk 17:24, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that's doable. Presently the only changeable parameter is to display or not to display the ranking column, so it shouldn't be too difficult to change that to a parameter listing the number of ranking columns, as well as optional parameters for the two polls (which would default to AP and Coaches if left blank. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 17:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I think I've got this one figured out too. See here. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

New templates - CFB Yearly Record

College Football
Yearly Record Table

I've recreated the yearly record table templates under a more generic name - "Yearly Record" and added much of the functionality discussed above: the ability to display either a team's record under different coaches, a coach's record with different teams, and the series history of a rivalry game (still in progress). I'm working on adding more flexibility in displaying poll info as well as finishing up the rivalry features. The documentation on each template page needs revised, but I have examples of each of the three main uses on the examples page. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 21:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Once again, thanks for all the hard work - the usage examples are particularly helpful. I have bumped into an issue that may be easy to solve. Can we set it up so that the font color can also be an option on rivalry pages? I'm still fooling around with something for the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry and have found that the use of UGA red and AU orange is just too much. However, UGA red and AU blue would work, but we'll need a different font color for the AU years. You can see what I'm talking about at my test page.--Tlmclain | Talk 13:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

University of Pittsburgh

The University of Pittsburgh Panthers article is a mess - I'm rather unsure where exactly to start helping to clean it up. If there's anyone here more familiar with the university or even just Big East athletics in general, it would help a great deal, since I'm mainly going to be focusing on cleaning up formatting and fact checking. The athletics section of the UPitt article leaves a lot to be desired, as well, especially in terms of NPOV. I know that we're mainly focusing on CFB here (I'm going to mention this on WikiProject College Basketball as well, but since to my knowledge there's no overarching college athletics project or coordinated effort, I figured I'd toss this out here. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 03:38, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:UODucksCoach

Template:UODucksCoach has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. This template was listed along with {{OregonDucksCoach}} on the master team table as a duplicate - all relevant articles now link to {{OregonDucksCoach}} so this template can be safely deleted. --PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


2007 team pages

moved from main page

The first preseason top 25 ranking (that I've seen) is in and reported here. Each of these teams should have a 2007 team page and, as of this post, 20 out of 25 still need pages. I know that it is very early in the season, but why not get a jump on it?--Tlmclain | Talk 13:06, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

AfD of 1987 Fiesta Bowl Play-By-Play

Located at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1987 Fiesta Bowl Play-By-Play VegaDark 05:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

All the Mugshots gone

Sometime, without warning or discussion, all the fair use Coaching pictures were removed. Is this reversable? CJC47 15:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I had uploaded many, many, many (50, 60?) of these and had them all deleted as they were all classified as "replaceable fair use." The images can be un-deleted, but if it's an existing head coach, they will be "replaceable" and thus not useable under fair use. The best option is to search [3] under advanced search and checking all three boxes under "CreativeCommons" so they will be useable on Wikipedia. If you find an image, upload them to commons. I kept the few coach images that were from past teams. For example, a picture now of Dan Hawkins at Boise State wouldn't be replaceable since he's at Colorado now. Those fair use images we could use, though free would still be preferred. --MECU≈talk 16:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Don't you think a slower move would have been advisable? All of these articles now are pictureless with red links in every infobox. CJC47 16:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
No I don't. The policy is very clear on this issue. Pictureless isn't a problem. Some people have problems with red links, but I think they're fine, as they encourage someone to upload an image. Who knows, we may get a free image out of it. I'm fine with removing the red link, but I won't specifically edit a page just to remove the red link. If I'm doing something else on the page I will. --MECU≈talk 17:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I personally think the deletion was ill-advised. Wikipedia needs to focus more on being an informative encyclopedia, including making legally-permissible use of fair use photos, rather than over-crusading on a free content mission. We have commons to champion the cause of totally free images. Also, if the images were actually deleted, that cannot be undone. Unlike deleting an article (which keeps the article and its history visible to administrators) deleting an image gets rid of it completely. It cannot be brought back unless someon re-uploads it. Hopefully the climate at Wikipedia will change back to being more permissive of appropriately used fair-use images and the images can be re-uploaded. Johntex\talk 00:56, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
The biggest problem is that too many people were taking "promo photo" to mean "any photo I find on the internet". If a photo is legitimately, actually from a media guide or press kit, that's one thing ... but 99% of the photos in that category were essentially "I found it on the internet therefore it's a promophoto". --BigDT 01:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you that those types of photos should be deleted no question. However, there are too many people who want to go to the other extreme and say that we should not use any promophotos.
This image: Image:Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel with his team.jpg, which I took with a long-range zoom lense from in the stands, is not a suitable replacement for a photo taken by a professional photographer on behalf of the university's PR department.
The universities specifically post promophotos to have them used - we should do so. To avoid copyright issues, we should stick to images posted by the actual institution, and not taken from Associate Press or other websites. Johntex\talk 01:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Amen... Almost every coach has a photo put out by the SID deparment that you can see nose hairs in. They are for promotional use, and are used by news outlets at the like. To use grainy photos when the others are available just doesn't seen to make sense. CJC47 02:29, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Images can now be undeleted. They have been able for months. You can request undeletion by the same methods as undeletion of an article. Free images are better than stock promophotos by the universities. In some cases, they were so small to be of little value anyways. Look at Gary Barnett. That's a free image and it's MORE interesting that a stock photo of him posing for the promo press photo. --MECU≈talk 02:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry to disagree again. If the photo of Gary Barnett was from a PC or practice or a game, I can see the intrest. Him standing in the parking lot wearing gear of a team thathe doesn't coach for anymore or didn't gain fame with makes the photo seem a bit out of place in the article. In my opinion, that picture would make the article better if it was moved to the discussion of his time at Colorado, and a stock photo was the infobox picture. CJC47 02:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Mecu, thanks for correcting me about images being undeletable now. I didn't know that. So much changes here all the time, it is hard to keep up.
Regardless, I still disagree with your assertion. Free images are not inherently better. If someone takes a free image and wants to add it to the article, more power to them. I have certainly contributed (I think) my share of free images and I have nothing against free images.
However, it should be up to the editors of the article to decide which picture is better, or if they both contribute something to the article and both should be kept. They are in the best position to judge what will be most informative for the article. With regard to the Barnett photo, again I agree with CJC47. The background of that Barnett photo is very distracting. The average publicity photo would be much better.
Our articles should not suffer and languish without photos when perfectly usable publicity photos are available. Johntex\talk 04:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Has anyone ever considered asking their SID if they would release a photo of the coach under the GFDL? When Jimbo first initiated the process that led to the end of promo photos, his reasoning was that Wikipedia had grown to the point where we could now ask for this. I don't if this theory has actually been tested anywhere yet. It's one thing for someone of borderline notability ... they will jump through any hoop for the potential advertising ... but it would be interesting to see if a major school would cooperate and release a photo of their coach. --BigDT 05:01, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I've not only considered it, I've tried it. I have contacted not only the UT athletics department and also the student newspaper (The Daily Texan) and two other newspapers that cover UT sports. None were willing to release any photos under GFDL. If I were them, I wouldn't do it either. The GFDL allows for any modification of a photo. Why should they give us their photos when we (or those who re-use content from Wikipedia) could legally edit them to make the people all look like they had a skin disease or were speaking at a pro-nazi rally or something? The UT atletic department did say we could use any image on their website under fair-use - not that we legally need their permission, but they were very cooperative about fair use. Johntex\talk 05:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I've thought about that ... and that's one of the reasons there's no picture of me on my user page. I wonder what the legality of that would be ... because even if the image is free, you still have certain rights to what's done with your likeness that are independent of what the license on the photo is. I would like to try it with a smaller, potentially more internet friendly school. Syracuse, for instance, has a very forward-thinking AD. --BigDT 05:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Here is another prime example of what is wrong with deleting promophoto images. Another image I took with a zoom lense, Image:Colt McCoy on a quarterback keeper vs Rice - 2006-09-16.jpg, was cited as justification for removing this promophoto from Colt McCoy. I'm somewhat fond of the photo I took, but it shows him in full uniform and helmet from across the field - you can't see anything of what he looks like. The fair-use promophoto should have been kept along with the free action shot. It would make a better article. Johntex\talk 05:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Yeah ... I've often wished I had a better camera. I got a pretty decent shot of Sean Glennon, but I can't come close to getting decent shots of on-field action. --BigDT 05:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
      • I love my camera set-up. I have the Canon digital rebel XT and several lenses. For games, I use a 70-300 meter zoom that is fairly compact for that amount of telephoto. Compact is needed because different stadiums (and different gate guards within a stadium) have different ideas about what kind of lenses they will allow. Unfortunately, one of the compromises of that zoom is that it is not that fast, which means it is sometimes hard to get crisp telephoto action shots - especially at night. I have higher quality telephoto lenses, but they are bigger and would be impossible to get into the stadium. Johntex\talk 15:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
"Perfectly useable publicity photos" isn't true. Wikipedia has decided and it's policy is that these images aren't useable here. I agree they are probably useable legally, but Wikipedia has decided they don't want that. I agree that your Colt McCoy isn't a good replacement of a promophoto showing his face, but that image doesn't have to. It's still possible to find or create a free image that would show his face in a suitably replaceable manner. See Mason Crosby. The free image in the infobox shows his face reasonably well. It's from the side, but you get the point.I wouldn't be opposed to getting another image that shows his face better, but for now, it's suitable, especially since it's in compliance with Wikipedia's policies. The only argument I can't defend against is m:eventualism. Eventually, every head coach will be fire or retired and then the promophoto headshot because useable under Wikipedia, since it can't be replaced anymore because the coach likely won't wear school items, and probably won't be freely publicly available. Further, in 40 years, is a free image of Dan Hawkins going to represent how he looked while he coached at Colorado? Would you want a picture of Joe Pa from his early days as a coach there? Would the current image of Joe Pa be suitable for an article talking about him coaching in the 1970s? (And there is sufficient material to have a single article on that topic, let alone the 60s, 80s, 90s, 2000s). In conjunction with this, try to find an image of Dan Hawkins at Boise State now. I found one or two that could be used under fair use, but most were deleted from the servers (I found them via google search) or the image had been altered to make it unusable (one newspaper had made the entire image so blurry it was useless). Shouldn't we be able to keep a promophoto of Dan Hakwins as a Boise State Coach since eventually he will be fired/retired/dead and that will be impossible to then be replaceable? My only guess is that the thought goes that by not using the promophotos now, perhaps we get a free image of Dan Hawkins as head coach at Colorado that would invalidate the use of using the promophoto. That works for all future terms, but what happens for past images? What happens if we never do get a free image of Dan Hawkins at Colorado? It then becomes difficult to find an image. But no one ever said editing Wikipedia would be easy. --MECU≈talk 16:52, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
The problem, and my main point of contention, is that your desired result of all the promo photos being replaced by user photos has not frequently happened, and I don't think it would happen. On the scale we are talking about: EVERY coach and EVERY player, photos will not come. We won't get free images. I could go up to Peyton Manning at a practice and ask for a picture, but he's going to do the normal stand close and smile. I could get an action shot of a player like Erik Ainge (I did), but unless I have a super camera to lug around Neyland Stadium, it's just not going to happen. If a great, free image is found, then go with that. If its not, this policy will lead to blank pages. Who at Wikipedia decided that anyway? CJC47 18:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but the short term issue of not having pictures for every CFB person RIGHT NOW' is not justification enough. Wikipedia was not built in a day, neither will be the WP:CFB. What we should be pushing especially in the offseason, is to get more editors, and particularly photographers involved in the project, and for those of us already involved to think outside the box on aquiring new images. Games are not the only places to get pics of players and coaches. They do make other appearances, at alum/QB club meetings, fan days during spring and August, etc, etc.. Spring training will be coming up very soon (AU starts in late Feb.) and many teams are pretty loose on public access for those practices. Personally, I intend to make an effort to hit as many spring games/fan days as possible for schools close to me. And just because there is no pic, doesn't mean the person's article will be blank or have no value. AUTiger ʃ talk/work 23:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
My point is that the current Wikipedia policy is bad policy. It hasn't always been this way. We used to happily accept promo photos. This being a wiki, hopefully the policy will one day change back and promophotos will again be welcome. Johntex\talk 21:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, I'm tossing my hat into the ring on this. Frank Beamer's picture was deleted as being replaceable. There are three users on flickr who have good pictures of him, but all three are marked as all rights reserved. I have messaged all three, asking them if they would be willing to release cropped versions of their images under the GFDL. I call it a test case ... if I get good response from this, let's try it for more coaches/players/whatever. If not, then, well, I wasted 20 minutes. Such is life. --BigDT 01:23, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
New free picture found of Greg Schiano. I think this is way more interesting than the standard pub photo. Sure, you can't see his full face, but we're not taking mug shots here either. --MECU≈talk 17:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Naming conventions of notable football games

We need a standard naming system for the games in Category:Notable college football games (soon to be renamed to Category:College football games, it looks like). I recently created 1985 Oregon State vs. Washington football game, which I think is the naming convention we should use. Other games in the category include:

I propose we rename the four above articles to be "(year) (Common school name) vs. (common school name) football game". I am not sure which school should be listed first, but I used alphabetical (i.e. Oregon State is before Washington alphabetically) when I made the OSU vs. UW game article. Another possibility would be to always use the home or away team first. If we used the home team first the OSU vs. UW game article would also have to be renamed. Also, as for other games in that category, I am fine with leaving them under their common name (i.e. Fifth Down instead of 1990 Colorado vs. Missouri football game). VegaDark 21:30, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I like your idea. I support putting away team first. So, I would support the format 1985 Washington vs. Oregon State football game. I think we should stick with "vs." instead of "at" because then we don't have to change the convention for neutral site games.
There is also the question of two teams playing twice in the same season. For example, in 2005 - Texas faced Colorado twice, once in the regular season and once in the Big 12 Championship. In that case, if both meritted thier own articles, I would say the regular season would follow the convention above: 2005 Colorado vs. Texas football game, and the other would be named according to the title of the game: 2005 Big 12 Championship Game. Johntex\talk 21:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Agree with that. Also, OSU was the away team so if we went with away first the name wouldn't have to be changed for that one. For neutral site non-bowl or championship games we can list the schools alphabetically. Also, I found another one that needs to be changed: Nevada vs. Weber State. VegaDark 21:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with all of the above. Regular season games should be <year> <away team> vs. <home team> which postseason games should be <year> <conferences championship> game or <year> <bowl game>.--NMajdan•talk 22:30, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
My only small point of conflict is I think regular-season neutral-site games shoud still follow <year> <away> vs. <home>. (Not alphabetically order.) Neutral site games such as Red River Shootout still have a designated home and away team. This would keep our naming consistent with the linescore, any photos showing white uniforms, etc. Johntex\talk 01:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
All articles in Category:College football games are now renamed accordingly. Someone may want to double check to verify I got everything correct. VegaDark 03:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Division I-Bowl Subdivision

I will be going through and moving all pages for 2006 season-related articles that still say Division I-A to Division I-BS. The Division I-A/I-AA designation has been retired and has been replaced with the Division I-Bowl Subdivision/I-Championship Subdivision. I'll wait about an hour before making these changes to allow other editor's to voice their opposition, if there is one.--NMajdan•talk 15:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I started the process and its proving more indepth than I realized. I cleared out Category:2007 NCAA Division I-A football season and put it up for speedy deletion (all articles moved to Category:2007 NCAA Division I-BS football season). Now I need to do the same thing for the 2006 category which is more populated. It is very important to stop using the Division I-A name and start using Division I-BS in articles. Just remember that 2005 and before = Division I-A and 2006 and after = Division I-BS.--NMajdan•talk 16:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Is everyone ok with this change to the 2006 articles?
Is it actually referred to as I-BS? I just can't see the NCAA allowing BS to be used. Is the official title "Division I Bowl Subdivision" and people just generally refer to it as I-BS (like ESPN)? I have a hard time with this change since it doesn't seem to be readily used anywhere, except here and NCAA promoted. --MECU≈talk 17:01, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
"Division I-BS" gets only two g-hits from non-Wikipedia sources, both from message boards and both sarcastic. Every NCAA source I see (ex. [4]) says it should be "Division I FBS". So I think if it is changed at all, it should be "Division I FBS", although honestly, my first preference is to go back to "Division I-A" because that's what just about everyone in the world calls it. --BigDT 23:40, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Useful template

This template: Template:American football uniform may be useful if we could add text and numbers to the jersey. The helmet may not be needed as we can get a good image of the helmet logo/design from elsewhere and use it like the NFL pages do. If someone wants to work on this, it's been around for a month and not used at all. --MECU≈talk 16:28, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm....interesting. I knew they had something like this for Soccer. I may try this out.--NMajdan•talk 17:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
I added images for a few different number/jersey color combinations here, using the same techniques used for Template:Football kit, such as transparency. Generally with the soccer uniforms, they ignore details (e.g., sponsors, badges, team names) in favor of colors. For a first cut, the helmet could just be the main color of the helmet. Again, for soccer clubs (which is a very successful project), the template is used to do a very simple rendering of the uniform, and then there are other elements to see details of the uniform, such as the club's badge. Rolando 01:15, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

On a similar note, any thoughts on using the NCAA helmet images at The Helmet Project? The guy's given his permission to use them and I think their use would certainly add some eye candy to the various team infoboxes and help delineate this project from the standard swill. My apologies if this subject has already previously been broached, but I couldn't find any mention of the subject. Pepto gecko 02:54, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

That article specifically states "Commercial use of the images is NOT permitted, because the various colleges and professional teams own all such rights to their respective logos" so I would not use them.↔NMajdan•talk 17:12, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I saw a similar discusson on User talk:Football79 between Football79 and MECU where they seem to approve of their use. Just curious, but is the use of helmets w/ logos different than the use of school logos for illustrative purposes? Pepto gecko 20:37, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, their use would have to be under "Fair Use" and thus fair use rationale would need to be provided upon upload. Edit: Looking at the talk page above, it appears Mecu already stated the helmet images would have to be fair use, so he concluded the same as I.↔NMajdan•talk 21:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Yup. See Denver Broncos for how the NFL Project does it. Not that the way they do it is the way we should, but just as an example. It's hard coded into their template even so someone even gave it some pre-thought as to the naming convention of the filenames. Football79 wanted to do this as a big project and I was letting him lead, but if others wanted to as well I'm fine with that. --MECU≈talk 22:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Portal

We are in the process of improving the Portal and would appreciate any help.--NMajdan•talk 15:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Please nominate and/or support articles and pictures for the Portal. February is fast approaching. Portal:College football/Selected Content/Nominations.--NMajdan•talk 20:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Another month is coming. Any input would be appreciated.↔NMajdan•talk 22:25, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

AFDs

Would anyone be opposed to a subpage off the main project page where AFDs could specifically be listed, then folks could watch that page and it would showup better in the watchlist? Only bad thing is if people don't watchlist it. --MECU≈talk 19:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure. I would definitely watch list it if we had one, but my watch list is so long - I may be more prone to notice it here. Overall I'm neutral on the idea. Johntex\talk 20:39, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Are there that many CFB-related AFDs at any one time that would make having an entirely new page necessary? Otherwise I think using this talk page or having a section on the main project page is sufficient. PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 20:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:Linescore Amfootball

Template:Linescore Amfootball now calculates the total values for the home and road teams. This makes RT= and HT= values useless. You can remove these fields when you see them and are making another edit, don't bother just going around and removing them, as inclusion doesn't harm anything, it's just a waste of space. Also, for those that don't know, the template can handle up to three overtime periods automatically, just by adding R5/H5, R6/H6 and R7/H7 as appropriate. It can be expanded if needed too. I thought I'd mention this now while some folks are setting up the 2007 season pages. --MECU≈talk 20:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

That's great! Thanks for the work on this. Let me pose a question to everyone here: when setting up the 2007 season articles, is it appropriate to include the "Game recaps" section in a skeletal format, with subheadings for each games and empty line scores? On the 2007 Penn State Nittany Lions football team article, I've done that but also commented the entire section out so that we can "include" each game as it's played. Others have prepared articles with the same sort of format but with the empty game summaries/line scores uncommented. Any thoughts? PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 04:03, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Semi-recent discussion

I just found this today: Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Sports results. The discussion is semi-recent and has mostly died down. This is just an FYI. Johntex\talk 16:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Bit of a rant and a challenge

Vince Young used to be a GA for this project but it (rightly) got demoted. I was thinking about trying to finish up the work to bring the article back to GA status. In re-reading the article, I realized that of 30 references in the article, 30 pertain either to his time at UT or to the draft. There have been zero references added since he joined the Titans.

So I figured, well, there will be some references I can borrow from Tennessee Titans. Nope. Completely unreferenced. There is a page for 2006 Tennessee Titans season - completely unreferenced. These are not exactly obscure topics where references are hard to come by. Not only are these articles supposedly watched over by the NFL project, they are tagged by the Tennessee wikiproject also. I tagged both articles as unreferenced and left notes for both WikiPorjects.

I am now a bit discouraged about trying to fix the article. I feel the article may just fall back out of GA status once a new season starts if the NFL editors don't do a better job. I apologize if this ruffles any feathers as I know some editors here work on the NFL project as well. This may be a completely untypical example. Maybe the NFL pages are usually better than this with references. I just checked Bret Farve and it has lots of references. Michael Vick has a total of nine references covering both college and pro. That is pretty poor for such a famous player, in my opinion. Dusty Mangum, who never went pro, has 5 references. Much to my shame, Chris Simms has zero references - none from college or pro. Rest assured I will fix that porblem.

Anyway, I would like to use this to make two points: (1) College football players can have articles that are as well referenced as the pro players. This might be an interesting point in future discussions about deletion. (2) We all need to do a better job about citing our sources. These are not exactly obscure topics where it is hard to find references.

This being the off-season, we have time to improve the quality of our work. I'd like to challenge us all to adhere to a higher standard of referencing. It will make our project look good and it will help to eliminate any "fan-boy" aura that may surround sports articles in the minds of some editors. Best, Johntex\talk 16:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Proper referencing style, not just the mere presence of references, is a bit of a pet Wiki-peeve of mine as well. For me, that means more than just inline external links like this [5] but using a consistent citation style. That becomes the biggest challenge: in our haste to make sure articles are well-referenced, we need to make sure that those references make sense and are usable both to future editors but also to casual browsers. I've been working on the Favre article and it's great to see the work we're doing there is being viewed as at least some sort of a model. PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 04:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Conference championship in team season schedule

As we create 2007 team articles, I propose we list the championship game for all teams playing in a conference featuring a championship. We would list this game until that team becomes mathmatically eliminated to play in the game. Reasons:

  1. It is helpful to the reader because they will likely want to know when the game is if their team is still in the running.
  2. It gives one more opportunity to "build the web" by linking to a related article.
  3. It is what most teams do on their own web pages so we would be consistent with the outside world.
  4. It is what we did last year (for articles I worked on at least) so we would be consistent with our past actions.

Thoughts? Johntex\talk 23:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Seancp 02:26, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I was criticized for having the CCG in the Oklahoma schedule at the beginning of last season. Nevertheless, I agree. The CCG is typically on the schedules for most schools. I'll add it to the OU schedule for 2007.↔NMajdan•talk 13:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I think that was our reasoning last year as well, but it didn't fly for some reason. Personally, I prefer always having the CCG on the schedule, even for teams that can't make it. z4ns4tsu\talk 14:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
This makes sense to me - still bitter about the fact my conference doesn't have a championship, but I digress. Just for clarity's sake, it might be helpful to indicate somehow that this game is listed on the condition that the team is eligible to attend. PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 03:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Yet another player AFD

Greg Olsen (Football) has been proposed for deletion here.

Let me launch a trial balloon here ... does anyone think we should come up with our own notability guideline? WP:FOOTBALL (the other kind of football) has a discussion page here. We might want to come up with our own guideline ... regardless of how restrictive or lenient it is, at least we could have something to point to and try and get some consistency so we can try and curtail the random players being AFD'd or even speedied here and there. Any thoughts? --BigDT 14:36, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

This was tried before. See [6] and [7]. I'd still support having something, even if we leave it under this WikiProject and tag it as a guideline, though see input from outside folks as well. --MECU≈talk 15:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Here ... check out Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Notability. This is really what we need. Feel free to edit/add/delete/whatever. I'm not picky on what we decide - we just need something written down so that we can be consistent in our application of it. --BigDT 15:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Its a good idea in theory, but it has been tried before. What would you vote if there was an AFD for Paul Thompson (football)? By the criteria specified thus far, he would be deleted. But what criteria would need to be specified that wouldn't also include many players who probably do not need articles?↔NMajdan•talk 15:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Maybe we could add, "well-known starting player for a BCS team" or some such thing. Honestly, though, I think Paul Thompson is right on the edge of acceptable. If he is going to be drafted, then ok, but otherwise, there isn't really any information in that article that couldn't be folded into a team year page for the one year that he played. --BigDT 16:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
See, thats the point. I agree he is right on the edge of acceptability. But, I would argue he does deserve an article given the situation surrounding Rhett Bomar and Thompson's rise back to starting QB and leading his team to a CCG. But this is the type of sticky situations I can see getting into surrounding this issue.↔NMajdan•talk 16:41, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's true ... and that's why notability is a guideline more than a policy. I just think that we ought to have something that we can point to and agree upon. I think that if we should have an article on a person, we should be able to come up with a rule that includes them. Maybe that's a little bit of the programmer in me - wanting an algorithm for everything. ;) Maybe we could add, "starter for a division I-FBS team about whom there is substantial media coverage". That would include Paul Thompson. --BigDT 19:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Opinions before I nominate for deletion

The Jimmy Clausen article appears it was recreated a week ago (it was previously deleted in August). This person is not a notable athlete yet. He has not played one down of college football. Nothing has changed since it was last deleted. This article should wait until he is named the start at least.↔NMajdan•talk 14:09, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Taking a look at it, it's got sections, it's well-referenced, and it even has an infobox. In terms of quality, it's an impressive start to an article. As for notability, I'd say "Offensive Player of the Year" sounds pretty impressive. I'd say leave it, if only because it will have to be recreated at some point anyway, and it's a high-quality (e.g., Start or B-class) article. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 14:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I think it would be a bad idea to delete the article. He is notable enough to warrant an article. There are numerous ESPN, Sports Illustrated and other sports news articles written about him. He's the #1 rated football prospect in the nation. National Signing Day is only a week away and then he'll be a college football player instead of a high school football player. Deleting this article would almost be futile because its going to be recreated within the next 6 months. So my vote is keep. Here's another reason why I vote to keep: I use Wikipedia as pretty much my primary search engine. When I want to look something up I check Wikipedia first because there is less BS, no advertisments, and its generally pretty damn reliable. If Wikipedia doesn't have what I'm looking for then I move on to Google. So say you're a sports fan curious about Jimmy Clausen. You don't really know much about him and would like to learn. Well, without this Wikipedia article you have to go through sites like ESPN.com with a ton of advertisements and videos playing automatically, search through their massive website, click "Skip This Advertisement" screens, then finally find an article that's 5 pages long, and read through it before you finally learn what you really wanted to know about Jimmy Clausen. Or you could just read this Wikipedia article and get all the vital stats on Jimmy in 1 minute. But hey, that's just my opinion. Seancp 14:44, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
This new article is of much better quality than the one that was deleted so I guess I won't nominate for deletion. I still feel he doesn't meet WP:BIO though. What if he doesn't become starter this year? The article will be sitting idle for at least another year. According to ND's roster, there are four quarterbacks (not including Clausen) so its safe to say the chances are against him (how often does a true freshman start for a major team) as two of the other players are sophomore and two are juniors.↔NMajdan•talk
I think it's a good subject because of how much coverage he's got on the major SI.com/ESPN.com sources. If he ends up being a bust, then it will probably still be notable considering the hype machine.--Bobak 15:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree to keep this one. He's received a lot of press, and he's notable for that alone. I don't buy the "stagnant" argument. So what if it's untouched for 2 years? That's 2 years that someone was able to read about him with no one complaining about the information enough to touch it. --MECU≈talk 18:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I also think we should keep this one. Some high school players are notable just for their accomplishments at that level. Also, I support what Mecu said. If the article doesn't change for 2 years, it is still a valuable resource for those two years.
Proponents of deleting such an article sometimes say - "if he doesn't play in college no one will care about him in 10 years. We should wait until he plays otherwise he fails the 10 year test." I don't buy this argument either. Even if he sits on the bench for 4 years or gets hit by a bus and never plays - let's wait until no one cares about him and THEN worry about deleting it. In other words, we don't need to worry now about whether someone will care about him in 10 years. The fact is people do care about him today. What we say in the article is verifiable. Therefore, we would do a dis-service to our readers by deleting the article. Johntex\talk 19:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Possible new template

So I was working on adding the recruiting classes to the 2006 Oklahoma Sooners football team (and eventually to the 2007 article) when I realized that it might be a good idea for a template. Of course, it would only be applicable to college football recruits (actually it might work for college basketball recruits too if I drop the 40 column). I thought I'd bring it up here to get some feedback before going forward with my manual development of the table or beginning the actual template. To see the table I've started go here.↔NMajdan•talk 17:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks pretty good to me. I'm not sure that I like the image for the star rating since it's really flat and I could have sworn I'd seen a more 3-D one on other pages. I'll look around and see if I can find it. Which page do you expect to put this on? I would expect to see the 2006 class in the post-season section of the 2005 page. z4ns4tsu\talk 17:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, if you find a better one, let me know. I found this one here: commons:Category:Star_symbols.↔NMajdan•talk 17:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Really? I would put the 2006 recruiting class on the 2006 page. It has much more relevance there. What relevance do these players have to the football season in which they were high school seniors? I would put the 2006 recruiting class on the 2006 article.↔NMajdan•talk 18:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Take a look at Image:Crystal Clear action bookmark.png and Image:Five-pointed star.svg. If you want me to, I'll try to put these together into a series of ratings star images when I get home this evening. z4ns4tsu\talk 18:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok. I tried just using the image for every star needed but for some reason, its causing the row to increase in size (see here). Anyway, I've got a pretty good working sample at the link previously in parentheses. Take a look and tell me what you think. I have the references from Scout and Rivals auto generated from information in the template. If this is too difficult, or we find instances where it doesn't work, it can be scrapped and replaced with a regular cite template.↔NMajdan•talk 18:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Awesome template. I actually prefer the simpler star style. The 3D one with the white highlisht is pretty at large size, but at small size it looks to me like it is a half-filled star, which could be confusing. Johntex\talk 18:30, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Take a look at 2006 Colorado Buffaloes football team for what I did with the recruiting for another take on the table. I'm not sure I like the large, two row size because the table will likely get VERY long. I think 2007 recruiting (current) should go on the 2006 page (like I did for CU). This is still part of the season. No, they didn't play for them, but they were recruited during this season, they attended games this season. Putting the information on the 2007 year isn't really good, since recruiting information starts coming out during the season, so someone looking at the 2006 page would want to know about what recruits they have, and have to go to the 2007 page, they really shouldn't exist yet? --MECU≈talk 18:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm...dilemma. I like your table and I like my table. I do disagree whole heartedly about including 2007 recruits on the 2006 article for the reasons I stated. For many football fans, the season is over after the national championship game. Recruiting is the beginning of the next season. Start puling up great recruits that may be able to help your team next year.↔NMajdan•talk 19:09, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Where on the season page would this information go? Does it make sense to have it at the top? For importance and therefore chronological sense, it should go near the bottom. The first thing someone sees isn't recruiting info. I completely understand your point though. --MECU≈talk 21:51, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
I think that information about recurits coming in between the 2006 and 2007 seasons belongs in the 2007 article. Those recruits did not factor into the game play of the 2006 season. The most logical place to put the table is at the start of the 2007 season. Alternatively, one could argue that they were being recruited during 2006 in parallel to the games being played. By that logic, we could put the table at the bottom of 2006. If we do that, though, the top of the 2007 article should link back to the recruiting informaiton found in the 2006 article. Either way, the first section of 2007 should be "Prior to the season" or "Leading intot he season". That is the place to talk about who left the team and who joined the team. That is the most logical place. Johntex\talk 16:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
If Mecu is worried about having such a dominant table at the top of the page, where it would go if the article is done chronologically, we could always have a parenthetical description of the recruiting class and a link to the actual table which could be placed at the bottom of the article or even on another article. The question is, which format should I pursue with this template? I've halted development for the moment. I like my format better, with the two rows, but it could get pretty long, as Mecu said, for a recruiting class of 20+ athletes.↔NMajdan•talk 20:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Any further comments on this? I'd love to get this finished by tomorrow so it can be used on Signing Day on Wednesday. Do more people prefer the single row format of Mecu's of my double row format? I see benefits and setbacks for both so I'm really neutral. I do like mine better but I can see it getting pretty long.↔NMajdan•talk 14:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I was hoping for some more input. I'm fine with the summary at the top of the 2007 page and full table lower on the page format. Though I still think it should all be on the 2006 page. I'll go with the flow. --MECU≈talk 15:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Another possibility is using {{hidden start}}. I've added it to my userspace page as a demonstration.↔NMajdan•talk 20:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Okay. You win. (though shouldn't it start collapsed? it didn't for me) Also, since we're WP:NOT paper, let's go with the expanded format you have. It has more style than my boring chunky table. --MECU≈talk 20:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I know. The article I first saw this hidden template started out hidden but when I added it, it starts out shown.↔NMajdan•talk 20:37, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
One thing I just noticed, you don't have the ESPN ranking. It's not a star ranking so it's not as glamorous, but it still should be given, since rivals, scout and ESPN are the three main (only) sources for recruiting nationally. Also, maybe add the team overall rankings per rivals/scout/ESPN at the bottom? Looking good. Good work. --MECU≈talk 20:38, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I've never used ESPN's recruiting system. But I don't see a reason not to add it. However, now that we have three sources, what are your feelings on determining height/weight/40? Its a little more difficult and time consuming getting an avg of three.↔NMajdan•talk 20:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Check that, I'm against using ESPN. If you look at a school's list of commits on ESPN.com (see http://insider.espn.go.com/ncf/recruiting/tracker/school?schoolId=201&season=2007 for OU's 2007 class), you'll notice it says Data provided by Scouts, Inc. So it looks like ESPN gets a lot of its information from Scout. So is it necessary to have ESPN as well? Yeah, the grade is different but how much research is ESPN doing beyond what it gets from Scout?↔NMajdan•talk 20:58, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I'd also noticed that ESPN used Scouts' information. While using their grade might be a good extra indicator, we definitely shouldn't use their ht/wt/40 info since it's most likely straight from Scouts. Over-all, I like the two-line format better. Have we decided whether we will be putting 2007 recruits on the 2007 or 2006 page yet? I still think it makes the most sense on the 2006 page in a "post-season" section, but I can see how it could be more appropriate on the 2007 in a "pre-season" or "recruiting" section. z4ns4tsu\talk 21:13, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Wow, guys. I just don't see at all how the 2006 recruits pertain to the 2005 season. Sure, they were recruited during that season and probably attended games of that season but they had no effect on that season at all. I mean, take a athlete I am familiar with, Adrian L. Peterson. He signed in 2004 and was recruited in 2003. What role did he play in 2003 that would warrant his mentioning in a 2003 Oklahoma Sooners article (if there was one)? Now, what role would his recruitment play in the 2004 season? He was signed that year, and he went on to become a star that year. Look at 2006 Chicago Bears season as an example. Even they have the 2006 NFL Drafts as preseason (offseason). Once the national championship game has been played (whether its the BCS NC game or Super Bowl) the season is over. Anything after that it a fresh start, a new season. I know I'm getting hung up on this so I apologize.↔NMajdan•talk 21:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The templates have been created: {{College Athlete Recruit Start}}, {{College Athlete Recruit Entry}}, and {{College Athlete Recruit End}}. I'm still working out some bugs, such as one mentioned on the talk page of the End template. Nevertheless, I have added it to the 2006 Oklahoma Sooners football team article and the 2007 Oklahoma Sooners football team article for review in a live environment. I have utilized the {{hidden start}} template but am still trying to figure out why it defaults to show instead of hide. I would appreciate others to test it more, especially on basketball recruits.↔NMajdan•talk 21:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The difference seems to be determined by where each person considers the season to start and end. For me, the season ends between recruiting and spring practice. Thinking about it, I'm not sure it makes any kind of logical sense, but that was/is the basis for me expecting it on the previous season's page. I would be happy, however, with a link in the 2006 page's post-season section that points to the 2007 pre-season section. After this discussion has taken up so much space and time, it also seems like a good idea to avoid confusion from fans, too. We wouldn't want a curious mother in Africa thinking we don't have any information on recruiting just because we put it in a place she didn't expect to see it and didn't cross-link. z4ns4tsu\talk 21:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I found a bug. If you look at 2006 Colorado Buffaloes football team#Recruits (I know it's supposed to be on the 2007 page, but I haven't created it yet so this will do for now), when a 40 time isn't listed, it moves the signed data into that field. You can really tell by looking at Nick Nelson. --MECU≈talk 14:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
That is not a bug. Its in the design and in the documentation. If you include the 40 times in the Start template, then that field in the Entry template cannot be blank. Just put a hyphen in the 40 time if you don't have one. I thought it would be better to have the template default to no 40 time so you have to take extra steps to include a 40 time.↔NMajdan•talk 14:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Okay, maybe make a note of that in the documentation, that putting - or something for a 40 time that's not available? Also, can we increase the border between the rows of the whole player, after looking at the whole list it starts to get more difficult to determine the stars-ranking belongs to who. Making the border a few pixels thicker or a darker color or something may help. Otherwise, I am liking it overall, and the two-line format concern I had isn't really a problem. --MECU≈talk 14:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Its already in the documentation. I'll look into increasing the border size between players. Did you see the issue I'm having with the End template?↔NMajdan•talk 14:54, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
No, I don't see any problems and don't really understand what you mean on the end talk page. I did notice that the Scout.com link doesn't link directly to the school. It seems to be missing a "&toinid=660" in the URL. At least, for Colorado. --MECU≈talk 14:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I fixed the issue with the Scout source. I guess I need to provide better documentation on how to get that number.↔NMajdan•talk 15:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Also, the scout team rankings link doesn't work. --MECU≈talk 15:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
You see, thats the issue. If you look at the actual ref, you'll see both team rankings urls are missing the year. I don't know why its not working. And accessdate isn't working. The only reason Rivals works is because it defaults to this years team ranking.↔NMajdan•talk 15:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Maybe it's because the URL's have = in them? It might be confusing the template. --MECU≈talk 15:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
But the sources that are actually in the footer are fine. Its just the refs. As I mentioned on that talk page, I think it might have something to do with the whole ref tag being inside a {{#if: statement. I tried replacing all the pipes with {{!}} but that didn't work. May have to go to WP:VPT.↔NMajdan•talk 15:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I understand now. But I don't know how to solve it. You're using a varaible inside a template inside an #if. That's messy. Can you make the year and accessdate mandatory (ie, not make them and make it {{{year}}})? --MECU≈talk 15:30, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
<ad>I'd like to take this important day where you're likely to get some source-able quotes to put in a plug for our ill-forgotten WikiQuotes q:College football. It'll be great in a few years to be able to source some of these comments made today. If you get a great quote (like I found: "In the next four years, I'll give you at least one national championship.") please add to the WikiQuote!</ad> --MECU≈talk 15:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Any thoughts on how grayshirts should be listed? For example, if a player commits to the 2006 class but then is grayshirted and doesn't enroll until Jan 2007, should he still be part of the 2006 recruiting class or is he part of the 2007 class? Scout doesn't appear to list the player as part of either class, but Rivals would list him as part of the 2006 class. ESPN lists him as part of the 2006 class too, even though they get their data from Scout, weird. -- Billma 14:04, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I think listing them when they sign the LOI, so if they signed yesterday but are going to grayshirt, list them. One can always put a note in the next season saying "so and so signed last year but grayshirted". It'd be nice to have some kind of symbol for that in the table as well. Just take the redshirt image and make it gray. --MECU≈talk 14:08, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I added a grayshirt option to the entry template. Just add | grayshirt = yes to the tag and it will add Image:Grayshirt.png to the Commitment Date cell.↔NMajdan•talk 14:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
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