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New roster template

Just a reminder for editors as they begin to prep the various 2010 articles. Last season, I created a new roster template that allows for readers to sort by #, name, position, etc. Its another three-part template with a header, entry and footer template. The header template is located here: {{American football roster/Header}}. Documentation and links to the other templates can also be found at that link. The template in action can be found here: 2009 Oklahoma Sooners football team#Roster.—NMajdan•talk 21:40, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons

The WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons (UBLPs) aims to reduce the number of unreferenced biographical articles to under 30,000 by June 1, primarily by enabling WikiProjects to easily identify UBLP articles in their project's scope. There were over 52,000 unreferenced BLPs in January 2010 and this has been reduced to 35,715 as of May 1. A bot is now running daily to compile a list of all articles that are in both Category:All unreferenced BLPs and have been tagged by a WikiProject. Note that the bot does NOT place unreferenced tags or assign articles to projects - this has been done by others previously - it just compiles a list.

Your Project's list can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Unreferenced BLPs. Currently you have approximately 417 articles to be referenced. Other project lists can be found at User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects/Templates and User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects.

Your assistance in reviewing and referencing these articles is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, please don't hestitate to ask either at WT:URBLP or at my talk page. Thanks, The-Pope (talk) 16:47, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

This is an important effort for the project. If the unreferenced BLPs are not fixed, we may lose 400+ articles. That would result in the loss of a lot of work by members of this project. We made some good progress when Paulmcdonald created an assignment list at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Unreferenced BLPs, but the effort stalled after a week or so. If everyone can fix one, two or ten, however many they can, we should be able to reduce the backlog fairly quickly. Cbl62 (talk) 15:00, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
I wish the bot listed the creator of the article as well. I wonder how many of these were created by the same editors. I took care of one yesterday. I'll try to do a few more over time.—NMajdan•talk 15:58, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
If we can have ten enthusiastic editors handle one a day and another 40 editors handle one or two a week, in four weeks we'd have 360 articles sourced. That would be major progress!--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:20, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Cross-sport uniform template policy discussion

Please come discuss at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Sports#Template_policy_discussion.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 23:57, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

One of my long term goals is to create a coaches list for each Big 12 school (then maybe start branching out) and get all of them up to Featured List status. List of Oklahoma Sooners head football coaches is the only one I've completed so far. However, I just nominated List of Oklahoma State Cowboys head football coaches (nomination here). Any comments would be appreciated. Also, if anyone else wants to help, please feel free. Use one of the two articles above as templates.

—NMajdan•talk 21:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

If it helps anybody, I made a quick little "template" to get you started. Check out Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Style Guide/Head coaches list.—NMajdan•talk 14:54, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
It did help; I thought I might work on the Louisiana-Monroe page, but start with the coaches page first so that I'd already have that information for the main page, and the template worked very well. (Tracking down stuff like Gulf States conference standings, that'll be another challenge in and of itself.) I think the only thing that wasn't on every line in the template was the winperc code. --Zlionsfan (talk) 05:58, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm currently creating one for Alabama in my sandbox. However, I have a question ... what do you consider national awards? For instance, would you include the George Munger Award? Just wanted to get some clarity on awards such as that. – Latics (talk) 06:33, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I would include that award, although I personally had never heard of it.—NMajdan•talk 14:01, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I'd assume it's safe to include any of the awards featured on {{College Football Awards}}...? – Latics (talk) 19:20, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

The OSU list is now a Featured List. I have also nominated the Texas list for FL.—NMajdan•talk 15:35, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The TTU and ISU articles have been nominated for FL.—NMajdan•talk 15:47, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Texas list has been promoted.—NMajdan•talk 13:00, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

The Texas A&M list has been nominated. There's been some issues recently with lack of reviewers at FLC, so if anybody could take a look and offer any suggestions for the list, it would be appreciated.—NMajdan•talk 22:19, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Missouri list has been nominated.—NMajdan•talk 18:08, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok, the template I made above was made after my first FL and things have already changed. So, instead, I suggest any editor that wants to create a list like this take a look at the checklist I have created. Hopefully between the "template", the checklist and the several FL lists that already exist, you can put together an FL-quality list.—NMajdan•talk 15:30, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

The TAMU & Mizzou lists were promoted within the past couple of days. The Nebraska list has been nominated and the TTU list still needs reviews. Any help would be appreciated! We're almost there!—NMajdan•talk 21:48, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Baylor & Nebraska lists promoted, Kansas list nominated. I've been slacking recently. The Colorado list has been created but it not yet FL quality and I haven't created the Kansas State list. But the end is definitely in sight.—NMajdan•talk 00:53, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

There are now three lists currently nominated at WP:FLC. If they get approved, then I will begin the Featured Topic process. Any comments would be appreciated.—NMajdan•talk 17:09, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

To meet a certain criterion for FT, I have nominated List of current NCAA Division I FBS football coaches for peer review. Any comments would be appreciated.»NMajdan·talk 23:38, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

RfC on "Safety" article titles

Hello. I recently opened an RfC on sorting out the titles of the "Safety" articles, both for the position and the scoring play. Since no one has yet responded, I am notifying potentially interested WikiProjects and inviting comment in order to build consensus. Please go here: Talk:Safety_(American_football)#RfC:_.22Safety.22_article_titles to comment. –Grondemar 21:04, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

More "THE" OSU B.S.

An IP user, see User talk:75.23.202.149, keeps adding "the" before Ohio State University in the leads of OSU football coach articles, articles which I've recently done a lot of work on to actually improve, I might add. It's either Ohio State University (per normal users of the English language) or The Ohio State University (per meat-head Buckeye boosters who have a weird fetish for definite articles), but certainly not "the Ohio State University". I've already reverted this IP user's edits twice. What's the best course of action for dealing with this jackass? Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 19:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I can understand your frustration and think the word "the" in lower case and even in upper case isn't needed in many of the places it's used, but kindly hold off on the insults and remember to be civil. As Mackensen pointed out, it is the actual name of the university; some people just take it more seriously than others. Interestingly enough, the full name of Penn State is "The Pennsylvania State University" according to the official seal, so it's hardly unique to Ohio State. As for this instance, using "the" (lower case) isn't appropriate under any circumstance and for the most part, the only time "The" chould be included is for the full name "The Ohio State University" (like in an academic publication) and that use is hardly common or widespread. One avenue would be to remove the university name and instead use Ohio State Buckeyes or something like that where there is no question "The" wouldn't be used such as "...was a coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team..." or "...coach at Ohio State..." instead of "...coached at Ohio State University..." Like in the John Cooper article, I would use wikilinks to the various team (Tulsa, Arizona State, Ohio State) football articles instead of the university articles. --JonRidinger (talk) 01:22, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Concur with JonRidinger on all points. JohnnyPolo24 (talk) 11:30, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Frustrating, yes... but does this mean that we must change all references to Kansas State University to The Kansas State University of Agriculture and Applied Science or any of the dozens of other institutions that have a longer, official name than how they are usually referenced? Sometimes we say "Navy" when we mean United States Naval Academy -- when indeed those are different topics, but in alignment with content and context most everyone has an understanding of the message. I say it's okay to start out with University of Missouri-Columbia and then transition the content over to Missouri Tigers instead of The University of Missouri-Columbia Tigers: or even use links to create Mizzou.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:12, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree with JonRidinger and JohnnyPolo24. However, I think Paul McDonald may have a practical solution by just referring to teams how they are used in the national media and by using the nicknames (e.g. Arizona State Sun Devils, San Jose State Spartans, Michigan State Spartans). Rarely do we say the term "The Ohio State University" or see it used by anyone other than graduates, state residents, etc..It kind of seems like a ploy to get more attention and emphasis for the school (just my opinion). One interesting note is that the universities themselves are often inconsistent. USC's media guide states that they should not be called "Southern Cal" yet the school still markets shirts and slogans using the phrase (check out the Nike Store)! I think this is a slippery slope until we start seeing articles using "K-State" instead of "Kansas State". So perhaps Paul McDonald is onto something. Obamafan70 (talk) 20:52, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
To clarify, I don't think you should use "The Ohio State University Buckeyes" or anything like it for other schools by any means because its awkward and inaccurate. What I was saying was instead of using the link to the university article, use the link to the football team article and use the most common name. Most people don't say "The Ohio State University" and most don't even say "Ohio State University" or "Ohio State University Buckeyes"; they say "Ohio State", "OSU", or "Ohio State Buckeyes" when talking about the football team. For college football related articles, we're focusing on the football teams, not the universities themselves, so the only time the full school name could come up would be in the actual article on the team like "The Ohio State Buckeyes football team represents The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio..." As for the "The" in OSU's official name (I have frequently seen that abbreviated "tOSU" by OSU and non-OSU fans), it's been around for some time; it's nothing new and the university is fairly consistent in its use for the full name of the school; in athletics, however, "The" is never seen, only lowercase "the Ohio State Buckeyes". --JonRidinger (talk) 17:27, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Some things to consider:

  1. The name of the article here about OSU is Ohio State University, not The Ohio State University, which redirects to the former. Thus, Wikipedia is recognizing the primary name of the school as "Ohio State University". Until that article is moved to "The Ohio State University", the argument for a necessary inclusion of the leading definite article is weak.
  2. Publications such at The New York Times, consistently refer to the university, in reference to sports or otherwise, without the leading definite article (see: http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?query=ohio%20state%20university).
  3. There are going to be places in college football and other sporting articles where it is most appropriate to refer to the university, not the sports program as a whole or one of its constituent teams. This is further complicated by the fact that many football coaches in the pre-WWII era also coached other sports. I've been doing a lot of work in the past few months improving college football coach articles. In light of the first two points in this bullet, my general strategy has been to introduce links to the relevant universities early in the leads, then work in links to the sports teams later in the lead or in the body. It seems silly to abandon what may be the most comprehensive linking and style strategy because of the naming peculiarity of one school.
  4. The link above to the Ohio state law stating that OSU shall be known as "The Ohio State University" is dated October 1, 1953. Do we have evidence of an earlier decree? Is the inclusion of the definite article relevant before that date? Jweiss11 (talk) 19:41, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Just remember that the title of the OSU article was heavily debated. I was not a participant, but it went back and forth and could easily change. The current name of the article was more due to not using "The" in most cases in line with the general title guidelines, not because of one being significantly more common than the other or how long the university has officially been known to use "The" (which according to the source at Ohio State University dates to 1878). That said, I don't think there is anything wrong sticking "The" in front of the link Ohio State University (or just using piping) or just using it without "The" since both are used in other publications. It's really not that big a deal, but if "The" is used with the school name, it should be capitalized and should only be with the full name. The way it's being used in the coaching articles ("the") should be removed. --JonRidinger (talk) 02:33, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I have no dog in this fight, so to speak. I will note that I checked the 09 Ohio State Buckeyes football media guide for usage. There are 39 instances of "The Ohio State University" and 9 instances of "the Ohio State University".[2] It makes sense to me to add the direct article where it is not currently present. Group29 (talk) 13:34, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

User:75.23.202.149 keeps adding back in "the" (lower case) before OSU and making unfounded claims of vandalism against veteran editors. This needs to be stopped. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:59, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree. --JonRidinger (talk) 15:42, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
There's actually a policy/guideline that has been established in this area; see WP:THE. Accounting4Taste:talk 19:39, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
The policy isn't particularly helpful to JonRidinger, Paul McDonald, or myself because the second bullet states that it is acceptable under the condition it is an official title. Unfortunately, most of the major universities use the article "the" in their official titles. Obamafan70 (talk) 20:16, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Correction -- I am wrong. It is discussed later in the article. Quote:

Finally, if common usage has overwhelmingly rejected the The, then it should be omitted regardless of university usage. Apologies for my original post. Obamafan70 (talk) 20:19, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Issue with Kansas State coaches list

All, I wanted to get some preemptive opinions. An editor made several significant changes to List of Kansas State Wildcats head football coaches, a Featured List. I disagree with a bulk of the changes, so I reverted and left a note on the talk page. I'm sure the editor that made the changes will disagree with me, so I would appreciate it if any other editors would review his changes and my comments and voice any opinion. Thanks.»NMajdan·talk 15:19, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Naming conventions for head coach lists and categories

The de facto format for head coach categories seems to be <School> <Moniker> <sport> <title> yet lists for head coaches is formated <School> <Moniker> <title> <sport>. They should both have the same title style. Which way is the "correct one?" NThomas (talk) 04:18, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

List of poorly performing college football coaches AfD

I've nominated List of poorly performing college football coaches for deletion and I thought that members of this project might be interested in participating in the discussion. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 03:35, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this article should be deleted. The scope of the topic is too subjective and has no formalization elsewhere. On the topic of articles for deletion, I also nominated this one today: Michigan vs. Penn State 2006: The Definition of the Tackle. Yikes, that's an ugly one. What's up with the article's title?! Even if it was well formed, it would still be a good candidate for deletion anyway. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:11, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Jweiss, on the List article be sure to go to the discussion and add your comments (yes, we disagree... but I'd rather have the collaboration). The Mich/Penn State article is really bad, isn't it?--Paul McDonald (talk) 04:37, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Paulmcdonald, I will put my two cents in on the talk page for the list. Yes, that Michigan-Penn State article is terrible. Even if it was good, I don't think the game is significant enough to warrant its own page. Detail on the two 2006 teams pages should be sufficient. It was a good game though. I was actually there in attendance at State College. If anyone is interested in reading a recap/mini-memoir I wrote about it, you can read it here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=5513649706. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:12, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

NSPORT guideline

A RFC is ongoing to promote WP:NSPORT to an official guideline. If you are interested you might consider contributing at the Discussion page. Cbl62 (talk) 19:07, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Article for deletion: Shannon Dawson

I've nominated Shannon Dawson for deletion. Please weigh in with your thoughts. Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:44, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

List of college football coaches with 200 career wins

Any suggestions on formatting or content would be welcome on the following new list: List of college football coaches with 200 career wins. Cbl62 (talk) 06:42, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Conference season articles

After a discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2010 Tabor Bluejays football team, I thought it might be better and easier to maintain if for smaller conferences we created a "Conference season" article. This would be especially helpful in NAIA and NCAA Div II/III programs where team's season articles may not have the "wide press" that many seek. This, of course, would not prevent a "season" article for a team in the conference should that team end up having a great season, just as having a "season" article for a team does not prevent an aritlce being created about a particularly noteworthy game. Ideas?--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:47, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Please review I set up an article at 2010 Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference football season, please give comments.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:20, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Two new lists

Check these out:

Comments/update/collaborate!--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:12, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Good stuff. These lists should match up with List of college football coaches with 200 career wins in terms of style and formatting. Also, check the record on Ray Morrison. He was co-head coach at SMU in 1922 and 1923 with E. Y. Freeland. See: http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/div_ia/conferenceusa/southern_methodist/coaching_records.php. Those two years are not included here on his main CFBDW page: http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/coaching/alltime_coach_year_by_year.php?coachid=1671. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:48, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Bowl game template uniform parameter

I've started a talk about adding a uniform line to the bowl template here and I'd appreciate some other members' input on it. I've already done a ton of uniforms (and I'm not the only one who's done so) and I'm perfectly fine with working on adding uniforms to the bowls. I think it would be as valuable an update to the bowls as the uniform images are to the individual teams' pages. --Kevin W. 02:43, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Anyone? --Kevin W. 09:59, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
I think that it's a good idea, but it should definitely be optional. Nowadays a lot of teams use unique uniforms or uniform combinations for bowl games, but even if they don't it would still add to the quality of the article. JohnnyPolo24 (talk) 11:27, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm not particularly good at coding stuff, so can someone help with putting the coding in? --Kevin W. 18:05, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Anyone? --Kevin W. 22:08, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
Hello? --Kevin W. 05:35, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Help needed

I need further input from other members regarding the discussion here regarding this image. I'm not sure who would have the authority to possibly override him if necessary but I believe I'm in the right on this one and I need support. Any help would be appreciated. --Kevin W. 09:34, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

The argument shouldn't be about the size of the image - it should be about the size you render it in the article. The best way is to create the images as svg (Inkscape is free - http://www.vectormagic.com isn't free, but for a small fee lets you convert existing images - Adobe Illustrator (not free) lets you trace them). SVGs are far preferable anyway for this type of line art, because they scale up/down with no quality loss. Then, because SVG images do not technically have a resolution, they may be described using "SVG will be rendered at low resolutions". Regardless, so long as you can claim confidently that the size of image you use "would be unlikely to impact the copyright owners ability to resell or otherwise profit from the work" you're complying with Template:Non-free_use_rationale#note-resolution. Hope that helps - saw this in passing.  -  Begoon (talk) 10:08, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
So I should be set if I upload them as SVGs? --Kevin W. 10:19, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Provided you can make the fair use resolution claim above, and it's used to identify the team, yes, I can see no reason why not.
In case it helps, I converted your file to SVG - it's at this link.
You could download that, and get Inkscape from: http://inkscape.org/download/
Then you could use the svg as a template to create your other files.  -  Begoon (talk) 10:32, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I uploaded the svg, and popped it in the article so you can see how it looks - feel free to revert if that doesn't help. Incidentally, at Wikipedia:Fair_use/Definition_of_"low_resolution", there is no hard definition of what resolution is acceptable, although anything over 400px might be pushing the limits. The page says: " the image resolution should be no more than the minimum necessary for the image to convey its information within the context of the Wikipedia article. In most cases anything which is not obviously too high of a resolution is probably fine. " - and the references talk about 400px images of Time Magazine covers probably being ok. In this case you probably need it big enough to see the logos "to convey the context" so I've tried it at 350px in the article for you. Hope it helps...  -  Begoon (talk) 16:53, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Ok, I'm slightly concerned about some of the lines. Is there any way that you can make it so the lines on the pants and the purple jersey's collar are clean and unbroken? Also, can I produce images like that with just Inkscape? I'm only a college student and, unfortunately, I don't have money to spend on things like a graphics program. --Kevin W. 18:44, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
I can try and clean it up a bit for you - and I'll try to make a blank template you can use. Inkscape will be fine for editing those images - you may need to read the help to get used to editing vector graphics - they are basically just filled shapes - series of lines (called paths) -filled with colour. As I say, I'll try to clean it up - and make a blank template, but I'm afraid I won't have time to create the other images for you - though I'm happy to help you learn.  -  Begoon (talk) 18:56, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, if you could give me a basic walkthrough, it'd be appreciated. --Kevin W. 19:24, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Actually, now I look at it closer, the original is not very good even in the 1,459×413 size - do you have something higher resolution that you used to create it - with less jagged edges on the pants/helmet/shirt outlines ? If you do, you can email it using Special:EmailUser/Begoon. I won't be online again for about 12 hours from now - but you can send anything you have in the meantime.  -  Begoon (talk) 19:26, 27 June 2010 (UTC) - I sent you an email address, forgot you can't send attachments with the Wikipedia form
Ok - received your email, thanks. At first glance I don't see anything much better in there, sorry. What I'm going to do is redraw a blank template from scratch by hand tracing an image - then I'll add colour as per the image we started the discussion about, and I'll upload both the blank template and the redrawn image. That's something that'll take a little time to do, though - hand tracing is more involved than just converting - so I'll need to find some spare time I can slot in for it over the next few days. Once it's done you should easily be able to use the template with Inkscape to create other images.  -  Begoon (talk) 07:11, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
I had a little change of plan.
To keep the work you have to do to a minimum, I've found the best conversion settings I could, and converted all of those files for you - they are enclosed in an email I just sent you. I also put a zip file at this link in case the email was too large, and you don't receive it.
They are fairly good - given the "jaggy" originals it's hard to find a better compromise setting for conversion. Most of the jagged edges are now cleaned up, but there may still be some little imperfections you would need to look at with Inkscape. If any of the team logos are awful, I can help you replace it with a better quality copy if you can find one (from the official website etc...) That's pretty easy with an SVG - you just need a good logo copy.
Pretty much, though, for the low resolution you are going to use them at they should mostly be fine.
If you wanted to, you could edit them in Inkscape to replace the type captions where they are traced with real type - but that could be more trouble than it's worth.  -  Begoon (talk) 10:36, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

"External links"

In addition to the Succession Boxes (discussed above), another way we could reduce "clutter" in coaching articles (probably player articles as well) is to limit the use of an "External links" section. For example, if an article already has a link to a coach's College Football Data Warehouse profile in the Infobox or in the "References" section, I'd suggest not listing it a 2nd or 3rd time in an "External links" section. See Mike Brumbelow where the same CFDW link is provided in all three places: Infobox, References and External links. Let's avoid the "External links" section in such a situation. Agreed? Cbl62 (talk) 16:50, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not in agreement with this. I think that listing links to a small number of respected and definitive sites is useful, especially if they are standardized with a template, even if those links are cited or appear in the infobox. Very often such links will provide statistical or other detail that is not included in the article. If we're not going to include them, then there's really no point for external links templates like Template:CFBCR or Template:Cfbhof to exist. What I will agree to is that external links sections for coaches or players should not have generic links to a school or team home page. See Joe Palmisano for an example. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:17, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
I disagree and agree at the same time. I think we should be careful to reduce clutter and not have too many "external links" at the bottom. At the same time, there is value in having external links of interest on articles. "External links" should be different from "references" in that the references should provide links to information in the article, where external links connects to pages of interest (such as current events) that are not covered in the article.--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:21, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree that sources like CFDW and CFHOF are important references. And I think the external links templates are useful where there's not a fully devloped infobox or where there's not already a link to the CFDW or CFHOF in References. But if it's already in the infobox and the references, do we really need it to be present for a third time in a separate external links section? The general Wikipedia:Manual of Style (layout) states that links should not appear in an "External links" section if they are already in the References section: "These hyperlinks normally should not appear in the article's body text, nor should they appear in this section [External links] if they already appear in the References or Notes section." I do think we could do with less clutter. Cbl62 (talk) 18:42, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Cbl62, but this is policy anyway: "Sites that have been used as sources in the creation of an article should be cited in the article, and linked as references, either in-line or in a references section. Links to these source sites are not "external links" for the purposes of this guideline, and should not normally be duplicated in an external links section. Exceptions (i.e. sites that can be both references and External Links) include an official site of the article's subject, or a domain specifically devoted to the article's subject which contains multiple subpages and which meets the above criteria." The infobox template has fields for CFBDW, DBF, etc. for this express purpose. Strikehold (talk) 02:21, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

College soccer

Hi guys, whilst not your WikiProject, I'd appreciate it if you could you add your thoughts as to whether College soccer coaches should be included in the WP:footy project. TheBigJagielka (talk) 14:52, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Article for Deletion: 2010 NCAA conference realignment

There is a current discussion going on here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2010 NCAA conference realignment. Rreagan007 (talk) 19:59, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

NCAA division history

Does anyone have the skinny on when the NCAA first broke into divisions? National Collegiate Athletic Association says this first happened in 1956 with the creation of the University Division and the College Division. College Football Data Warehouse suggests those divisions were created in 1937. See http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/div_ia/bigten/michigan/index.php for an example. This would be a helpful fact to know as I'd like to finish cleaning up the season categories at Category:College football seasons. Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:30, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

According to a Google News Archive search, it appears that the first mentions of "University Division" and "College Division" came in 1956. However, according to the NCAA, the "advent of official classification [came] in 1937" (2008 Record Book, p. 402). I think they may have been known as "major college" and "small college" before 1956, but its use isn't capitalized and I'm not sure it affected scheduling, bowl berths, and the like. Strikehold (talk) 20:45, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

College football players categories

A Category For Discussion related to this project is underway at: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 July 2. Strikehold (talk) 19:49, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Succession boxes

Just talked with User:Jweiss11 about the use of succession boxes in coach bios after I removed one on Andy Moore (American football). Jweiss11 says they are standard, but I think it is more of an informal practice. Hopefully the project can form a consensus as to how to proceed with these things here.

I feel they are redundant, as all the information is already provided between the infobox and the navbox. The infobox gives the tenure and position, and the navbox the successor and predecessor. These things give no additional information and add unnecessary clutter, especially in either stub-class articles or for people who had many head coaching positions.

These things are the succession boxes I am talking about:

Sporting positions
Preceded by University of Chattanooga Head Football Coach
1931–1967 		Succeeded by

What does everyone else think?

Strikehold (talk) 23:59, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

  • If an article already has a fully developed infobox and navbox, I agree that the succession boxes are redundant. There's too much clutter on many bio pages, and getting rid of unneeded succession boxes would help. Cbl62 (talk) 00:06, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
  • agree I think the succession boxes take away from the artice. The coach navboxes are much smaller and much more useful all at the same time.--Paul McDonald (talk) 00:07, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
I came across this a year or so ago. I think the WP policy was to have the succession boxes instead of navboxes, if both were present. I will try to find the page. — X96lee15 (talk) 00:29, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
Here's what I was referring to: WP:Navbox#Alternatives. It's definitely not a policy (maybe it was way back when):
For a series of articles whose only shared characteristic is that they hold the same position or title, such as peerage or world champion sporting titles, consider using {{succession box}}.
I'm not sure how much weight the "consider using" text holds. — X96lee15 (talk) 16:29, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

I certainly understand the arguments made here about redundancy and cluttering. When I said that the inclusion of both succession boxes and nav boxes were standard, I meant that I had generally observed them to both be present in the more developed football coach bio articles that I have come across. I suppose this practice may be "informal", but where would it be formalized? Perhaps, in some style guide? If such formalization exists, I have not seen it.

A cursory search of well-developed articles about Hall of Fame baseball managers and United State Presidents also shows both succession and nav boxes to be present. Baseball and government/politics are more matured topics on Wikipedia and thus it makes sense to take cues from them when working on college football. In that sense, those other topics provide a standard for inclusion of both succession and nav boxes.

Over the past few months, I've done a lot of work on coaching biography articles, particularly focusing on cleanup, formatting, and standardization, as "informal" as it may be. So far I've completed sweeps through the coaches of a number of Big Ten and SEC schools, so those articles will definitely have both succession and nav boxes, because I've ensured as much. But if you look at some of the more built out articles, you'll find that both structures were present before I did any significant editing upon them. See Woody Hayes circa a year or so ago, for example. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:35, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for 2009 International Bowl

Hello. I am working on taking the article 2009 International Bowl to featured article status and have opened a peer review to obtain input prior to submitting the article as a featured article candidate. Please review and provide any comments you have directed at improving the article. –Grondemar 20:11, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Connecticut Huskies categories

I have request in to rename Category:UConn Huskies football and subcategories to Category:Connecticut Huskies football and the like. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion#Add requests for speedy renaming here. I'm getting some resistance from a UConn alum who, frankly, doesn't seem to have an appreciation for the established naming standards here. Also see User talk:Markvs88#Connecticut Huskies categories for the arguments. Anyone else care to chime in? Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:10, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Reasonable minds can differ on this one. There are certain university sports programs that have become known by established shorthand catchphrases. For example, in our naming practices, we use UMass Minutemen (not Massachusetts), USC Trojans (not Southern California Trojans), LSU Tigers (not Louisiana State), UNLV Running Rebels, BYU Cougars, etc. Much like those cases, I've typically heard "UConn Huskies" rather than "Connecticut Huskies." It may also be significant to note that the official athletic program website is called "uconnhuskies.com." On the other hand, the category ought to match the main article. Right now, we have the main article titled Connecticut Huskies and the category as UConn Huskies. Cbl62 (talk) 01:31, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Also the university itself uses "uconn" in its main domain name -- uconn.edu. At the university's home page, they do refer to the school by the shorthand "UConn." I don't feel strongly on this one either way, but both points of view appear reasonable. Cbl62 (talk) 01:38, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Adding another layer of ambiguity, the school's football jerseys say "Connecticut," but the basketball jerseys say "UConn." Compare basketball uniform and football uniform. Cbl62 (talk) 01:54, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
The logos also go both ways. Compare [3], [4], [5]. Cbl62 (talk) 08:02, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
I agree that going with either "Connecticut" or "UConn" is acceptable, although I would slightly prefer "Connecticut" as it is more formal. However, I do think it would be a good idea to have a wider discussion of what to name the categories, whether under CfD or a RfC.
Also regarding the UConn uniform, the current football uniform has no name on it; they removed "Connecticut" across the middle in 2009. The men's and women's basketball uniforms used to say "Connecticut", and then for a while the home uniforms said "UConn" while the road uniforms said "Connecticut". I believe now both say "UConn" for both home and road. I'd have to check to confirm however. –Grondemar 02:19, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

The first issue is that the article names and category names don't match. I think everyone is in agreement that this needs to be fixed. The second issue is UConn or Connecticut. All of the following major sports media outlets and definitive online sports databases refer to the teams as Connecticut, not UConn:

Jweiss11 (talk) 05:18, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

OK, but those same "major sports media outlets" also routinely use "UConn" in their coverage of the school's sports events. It's not as black-and-white as you are suggesting. See, e.g., espn, Rivals Yahoo, Sports Illustrated, CBS Sports. Both versions appear to be widely established and recognized. UConn does also have the advantage of being more descriptive than Connecticut, as UConn clearly refers to the university, and the latter is a more generic state reference.Cbl62 (talk) 07:36, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Also, the URL/domain argument is pretty weak. Domain names by design have generally been engineered to be as short as possible. Michigan State is msu.edu, Michigan is umich.edu, Penn State is psu.edu, Wisconsin is wisc.edu, Minnesota is umn.edu, Florida is ufl.edu, etc. Those domains name offer nothing in terms of informing naming conventions for us on Wikipedia. As such, domain names should be thrown out of the argument. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:34, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Disagree that it can/should be "thrown out." Moreover, there's the fact that the university refers to itself as "UConn" on the web site. Neither position is "weak." Cbl62 (talk) 07:19, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Cbl62, the domain name argument is indeed weak. In and of itself it does not make the "UConn" position weak, it just shouldn't be used to support it. The fact that the university refers to itself as "UConn" is not weak. It the most compelling argument for "UConn". Jweiss11 (talk) 07:57, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Of course, you're entitled to your opinion on what points are weak. But the fact that the University chose "UConnHuskies.com" as the domain name for its official athletic site is relevant IMO. The choice suggests a deliberate choice of a descriptive term rather than the selection of the shortest possible url. The evidence is cumulative. It's the combination of the domain name and the fact that the university uses "UConn" and "UConn Huskies" on its sports uniforms, sports logos, and generally in its self-descriptions. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that this is not clear-cut. A broader discussion seems appropriate. Do you disagree? Cbl62 (talk) 08:17, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Agree with Cbl162. In the links provided by Jweiss11, how do they refer to some of the other examples of shortened names mentioned here like USC, BYU, UMass, etc.? I've found that many times they use the more formal name on those sites (USC=Southern California, BYU=Brigham Young, UMass=Massachusetts, etc.) so using those is hardly a definitive argument. At this point, I'd lean towards titling them UConn since that seems to be the more common way they are presented by the school and in publications, at least in athletics. --JonRidinger (talk) 07:37, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Jweiss is correct that the article names and category names should probably be consistent. Both versions have legitmacy. As the issue goes beyond college football, I agree with Grondemar that the issue should be brought to a broader forum with notification to relevant projects, including Wikipedia:WikiProject College Basketball and Wikipedia:WikiProject Connecticut. That will allow those with broader knowledge to weigh in and ensure a more reliable consensus. Cbl62 (talk) 07:55, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Cbl62, I also want to address some of your earlier comments. You're quite right that these major media outlets use both "UConn" and "Connecticut" in headlines and the bodies of articles. But, we here on Wikipedia are going to have to make a decision and pick one or the other for an article/category naming convention. The links I've provided and the table below show how those media outlets have made their own analogous decision. The naming convention we choose will go a long way to informing how the school appears in lists, infoboxes, and standing templates. The other thing to keep in mind is that we're not really choosing between "UConn" and "Connecticut". Where are choosing between "UConn Huskies" and "Connecticut Huskies". While "UConn" indeed has greater specificity than "Connecticut", does "UConn Huskies" have greater specificity than "Connecticut Huskies"? Jweiss11 (talk) 08:55, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
I do, but my main points are (1) both versions are valid, (2) a decision on this goes beyond college football, and (3) it would be a good idea to take this to a broader forum. Are you opposed to that? Cbl62 (talk) 14:27, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Cbl62, (1) I'm not saying "UConn" is invalid. I'm arguing that "Connecticut" is better for the article/category naming convention primarily because of the evidence in the table below, i.e. "Connecticut" is how ESPN and other major media outlets phrase the school in the most fundamental listings on their websites. (2) Agree, this obviously involves college basketball, and would impact other UConn sports as well. (3) Seems right to loop in WikiProject Connecticut as well, but my fear is that may bring in a lot of provincial bias, much like we have with that nasty "The" Ohio State University issue. Where's the best place for this larger forum? Do we handle it at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion? Jweiss11 (talk) 20:03, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
I've been thinking about it, and I believe the scope of this discussion goes beyond CfD since if we conclude that "UConn Huskies" is more appropriate than "Connecticut Huskies", we will have to rename several articles instead. I'll open an RfC at Category talk:UConn Huskies as a neutral site for the discussion (also because I've never had the opportunity to edit a Category talk page before). –Grondemar 22:18, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
The RfC is open at the following location: Category talk:UConn Huskies#RfC on use of "Connecticut" versus "UConn" for University of Connecticut athletic teams. –Grondemar 22:26, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Grondemar, thanks for starting that. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:35, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Breakdown of naming conventions in media

Looking at how ESPN, Yahoo, Fox, CBS, SI/CNN name teams in standings and team homepages:

  • UMass: all 5 use Massachusetts
  • UConn: all Connecticut
  • BYU: 3 Brigham Young, 2 BYU (only CBS and Yahoo use BYU)
  • LSU: all LSU
  • UCLA: all UCLA
  • UNLV: all UNLV
  • USC: all USC
  • SMU: 3 Southern Methodist, 2 SMU (only CBS and Yahoo use SMU)
  • TCU: all TCU

Jweiss11 (talk) 08:27, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

I applied WP:Search engine test using Google. Searching Google News for 'UConn' and 'Huskies' yielded 22 pages of results; searching for 'Connecticut' and 'Huskies' yielded 18 pages of results. The same search using Google Web yield 46 for UConn and 40 for Connecticut. I prefer Connecticut, but the evidence is not a favorable as I would have liked. JohnnyPolo24 (talk) 12:42, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Keep in mind that there are often multiple acronyms. For instance, in USC's case, there is Southern California and South Carolina, not to mention University of Sacred Heart, University of San Carlos, University of Santiago de Compostela, University of the Souther Caribbean, University Senior College, University of the Sunshine Coast, Upper St. Clair High School, Utica School of Commerce, etc.. The Trojans would like to think they are the only "USC", but they aren't, and South Carolina does use the USC abbreviation, as do others. IMO, a standard naming convention should go by the formal in most cases, which is the official name of the university, not an abbreviation. The only two exceptions might be UCLA and UNLV because they are awkward otherwise because of the nature of them being "branches" of larger systems and the fact they are almost never referred to as California Los Angeles or Nevada Las Vegas, whereas the reverse is not true for any of the others listed. Keep in mind this is an international encyclopedia, and not all visitors may be familiar with colloquial sports abbreviations, as are the typical readers (all of us) of US collegiate sports journalism. CrazyPaco (talk) 10:05, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
Also, there is this:Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(categories)#General_naming_conventions point 3: Avoid abbreviations, except where there are no conflicts. CrazyPaco (talk) 18:53, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
I think for the ones where all the major sports websites agree, we should use that name - LSU Tigers, USC Trojans, Massachusetts Minutemen, Connecticut Huskies. The ones where the websites disagree (BYU, SMU, probably Ole Miss) should be open for discussion. There's no real issue with ambiguity - USC might mean multiple things, but USC Trojans is pretty unambiguous. Nobody anywhere ever says Southern California Trojans. The university itself is, and should be, at University of Southern California. john k (talk) 04:28, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
Just to play devils advocate, there are many examples where formal standardized naming conventions for Wikipedia articles aren't what people "say". CrazyPaco (talk) 09:22, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
As a Utah resident that sees and hears promotional material and the like for Brigham Young University, I'll just chime in on that one. The school article is correctly named Brigham Young University, but similar to "USC Trojans", nobody ever calls the sports teams the "Brigham Young University Cougars" or the "Brigham Young Cougars". BYU Cougars is the accepted name. The search engine test bears this out as well, with "BYU Cougars" beating out any alternative by at least a 2:1 margin. DeFaultRyan 19:01, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Washington State coaches

A user created Template:WashingtonStateCougarsFootball and then replaced it for the Template:Washington State Cougars football coach navbox on all of the head coach pages. Template:Washington State bowl games was also replaced on the bowl game articles.

While I think the Washington State football navbox is a good navbox for a college football program, I don't think those types of navboxes are appropriate for biographical articles. My inclination is to think that a reader looking at, say, James N. Ashmore would not necessarily be interested in Mark Rypien or the 1992 Copper Bowl, and it makes it more difficult to find and navigate to the other Washington State coaches. I prefer head coaches have navboxes specifically for the coaches of the programs they were associated with.

I see that Paulmcdonald brought this up on the template creator's page, but do not believe there was any further discussion. I propose removing that template and replacing it with the coach navbox on head coaches' articles and bowl game articles, and removing it altogether from other biographical articles.

Does anyone have any other thoughts on this? Strikehold (talk) 16:29, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree I noticed it before. I have to say that I respect the work of the editor making the change! It just, to me, makes the article more "clumsy" to read with the extra information. Certainly if we design the pages correctly, readers on the page of one coach at one school could quickly navigate to the bowl game of another coach at that school--but I don't think we need "Super-Nav-Box" on every page.--Paul McDonald (talk) 16:34, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Agree. Revert back to Template:Washington State Cougars football coach navbox for Wash St. coaches and Template:Washington State bowl games for bowls. Template:WashingtonStateCougarsFootball works best at Washington State Cougars football. Placing Template:WashingtonStateCougarsFootball on all the coach and bowl articles gives us too much nav box there are also breaks parallelism with the way templates are deployed for other programs. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:32, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Disagree - I think the program-wide navbox makes the coach-specific navbox redundant. I'd merge them.--GrapedApe (talk) 00:19, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Error at College Football Data Warehouse

I just uncovered a curious error at the College Football Data Warehouse. The listing for Stanley E. "Stan" Borleske & Casey C. Finnegan, who co-coached at North Dakota State in 1928, and the listing for Frank O. Spain & Lt. Leonard Wood, who co-coached at Georgia Tech in 1893 and 1894, have been switched. See:

Borleske and Finnegan each coached at North Dakota State solo in other years. See: http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/coaching/alltime_coach_year_by_year.php?coachid=210 and http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/coaching/alltime_coach_year_by_year.php?coachid=3651. Articles had been created here on Wikipedia for the erroneous Georgia Tech versions of Borleske and Finnegan, seemingly entirely based on the the error at College Football Data Warehouse. I've redirected the Georgia Tech Borleske article to the legit one and re-purposed Finnegan's to reflect his genuine North Dakota State tenure. I've verified all this with the Georgia Tech and North Dakota State media guides. I guess the lesson is to take the College Football Data Warehouse with a grain of salt, especially when using it as a basis for starting an article about a lesser-known coach or when co-coaches are involved. College Football Data Warehouse doesn't handle co-coaches well in general. Tenure as a co-coach for a given individual tends to be spliced off in a separate listing from that individual's solo career. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:23, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Email CFDW, they're very responsive to error correction. CrazyPaco (talk) 21:06, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
I hadn't notice contact info on the site, but just found it in the footer of the homepage and emailed the error in. Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:54, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
Yes, they're very responsive. I sent them information about the Washington & Jefferson College football team, and they got back to me in a few days. (Unfortunately, it will take considerably longer than that for the database to be updated). Have you all seen this: Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Reliable Sources#College Football Data Warehouse?-_GrapedApe (talk) 16:59, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

GA Nomination: Washington & Jefferson Presidents football

I have nominated Washington & Jefferson Presidents football for Good Article status. I'm letting the project know, in case someone with a decent background in college football wanted to perform the review.--GrapedApe (talk) 00:20, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll take a look, although I apologize in advance if the review takes more than a few days. –Grondemar 16:32, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Past nicknames in navboxes

Have been discussing with User:cmadler the Template:Eastern Michigan Eagles football coach navbox. I'm not sure the navbox is a good place to include the various iterations of nicknames, but others may prefer this format. If it is preferable, this should probably be made universal across all the coach navboxes for uniformity. Other opinions or comments? Strikehold (talk) 00:04, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's a bad idea to list the former nicknames in the header of the navbox like in Template:Stanford Cardinal football coach navbox (although that one is missing the plural "Cardinals" that was in use for a few years), but breaking out a template as has been done with Eastern Michigan seems a bit much. Specifically, listing a given coach twice who coached a single tenure through a nickname change is not good. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:43, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
That's how it originally was on the EMU navbox, with all the nicknames listed in the title. I changed it to just use the current nickname because I had not seen that done on other navboxes. Some (Nebraska for example) have a huge list of nicknames that would be unwieldy in the title bar. Strikehold (talk) 03:59, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I've removed the double-listings of two coaches at the nickname changes, basing the placement on what the nickname was for the majority of that coach's tenure. Note that Rynearson is still listed twice, because he coached in 1917, and then again from 1925-1948, with three other coaches coming in between. For comparison, the earlier version of the template looked like this. For what it's worth, I think it looks better now than it did then, but I think that one way or another the different nicknames need to be acknowledged. As I mentioned on Strikehold's talk page, the nickname is still a very contentious issue at EMU. The "Eagles" nickname is just entering its 20th year, while "Normalites" lasted 30 years and "Hurons" lasted 62 years. Obviously there aren't people out there arguing about "Normalites" but there are an awful lot of alumni, including former players and probably former coaches, who identify as "Hurons"...of the 40 coaches listed as "Eastern Michigan Eagles head football coaches", it is only really true for 9 of them. The other 31 -- the vast majority -- coached the program under a different name. cmadler (talk) 15:37, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Seven Heismans or Six

An interesting discussion is taking place (and ridiculously ongoing) concerning whether or not USC has 7 Heismans or 6 Heismans. I have argued that USC still has 7 since Heisman.com still lists 7. It seems to me a total non-sequitor what a player or university does with an award (sell it, return it, give it away, give it to charity, break it). The only thing that seems to matter is what the awarding organization decides. If Bush's trophy is vacated, then I would certainly agree that USC only has 6. However, we currently have a situation on the Reggie Bush and USC Trojans football pages where users are continuously changing it to 6. If you wish to chime in, please do so here or on the respective talk pages. I think it would be a service to Wikipedia with all the discussion of NCAA sanctions taking place right now.Obamafan70 (talk) 04:34, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I would agree that USC's Heisman count should stay at seven until and unless a reliable source confirms that Reggie Bush has been stripped of his Heisman Trophy. –Grondemar 04:46, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I have nominated List of Heisman Trophy winners for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. --Smashvilletalk 19:46, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Discussion needs participants

If anyone has a few minutes, would you stop by Talk:Wisconsin_Badgers_football#.22Other_notable_players.22 and join in the discussion and consensus building? Burpelson AFB (talk) 23:54, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Coach biography resource

I'm not sure how widely known this website is, but I just stumbled upon it myself. It apparently only started last year, but looks like a promising resource to track down some elusive assistant coaching tenures (probably other uses as well) for coaches' biographies: http://coachtrees.com/. It's definitely not all-inclusive, and probably not a reliable source in itself, but can at least be used to guide searches. Strikehold (talk) 03:24, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Request for Bowl Game template

We support a template for CFB team links: 

{{cfb link|year=2010|team=Richmond Spiders|school=University of Richmond|title=Richmond}}

Similarly, could someone assist with the equivalent for Bowl Games? As the number of season-specific team pages grow, the references to particular season-specific Bowl Games is also increasing. It would be great to support a linking convention independent of whether the particular game page exists yet. Game and Year appear to be the only necessary parameters, but there might be a corner case for games which float between end of Dec and beginning of Jan resulting in some calendar years with two games (guessing the editor should handle that manually). Perhaps: 

{{cfb link|year=20xx|game=Sun Bowl}}

Which would output either:
20xx Sun Bowl (if exists) or
Sun Bowl (by default)
Pasadena91 (talk) 15:30, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

There are many older bowl games that do not yet have articles, but which probably should, and eventually will. Why not make the year as XXXX rather than 20XX ? cmadler (talk) 15:39, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. 20xx is simply an illustration. You would just pass the appropriate year data (19xx-20xx) to the proposed 'year=' parameter. Pasadena91 (talk) 15:50, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
This has been completed. See Template:Bowl link Pasadena91 (talk) 01:37, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't notice this in time to save someone some work, but there is also the Template:Alternate links that will check down a list of links you provide and link to the first one that exists. Strikehold (talk) 20:46, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 Not needed Thanks, but no thanks. {{alternate links}} already does what we need, and more explicitly. Unless we put a bunch of special-case logic into the template (which will make it much harder to clean up via bots a la {{cfb link}}), it won't handle years with two games (January and December), and also won't handle cases where the yearly game name is not the same article title as the article about the game in general, e.g. 2010 Rose Bowl vs. Rose Bowl Game. For the sake of standardization, I suggest we either delete the template (and revert all transclusions to {{alternate links}} or, if strong support for it exists, beef it up to support the dual year cases and nonstandard name cases. Thoughts? DeFaultRyan 22:05, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree with DeFaultRyan. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:22, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Jake Long long edit war brewing

Please come comment on the talk of Jake Long regarding the fireworks.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:53, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I have commented and agree with TonyTheTiger's position. Hopefully, this can be resolved shortly and painlessly. Obamafan70 (talk) 18:03, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Outland article needs H-E-L-P!

Gang, the article on John H. Outland needs some serious help... I don't even know where to begin. Some of it is good, some of it is just rambling. It should become in my opinion a high priority for our project!--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:50, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Just did some work on this one. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:01, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Problem with editor

I've run into a bit of a problem with editor User:MDSanker. He does a lot of editing on Tennessee and Vanderbilt football articles. I first encountered him in May when he created some new season articles for those two programs. I made a bunch of edits on those pages to clean up layout and grammar and bring them in line with formatting standards. I also made a post on his talk page explaining the rationale for a lot of my edits and giving him a few tips/suggestions. He responded with inapt reverts of my edits and unwarranted claims of vandalism against me. He seemed to have difficulty grasping appropriate notions of rights and ownership on Wikipedia.

For example he wrote on my talk page, "Jweiss11 thank you for trying to help I am trying to get as much Vanderbilt and Tennessee sports updated as I can, It may take me a while to do this. I would like you to stop changing the content to fit what you want to say. If you where a Tennessee alum or even a fan I would not have a problem with it. You seem to be a Michigan person and that seems to be strange that you want to change a Tennessee and Vanderbilt page to fit your way of thinking."

In just the past week or so I made a few edits to 1949 Vanderbilt Commodores football team and 2010 Vanderbilt Commodores football team. In particular, I removed a large copy and paste edit that MDSanker had made on the 2010 Vandy page and explained on his talk page how such copy and paste edits were inappropriate in terms of tone and were likely copyright violations. He responded by reverting my edits on the article pages and his talk page with edit summaries such as "Stop Stalking" and "up this guy".

I'm not sure what the best course of action is here. I was thinking the best move might be for a third party, ideally someone else here who is familiar with college football topics, to drop him a note and explain what's up. Would appreciate any advice. Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:36, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Start a "paper trail." Some of this stuff is warning warranted. (I presume you're familiar with warning templates?) Definitely copyright violations warrant a warning. He may also be violating WP:3RR. Not sure if that helps, but I'll try and keep a watch and help.—Ute in DC (talk) 19:17, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Ute in DC, thanks for chiming in here. Yes, I know about warning templates, but I've really only used the ones for vandalism. I'm not sure that plastering his talk page with with warning templates, especially if they are coming from me, is the best move at this point. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:54, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I'll leave a comment for him (on his talk page) as an independent, third party only with an interest in advancing college football on WP. There are a lot of issues here, and I think it would be beneficial for him to be aware of the protocol here, specifically WP:CIVIL, WP:OWN, and WP:AGF.Obamafan70 (talk) 19:35, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Jweiss11 and Ute in DC, thanks for bringing this to our attention. I left the following comment on his talk page:

MDSanker, thank you for using WP and your dedication (specifically) to improving college football articles. A number of your fellow editors have expressed concerns about your editing, and I just wanted to provide a few of my own comments -- both for conflict resolution purposes and to better WP....I've read the series of exchanges between you and JWeiss11 and Ute in DC, and I think it would be beneficial if you re-read WP:AGF, WP:OWN, and WP:CIVIL before your next edit. We all value your hard work and commitment to improving WP, but none of us is above protocol, and some of your recent edits that you may violated a few WP policies. I'm not an administrator, I'm not here to personally attack you; I'm just here to remind you that Wikipedia is a collaborative project effort and to be a bit more mindful of that. Thank you, Obamafan70 (talk) 19:42, 14 September 2010 (UTC) Hopefully, this resolves the issue. If not, we can re-visit it here and discuss further. Thanks, Obamafan70 (talk) 19:44, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Obamafan70, thanks for helping out here. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:54, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Jweiss11, the aforementioned user deleted my constructive criticism. I don't know wherein the problem lies. I've informed him of the conflict. If this continues to be problematic here, let me know and I will support your mediation efforts. Obamafan70 (talk) 20:30, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

AP Poll vs. Coaches' Poll

The default for the CFB Schedule template is the Coaches' Poll, but the template leaves open the possibility for an editor to use a different poll. Many editors, including myself, prefer the AP Poll and have used that. I won't speak for other editors, but I prefer the AP Poll because it is the ranking that most news outlets use, including ESPN. It is also the oldest and is most respected of the Polls.

I have no problem with editors who use the default Coaches' Poll. User:Bsuorangecrush has changed several team pages to the Coaches' Poll after the original editor has selected the AP Poll. If there is consensus for this change to uniformity, I will respect it. I would like to solicit other editors opinions. —Ute in DC (talk) 21:35, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

They ought to both be used where applicable. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:37, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
Comment Part of the reason that is there is for other polls such as NAIA or DIV II/DIV III polls... or for polls before the Coaches and AP existed...--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:23, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Both should be used if possible. Both polls ultimately result in the selection of national champions that are popularly viewed as being equally valuable and relevant. The fact that the Coaches is involved in the BCS does not make the AP Poll less relevant. The ideal solution is for both to be included. If only one can be used, probably the Coaches is better. CrazyPaco (talk) 05:18, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
This discussion has come up many times but I think it has usually ended with deciding to use the Coaches Poll as the standard because it factors into the BCS formula, while the AP poll does not, thus has a greater importance in today's football landscape. By the way ESPN only started using the AP in 2005, because the coaches elected not to disclose their votes. Ryan2845 (talk) 21:36, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Agreed with JWeiss11 -- they ought to both be used when applicable. Though, I just wanted to respond to the above statement -- "By the way ESPN only started using the AP in 2005." I am hoping that you are merely invoking ESPN as supporting evidence rather than as a gold standard.Obamafan70 (talk) 21:45, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I was simply responding to the original poster's comment that "most news outlets..including ESPN" use the AP poll. No particular argument being made using ESPN Ryan2845 (talk) 17:29, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Got it. Thanks for the clarification. Obamafan70 (talk) 17:43, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

College Football @ Sports-Reference.com

Sports Reference recently launched a college football site: http://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/. Jweiss11 (talk) 11:25, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Don't know if I fully understand or agree with their method for whether to include a particular school's yearly statistics. For example, since I know Oklahoma best, they exclude the following Oklahoma seasons: 1895-1902, 1904, 1906-1908, and 1910-1911. When I asked about this, they referred me to this page. While I won't argue with the early, pre-1900 years, when they decided to start skipping around years, I start questioning the logic. Whey were they major in one year, but not the next. Not to mention they skip one year Oklahoma when 8-0 including wins over Oklahoma State, Texas, Missouri and Kansas.
Anyway, I'm sure there are other years skipped for other schools, so just be careful if you decide to use statistics from this site that include entire program stats, like all wins-losses for a particular school. Since some years are skipped, their numbers may not match the numbers the school or NCAA recognizes. On the flip side, they definitely have information that can't be found anywhere else.»NMajdan·talk 19:17, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, I guess we're going to have take some of the stuff there with a grain of salt, at least for the time being. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:11, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
In the case of Michigan, they have excluded more than 10 seasons, including each of the years from 1884-1891. Based on the page referenced above, they have done that based on one person's value judgment that Michigan was not "major" in those particular years, but apparently was in 1883 and 1892. Cbl62 (talk) 21:18, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Season schedule templates

A user has recently created a series of templates for 2010 team schedules in the SEC; see Category:2010 SEC football season. This bodes to open a can of worms. I see no reason why we need templates of this form because a team's schedule in a given season only belongs in one place on Wikipedia, in the article for that team's given season. These templates are being transcluded into another location at 2010 Southeastern Conference football season. However, 2009 Big Ten Conference football season has reached GA status with a different and more appropriate weekly schedule format. I've already nominated Template:2010 Georgia Football Schedule for deletion, but wanted to bring this up here to have others weigh in before I nominate the others. Jweiss11 (talk) 06:26, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree. These simply aren't needed. The whole schedule is sufficiently covered on each team's page. The 2009 Big Ten Conference football season is the preferable form for conference pages because that places each week's schedule within the context of the conference. It highlights when the Big Ten team played a non-conference opponent and what its effect on the conference was. The alternative duplicates a majority of the games, by listing them under both conference team, and deemphasizes the cohesion of conference since every team's schedule is listed as an individual unit. It also includes information that is not particularly relevant to the conference as a whole such as homecoming games. —Ute in DC (talk) 06:53, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree as well and left my vote on the TfD page. As I noted there, there is a prior precedent for deleting these. We used to have rosters as a template, but that was voted down as well.»NMajdan·talk 14:47, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Agree DeFaultRyan 16:23, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Also, in regards to 2009 Big Ten Conference football season, I've created some templates, similar to single-team schedules, that will facilitate this. I've replaced the week one schedule on the Big Ten page with {{CFB Conference Schedule Start}}, {{CFB Conference Schedule Entry}}, and {{CFB Conference Schedule End}}. That way, if we want to do this type of conference schedule in the future, say for 2010 Southeastern Conference football season, we now have a standardized way of doing it. DeFaultRyan 16:48, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

DeFaultRyan, great. Thanks! Jweiss11 (talk) 20:36, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

College football articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the College football articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 22:16, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

  • I took a look at the generated list and noticed that it seemed odd. Then I realized that because this project doesn't assess articles for project importance (only quality), it's a straight pull of the top quality articles that are marked as being under this project. The result is a list dominated by NFL topics and other people whose primary significance is outside college football, while significant college football people and topics (e.g., Bear Bryant, Walter Camp, Fielding Yost) are omitted. cmadler (talk) 13:09, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Template:Infobox college coach

I'd like to propose a little reworking of Template:Infobox college coach, the infobox template for college coaches. I mocked up an example of the new proposed version for Bo Schembechler here: User:Jweiss11/Bo Schembechler; template code here: User:Jweiss11/Template:Infobox college coach.

Some of the fields are populated with fictitious stuff to fully blow out the template and display everything. I think this will order, section, and format the elements better and make the field labels more precise. It will also clear up the purpose of those fields that seem to have ambiguous purpose, specifically Title, Team, and Conference, which really only make sense for active coaches, but in practice are often populated in a sloppy, redundant fashion or re-purposed for retired/deceased coaches; see Mike Gottfried. I also added a new section for "Administrative career" to note tenures as athletic director or the like. To date, those positions often get tacked onto the coaching career section, but they don't really belong there; see Bump Elliott. Everyone, let me know what you think. Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:34, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Good work. I like it. DeFaultRyan 15:16, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Looks good, JW. Does it preserve the flexibility to continue to use it for coaches of college sports other than college football, and what's your proposal for the standardized formatting of the history and records of those early coaches who mentored more than one sport? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:57, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, all the existing flexibility for multiple sports has been preserved. Here's what the new infobox would look like for someone who coached three sports (on the fly, without making any edits at the article): User:Jweiss11/Zora G. Clevenger. This formatting, which is what I've been implementing for multi-sport coaches over the past few months, is what I propose to continue using at this time. Doing something more advanced in the infobox, like creating fields for second and third sports, would require major maintenance all over. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:18, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Eagles 24/7 (C) 19:20, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Looks good to me as well, although I think it would be even better if the template code used {{infobox}}. I can refactor it if you want. Plastikspork (talk) 00:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Plastikspork, yes, please refactor away. Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:43, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Jweiss -- Using your infobox, how would we handle the situation where a coach has also been a player at both the college and pro level? Would the NFL teams/years go in the same "Playing career" section, or in a different section? Don Doll, which is an article I'm working on currently, is an example. Cbl62 (talk) 01:13, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Cbl62, nothing changes from the existing template to this reworked one with respect to handling multi-level careers as a player or as a coach. See Rick Neuheisel for an example of this template used for someone who has both played and coached at the college and pro levels. I see you used Template:Infobox gridiron football person for Don Doll. That may be an more appropriate choice for him. That template has fields for coaching history. Maybe an integration of all these templates is in order, but, yikes, that's a much bigger project than what I initially bit off here. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
The Rick Neuheisel format looks good to me. I have no problem with the college and pro "playing career" being combined and think that makes sense. The Don Doll infobox actually precedes my work. I am never sure which infobox to use in a case like that. Cbl62 (talk) 05:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

FYI, everyone, these changes have been pushed into production. Let me know if you see any issues. Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:50, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

AfD candidate

A head coach stub I created months ago is now up for deletion. Since I'm generally unfamiliar with WP:CFB notability standards, I thought I'd let this WikiProject know in case anyone can offer valid reasons why this article should be deleted or kept. Here's the link: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thomas Reap. Thanks. Jrcla2 (talk) 04:49, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Curse of Mike Hart

Check out this garbage: Curse of Mike Hart. Please chime in here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Curse of Mike Hart. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:49, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

A fair warning / "heads up"

Back in fall 2009 and winter 2009/10, I was on a college football coach stub-making binge. Since 99% of the articles I created mirrored what Thomas Reap looked like (infobox, W-L-T record, and the navbox only), I'm afraid that in due time all of them will become AfDs as well. I don't want to have to keep re-posting "Hey WP CFB, here's another one up for deletion, please comment" on this talk page, so I'm going to list all of the templates right here in which I completed the coaches' articles in hopes that some of you will expand the articles. I focus on WP:CBBALL, so CFB isn't really my realm of expertise. Here's the list:

Categories for discussion nomination of Category:College football

Category:College football has been nominated for renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you.--Mike Selinker (talk) 19:40, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

List of Michigan Wolverines head football coaches

I've put a peer review request in for List of Michigan Wolverines head football coaches here: Wikipedia:Peer review/List of Michigan Wolverines head football coaches/archive1. I think this is a good candidate for a Featured List nomination. Please make comments if you like. Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:14, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I left a few comments on there for you.»NMajdan·talk 18:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
Great. Thanks for the input. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:17, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Infobox NCAA football yearly game

I recently discovered that articles have been created for the last two NCAA D-II Championship games (2008 NCAA Division II National Football Championship game, 2009 NCAA Division II National Football Championship game). The creator of these articles used an infobox called Template:Infobox American Football Championship game, that was also created by the same user and doesn't seem to be in use anywhere else. There are different templates dedicated for NFL Championship games and Super Bowls.

I swapped in Template:Infobox NCAA football yearly game for standardization and because it seems to service more relevant fields. The one problem is the "Football Season" field. When populated, the logic of the template automatically links to the I-A/FBS season or whatever the highest division play was in earlier eras. To generalize this template for lower division championship games, we need to tweak the logic to make the linking conditional. Or maybe we just leave the "Football Season" field blank for now? There are articles for the I-AA/FBS articles from 2004 to present and redirects for 1978 to 2003 that could be linked to, but no articles have been created for I-AA championship games. No season articles have been created yet for NCAA D-II, D-III, or NAIA, but we do have a 2010 NAIA conference article (2010 Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference football season. Seems like these could start cropping up. Thoughts on this? Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:35, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Request input--NAIA Conference season article

Hey everyone! I could use some input at 2010 Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference football season for some pointers... first time I've done a season article for a conference...--Paul McDonald (talk) 22:01, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

See the "Season schedule templates" section above for some new templates that were created for conference season pages. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:05, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Looks pretty good. A couple formatting issues jump out. 1) Record and scores should be punctuated with an en dash, not a hyphen. 2) The heading hierarchy in the Schedule section in inconsistent. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:32, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
What's the syntax for en dash?--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:24, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
For an en dash, type: &ndash; Jweiss11 (talk) 20:04, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Template:CFB Yearly Record Start

A column heading name change seems to be in order for Template:CFB Yearly Record Start. The CFB yearly records templates are in use for plenty of coaches who have coached teams in the NCAA or NAIA playoff tournaments. Some of these guys have also coached in FBS bowl games, e.g. Jim Tressel. Maybe we need a parameter that modifies the heading appropriately? "Bowl" or "Playoffs" or "Bowl/Playoffs"? Thoughts? Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:12, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Good idea. A lot of the post-season playoff games have "bowl" names to them, especially in the lower levels. How do we differentiate a "conference chamionship" game from a "bowl game" from a "playoff game" ?--Paul McDonald (talk) 12:57, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Citing sources from CFDW

Here's a template for citing a source from the CFDW that we use so much...

Information from the website in article.<ref>{{Cite web
| last = DeLassus
| first = David
| title = CFDW-Page-title
| publisher = [[College Football Data Warehouse]]
| url = CFDW-url-referenced
| format = html
| accessdate = date-you-viewed-website}}</ref>

Feel free to modify/improve/use/make changes.--Paul McDonald (talk) 17:57, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Naming for team season articles in the pre-nickname era

While we are on the topic of team naming conventions (see above), what are everyone's thoughts about how to name articles for team seasons before a given program adopted any nickname. We have 1926 Stanford football team as Stanford did not adopt a nickname until "Indians" in 1930. Per footnotes on Jack Forsythe, the University of Florida football team did not adopt the "Gators" nickname until 1911, but the early Florida team articles are carrying the Gators nickname anyway; see Category:Florida Gators football seasons. The Washington Huskies had no nickname until 1919, when they became the "Sun Dodgers"; see http://www.gohuskies.com/trads/huskies-name.html. They didn't take "Huskies" until 1922, but the early Washington team pages are similarly carrying the Huskies nickname; see Category:Washington Huskies football seasons. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:20, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Gentlemen, I agree that we should use the then-current nicknames for team seasons whenever humanly possible. In text, I have used "piped" wiki links to insert the correct nicknames, but this does not work on the sequential season links for the team season pages and only seems to create a red link. Does anyone have a quick fix for this technical issue? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:30, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
I am fine with using then current nicknames as long as there is a redirect created from what a reader is likely to think the article should be called. Most readers are not likely to know that Washington used to be called the "Sun Dodgers." So there should be a redirect for when someone types "1920 Washington Huskies" to the article. —Ute in DC (talk) 20:42, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Ute, I agree wholeheartedly that a redirect from the current nickname needs to exist, but Jweiss is asking what should be used before any nickname was in place at a given school. I would say it should be either the sports "short name" (i.e. 1926 Stanford football team) or the full university name (i.e. 1926 Stanford University football team). Strikehold (talk) 21:21, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Ute in DC about setting up the redirects from present-day names that point to the historical names. That should be easy enough. What I really want to get is people's thoughts about how we name a team season when there was no nickname, e.g. the Washington team in 1910. Is 1910 Washington football team specific enough? Or do we need to invoke the full school name in the absence of any nickname, i.e. 1910 University of Washington football team? Jweiss11 (talk) 21:24, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

I prefer the former as easier to say and remember. The latter is unwieldy and not really necessary. The former sufficiently disambiguates the article; it will be the rare case indeed where more than one team could be referenced without the phrase "university of".—Ute in DC (talk) 21:33, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
It depends on the point of view of these articles, and I'm not sure there is a clear distinction. Is one season but one part of the complete linage of the program and institution? For instance, is it an article about Washington Huskies' 1920 football season in which the institution used the mascot the Sun Dodgers, or is it an article about the 1920 Washington Sun Dodgers only? After all, the institution and program have really been the same continuous entity whether it was 1919, 1920, and 2009. Does it matter which title is used as long as this is discussed in the text and a redirect is present? In addition, you have early seasons where names and nicknames weren't formalized in the sense that modern marketing has fashioned them throughout the second half of the Twentieth century. If you go back and read through old yearbooks and programs, some single teams were referred to by multiple nicknames, some generic, like "Varsity" or, in basketball, "Cagers". For women's sports, you get into issues like "Lady xxxxs or xxxettes. Further, if you want to be historically accurate, then do you start call them "foot ball" teams, because it was two words for many decades. How do you decide the cutoffs for such things in a standardized way when it wasn't historically standardized? For Wikipedia standardization, it may be better to stick with the modern incarnations instead of the more murky historical names that weren't as formal, but again, does it really matter if it is explained in the text of the article? It may be best left up to the authors of the article that are most familiar with the history and program. CrazyPaco (talk) 10:39, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
  • As a related question, many older programs had informal nicknames. In some cases these were eventually formally adopted, which makes things easy -- just use the nickname -- but in other cases they were replaced with a different formal nickname, and in some cases there were multiple informal nicknames. For example, I'm preparing to work on some of the older teams for what is now Eastern Michigan Eagles football. From 1956-1990 they were the Eastern Michigan Hurons, that's easy. From 1929-1955 is also easy, they were the MSNC Hurons. Pre-1929, they were informally known as the "Normalites" from about 1899 (hard to be exact), and in the very early years they were informally known as the "Men from Ypsi". I'm inclined to ignore the "Men from Ypsi" nickname in naming articles -- even if it could be well-sourced by year, it's too unwieldy for an article name -- and just call those "189Y MSNC football team" as discussed above. I'm less sure about the "Normalites" teams, both because it is a more succinct nickname and because its use can more easily be documented. Should that nickname also be ignored because it was not formally used by the school (continue with "19YY MSNC football team"), or should it be used to the extent it can be sourced ("19YY MSNC Normalites football team")? Thanks, cmadler (talk) 15:32, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
  • To be truly correct, pre-1929 they were generally known as the "Michigan State Normalites" but that would be too confusing to modern readers who associate "Michigan State" with the Michigan State Spartans, which were then known as the "Michigan Agricultural College Aggies". Ah, the joys of historical name changes! cmadler (talk) 15:46, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
If you put in the historically correct name and a redirect from what a reader might expect to find, it shouldn't be too confusing. —Ute in DC (talk) 18:23, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Coach Navbox for new programs?

Template:Saint Francis Cougars football coach navbox is under consideration for deletion. There's only one coach becaue it's a new program... what do you think??--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:52, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Template:Monmouth Hawks football coach navbox also only has one coach in it. ~ Richmond96 t • c 01:09, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

What awards are sufficiently notable for a lead?

Please discuss each of the following, and please have one person summarize the consensus so it is clear. The issue arises from the fact that another editor & I disagree about whether or not Ryan Mallett should include in the lead a mention that he won the world's largest crystal football award as the national performer of the year. I will naturally abide by the community's consensus and would expect others to do the same. Thanks and happy editing....

Options -- Sufficiently notable for lead (strongly agree to strongly disagree) -- Thanks, Obamafan70 (talk) 22:57, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
The awards listed at ESPN here: http://espn.go.com/college-football/awards are definitely notable enough for leads. I would recommend against College Football Performance Awards and Lowe's Senior CLASS Awards for leads. I'm not sure how I feel about the Paul Hornung Award and the Lott Trophy, as those are newer awards, but they seem to be mentioned in the same breath as the more established positional awards like the Doak Walker Award, Fred Biletnikoff Award, etc. All the awards bestowed by the Touchdown Club of Columbus also seem to be of lower notability than the ones listed by ESPN above. Noting that the College Football Performance National Performer of the Year trophy is the "the world's largest crystal football award" belongs nowhere except as the purported claim is detailed on the award page. It's promotional/marketing fluff to include it anywhere on a player's article. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Also, while we are on the topic of awards, the College Football Performance Awards should certainly not be listed four times at Template:College Football Awards as they are currently. One link is sufficient. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:26, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. It was just unclear what to do with it since it crosses between divisions and has 20-something awards. Obamafan70 (talk) 23:35, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Done. Just one section now, but with clarification as both D-I FBS & FCS and numerous positions.
Thanks for opining....I think using the ESPN list is only slightly instructive, since ESPN is primarily an entertainment company. ESPN doesn't list the Manning Award, Lowe's Senior CLASS award, CFPA awards, Paul Hornung Award (an award with no recipients yet), or Lott Trophy, for example. The AP might be a more valid reference point since it's primarily a journalistic enterprise (it subsequently lists the Manning Award & CFPA & Lott Trophy in press releases). Another option here is to develop a notability hierarchy since some articles like Brandon Graham (American football) have lenghty, lengthy sections for leads. So my thought is to include the Manning Awards & CFPA awards & Lott Trophy in addition to the ones associated on the ESPN page. I would see the Paul Hornung Award & Lowe's Senior Class Award & Touchdown Club of Columbus Awards as non-notable for the lead.23:32, Obamafan70 (talk) 23:53, 20 October 2010 (UTC)20 October 2010 (UTC)
Jweiss11, the entire Brandon Graham article lead is filled with fluff like Tribune Silver Football Award. Are you suggesting we systematically purge leads in the fashion you suggest? For my 2 cents, keep all but Hornung which has zero winners, TD Club of Columbo, and Lowe's senior class award.Guiltlessgecko (talk) 00:05, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Gents, IMHO, I think we should include consensus or unanimous All-American status, as determined by the NCAA, in the lead paragraph—provided it's not superseded by the Heisman. Consensus All-American status is probably the closest-to-objective measure of a college football player's worth because it involves independent evaluations by multiple selector organizations. Frankly, consensus AA status is probably a lot more meaningful than half or more of the awards listed. Just my two bits worth. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:08, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I'm fine with that even though they aren't recognized by the ESPN list. Guiltlessgecko (talk) 00:09, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Ignoring the sockpuppetry by User:Guiltlessgecko and User:Obamafan70, I don't think the College Football Performance Awards should be listed in the lead, but it is acceptable to have in the body of the article. The rest of the awards listed above are just for comparison reasons. Eagles 24/7 (C) 00:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Ignoring the WP:SOCK accusations as I invited a university colleague to this discussion as well as multiple opponents (see associated talk pages, including BrokenSphere, Bender, and JWeiss) the aforementioned result is acceptable. The intention of this exercise was to build consensus and avoid potential spats given the extent to which I interact with fellow editors.Obamafan70 (talk) 00:37, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Don't play games with me. I could have blocked you on the spot for this kind of stuff, but I decided to give you another chance. Don't waste it. Eagles 24/7 (C) 00:46, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I don't see the need for fixed rules on which awards are sufficiently weighty to be listed in a lead. For any given biography, the lead should summarize the person's most notable accomplishments. If a person has won 20 awards, some discretion is needed in sorting which should and should not be in the lead. The lead shouldn't, in such cases, be a laundry list of every award. However, if a person's most significant accomplishments consist of an All-SEC recognition or Chicago Tribune Silver Football award, then the lead should make reference to those points. The question of what should be in the lead is inherently a case-by-case issue that depends on what any given person's most significant accomplishments are. Cbl62 (talk) 01:59, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Cbl62 makes some good points here. Hard and fast rules about which awards qualify for inclusion in leads may be restrictive and problematic. We might be better off with suggested hierarchy about what to highlight in leads. The top dog is definitely the Heisman. On the second tier I'd put the other annual, national awards on the ESPN page linked above (some important ones could be missing here) and All-American selections. Third tier would be official year-end conference awards and honors. Below that we'd have everything else like the College Football Performance Awards. In response to Guiltlessgecko's comment above, the Tribune Silver Football Award is hardly fluff. It's been around since 1924 and is awarded by the top newspaper in the Midwest. The Big Ten football media guide contains references to the award throughout including a full listing of the award's recipients on page 98; see [6]. By comparison, the College Football Performance Awards are rather new and upstart, don't you think? Jweiss11 (talk) 05:18, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
We all agree to place the Heisman Trophy in a first tier of notability as a kind of transcendent sports award that has achieved pop culture icon status (the Heisman is a dance, for instance). In a distant second place are all the national awards that get WP:V coverage from conferences, universities, and national media outlets. In the third tier are awards like the Bill Willis Trophy -- Touchdown Club awards where the first three google hits are Wikipedia links as opposed to university or media releases. I've argued that while some trophies like CFPA, Manning Award, and Lott Trophy are not partners with ESPN or the FWAA that they still meet the most reasonable conception of 2nd tier.

A simple google search for "Big Ten College Football Performance Awards", "Big Ten Manning Award" and "Big Ten Lott Trophy" reveals several official releases by the conference in the past few weeks for each award:

(Manning Award & Davey O' Brien weekly award winners)Obamafan70 (talk) 06:02, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

In the specific case of Ryan Mallett, which prompted the discussion, the current lead is too short and does not adequately summarize his major accomplishments. It's kind of odd that in 2009 he was chosen as a second-team All-SEC player while also receiving the CFPA's National Player of the Year Award. In other words, he's only the second best player at his position in a conference, but he's also the best player at any position in the entire country? Sounds like someone was mis-evaluating him. In any event, the CFPA award is the most significant award that Mallett has received to date and therefore should be mentioned in the lead. Cbl62 (talk) 14:47, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I think his All-SEC selection, or even his high school awards, are more significant than this CFPA which hasn't been mentioned anywhere in the media. I mean, there are thousands of newspaper articles reporting Ingram's Heisman (like [7]), or Suh's Outland (like [8]), but try to find me an article (not a press release!) reporting about Mallett's "Player of the Year award". This whole CFPA looks suspicious, as does Obamafan's surreptitious advertising. Essentially he's the only one plugging this award everywhere on Wikipedia. To me, this is either a case of WP:COI or WP:FANCRUFT. —bender235 (talk) 16:01, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
  • The more I read about them, the less convinced I am that CFPA is worth mentioning. As Bender235 pointed out, there are certainly plenty of press releases trumpeting their awards -- schools and conferences love to brag about getting awards -- but there are very few articles about such awards, and I suspect most of those are either trivial mentions or information pulled unquestioningly from press releases. I also have some concerns about the CFPA article, which at a quick glance, appears to be entirely sourced to press releases, the CFPA web site, and one tweet. There's just a tremendous amount of puffery in that article. cmadler (talk) 17:06, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
"Mallett CFPA" google search: Associated Press, Rivals.com, Fox Arkansas TV, Arkansas Football ReleaseObamafan70 (talk) 17:13, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I must admit, the more I look at the College Football Performance Awards, the more concerned I am getting as well. Let's establish a few facts:

  • User:Obamafan70 created the article for College Football Performance Awards created on January 3, 2010.
  • User:Guiltlessgecko created the article for Brad Smith (businessman), former college football player and founder/CEO of the College Football Performance Awards, on June 29, 2010.
  • The College Football Performance Awards article feature a number of photographs of award recipients receiving the trophies (File:Keenum with crystal.JPG), (File:Lamichael james606.jpg), (File:Mccluster spring game.jpg), (File:AdrianClaybornAward.jpg). All four of these photos appeare to be taken by someone who had privileged access to the awards presentation. Per the image licensing notes, these images were taken by Obamafan70, Guiltlessgecko, and User:Kcchief915.
  • All three of the aforementioned editors, Obamafan70, Guiltlessgecko, and Kcchief915, have made recent edits at Heisman Trophy regarding controversy or bias of the award.
  • The College Football Performance Awards article has entire sections devoted to nothing else but the enumeration of university press releases mentioning the awards.
  • The lead of the The College Football Performance Awards article states "In 2009, 553,495 fans attended CFPA presentations. According to NCAA statistics on cumulative season attendance, CFPA is the 14th largest on-site attendance property in college football." The citation is this NCAA document [9], which lists total home football attendance per D-I FBS program in 2009. 553,495 would be the 14th largest number on that list, but if that isn't a ridiculous manipulation, I don't know what it. Just what exactly is an "on-site attendance property"?! Summing up the cumulative attendance at the basketball games and spring practices where the CFPA awards were presented and then comparing them to home football game attendance is an absolute absurdity.
  • Moving to the CFPA website itself, http://collegefootballperformance.com/, you can see that the main graphical banner features the image of Keenum noted above that was taken by Obamafan70.

The CFPA websites goes to extensive, almost desperate, efforts to note its recognition. We are seeing that effort mirrored here on Wikipedia. I think it's safe to say we have a serious conflict of interest on our hands.

Furthermore, as for the awards themselves, the website makes a lot of claims about employing scientific methods to overcome the subjectivity and bias in traditional awards. The language of the website is littered with de-contextualized catchwords like "meta-algorithms" and "differential equations" and effusive blurbs from endorsing academics, but says very little that is truly meaningful about its methodology. Check out this doozie of a meaningless schematic: [10].

On a side note, the website bio for Brad Smith notes his IQ. Who puts their IQ in their CV?! May I suggest an additional category for the Brad Smith article? How about Category:Douchebag? ;) Jweiss11 (talk) 20:20, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

As I stated above, Obamafan70 and Guiltlessgecko are the same person. I'm not sure about Kcchief915, but I haven't looked into their edits yet. Based on your compelling reasons, it appears Obamafan70/Guiltlessgecko have a serious COI. Eagles 24/7 (C) 20:32, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I guess I should have looked at the article, which was full of spam. I have removed 23,000 bytes worth of promotion/spam from the article. Eagles 24/7 (C) 20:43, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Kcchief915 is also Obamafan70/Guiltlessgecko. And Obamafan70 has requested deletion of his user and user talk pages. Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:05, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Uhm, Kcchief915/Obamafan70/Guiltlessgecko = Brad Smith? Could it be? —bender235 (talk) 00:26, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
It would not surprise me. Eagles 24/7 (C) 00:40, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Just another evidence: those IP sock-puppets Obamafan70 used on various occasions (166.82.82.98 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), and 166.82.116.211 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)) can be traced to the Charlotte, North Carolina region, which is also the residence of Brad Smith (according to Guiltlessgecko's article about him). What a coincidence! –bender235 (talk) 01:08, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Did you know that Brad Smith has an IQ of 154?! Jweiss11 (talk) 01:36, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
153, actually. Eagles 24/7 (C) 02:03, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
BTW: If Kcchief915 and Guiltlessgecko are just sockpuppets of Obamafan70, it makes this and that kinda scary, doesn't it? —bender235 (talk) 00:56, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
I have been working with sockpuppet investigations for almost a year now, and this is not the first time I have seen sockpuppets give each other barnstars. Eagles 24/7 (C) 01:26, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Two of three barnstars I've ever been awarded were from Obamafan70. :( Jweiss11 (talk) 01:36, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
On second thought, maybe I will win a giant crystal ball trophy for my Wikipedia contributions! Jweiss11 (talk) 01:38, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
I think the main reason he gave out so many barnstars was because he hoped someone would return the favor, since the only barnstars he received were from himself. Eagles 24/7 (C) 02:03, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Best entertainment of my day so far. Thanks, gentlemen. Fjbfour (talk) 16:46, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
So I removed most of the spam/promotion from College Football Performance Awards, Brad Smith (businessman) and the articles on players who received an award. I also nominated the Brad Smith article for deletion (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brad Smith (businessman), and CFPA may be deletable as promotional material. Eagles 24/7 (C) 19:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
In light of the investigative work of JWeiss, Eagles247 and bender, the apparent COI and speedy withdrawal of Obamafan from his user and talk pages, it appears that the touting of CFPAs here on Wikipedia was part of a calculated campaign to use the project to establish the legitimacy of Mr. Smith's venture. Good work to those who uncovered this. While we should not allow Wikipedia to become a promotional tool for personal ventures, there are still sufficient press reports on the CFPAs (e.g., the AP story on Mallett's CFPA) to establish the minimum notability threshold to have some basic article on the CFPAs. I am persuaded, though, that it's premature to start listing weekly CFPA awards in player bios. Accordingly, I have removed the references to weekly CFPA awards from the Denard Robinson article. Should the CFPAs be removed from the NavBox listing of major college football awards? Cbl62 (talk) 20:21, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
I would hold off for right now on the navbox. I removed the sublist of Scientific awards which only contained CFPA, so now it is only linked once. Eagles 24/7 (C) 20:37, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Ultimately, I think we should delete College Football Performance Awards as well. That single AP story is not sufficent to establish WP:N for this phony award. —bender235 (talk) 21:27, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
After further review of the article, I have nominated it for deletion (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/College Football Performance Awards) as well. Eagles 24/7 (C) 22:13, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

"[program] under [coach]" articles

Do we actually need these articles that summarize a particular coaching stint? I'm talking about articles like:

...and many more. IMHO these articles should be merged into the respective season articles. —bender235 (talk) 00:41, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

The purpose of these articles is to group together otherwise non-notable seasons into one article. Eagles 24/7 (C) 00:44, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
I don't think there are non-notable seasons. Each season of these programs deserve its own article. —bender235 (talk) 00:48, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
If you want to separate them into individual articles, I would not be opposed to it. Eagles 24/7 (C) 01:26, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I've created individual articles such that there is now one for each of Michigan' 132 seasons going back to 1879. The four above mentioned programs are clearly as notable as Michigan and the same should probably be done for them. We've got existing articles like 1924 Centre Praying Colonels football team and 2006 North Alabama Lions football team. Thus, we've effectively decided, to date, that any college football team's season is notable enough for its own article, certainly for NCAA D-I. I've never been a fan of the "[program] under [coach]" articles or the "program, 19XX to 19XX" articles. They tend to be either very sloppy in stub-form (e.g. see what happens to the alignment on Washington Huskies football, 1980–1989 when standard infobox and standings templates are added without much or any body text) or unwieldy when more developed, which itself bodes for breakout into individual seasons. It also creates another layer of complexity in the organization of college football coverage. The exploits of the 2006 Oklahoma Sooners are can be covered in varying detail at 2006 Oklahoma Sooners football team, Bob Stoops, and the history section of Oklahoma Sooners football. But then we also have Oklahoma Sooners football under Bob Stoops.

The single season is a clean and discrete entity, whereas the decade or program under coach articles feature a greater level of contrivance in their framing. The single-season format ensures that we have something well-defined, clean, and tractable from stub (e.g. 1880 Michigan Wolverines football team to well-developed article (e.g. 1901 Michigan Wolverines football team. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:33, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I created USC Trojans football under Paul Hackett up there, though too be honest I'd just as soon do full articles for each season. I think it makes the transition from stub to full-fledged article a little easier, since contributors can add bits and pieces to each article without having to worry that it would stand out amongst other, less-contributed-to teams on a coach page. Plus the formatting issues that Jweiss11 pointed out in the Washington 1980s page can get out of hand.
Also, the by-coach pages can get a little uneven when they're about coaches who coached only two or three years while others have dozens of seasons. USC has a particularly awkward situation with John Robinson -- the Grover Cleveland of college football -- who had two non-consecutive tenures. I've been working on his page over on my sandbox but it's still a bit awkward to skip back and forth between the interim coaches. I'll throw my hat in with the page-per-season crowd. ― El Cid ∴∵ 05:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
This issue has discussed at length at least once before and there was no clear consensus one way or the other. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Archive 7#Articles for each year's roster of a specific team?. I prefer the year-by-year approach, at least for "major" programs. However, others (including DeFaultRyan, Nmajdan and ShadowRanger) felt it was inappropriate to create bare stubs for *every* season for individual teams. The discussion arose after Jweiss created several dozen stubs for previously omitted Michigan seasons over the course of a few days. BTW, I was a little surprised by Jweiss's use of the "first person" above ("I've created individual articles such that there is now one for each of Michigan' 132 seasons going back to 1879."). JW did create a very large number of stubs for omitted seasons, but it would have been more accurate to say "we" since the year-by-year Michigan articles have been a collaborative effort with Maple Leaf creating 10 of the articles, me creating almost 50 of them, and TonyTheTiger, SCS100 and TomCat4680 creating and/or contributing extensively to others. Cbl62 (talk) 06:12, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Cbl62, I just meant to say I made a mad dash last winter to fill in the gaps and make sure we had at least a stub for every year. The effort pales in comparison to what you've done to build out the meat of those articles, especially in cases like 1895 Michigan Wolverines football team, 1901 Michigan Wolverines football team, not to mention all the related biography articles you've written and all the photo cropping and uploading you've done. Didn't mean to overstate my contributions or dismiss those of others. The way I see it is that I did a whole lot of the foundation ditch digging...you, in particular, designed and built the houses. Jweiss11 (talk) 06:34, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
I appreciate your comments and know you didn't mean it the way it could have been interpreted. I just wanted to make clear that many editors besides you and me (like Maple Leaf and TonyTheTiger and TomCat) have also put a lot of effort into the Wolverines year-by-year articles. Cbl62 (talk) 06:37, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I think there is a place for both types of articles. It is my hope that eventually all of these coaches articles can be split out into separate yearly articles. However, first there needs to be at least some information beyond the schedule. The article Georgia Bulldogs football under Vince Dooley doesn't even have the schedule yet for each year. These coaches articles are a good first step to get the articles started. As for John Robinson and his non-consecutive tenure, I'd suggest two different articles. Say, USC Trojans under John Robinson (1976–1983) and USC Trojans under John Robinson (1993–1997). —Ute in DC (talk) 06:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Logos

This really spans any college sport, but affects this one. A well-meaning editor has been going through articles and replacing logos with a "free version" under WP:NFCC#1 (use a free alternate if available) and WP:NFCC#8 (contextual significance). Pretty much with any Wikipedia article that uses an athletic logo, an argument could easily be made that not having the logo would not be "detrimental to the understanding" of the subject (though it would be incomplete). It seems that articles on teams, team seasons, and overall athletics programs have justifiable rationales for using the principal logo of the school in the article. As for NFCC#1, most "free versions" are simply a letter. In the cases I saw for Kent State, the replacement of the school's principal logo (seen here) has been the block "K" logo (a .gif file seen here), which is an "official" logo (it's available on merchandise), but is not the principal or most recognized logo of the school (it's actually just the "K" from the main logo). It's very much an alternate logo, and isn't even seen on team uniforms. What do people here think about logos in general? --JonRidinger (talk) 01:01, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Hey, I'm that other editor. I was trying to follow common practice (or what I observed to be the common practice): primary, non-free logos are used in articles about the athletic department and teams, free, {{PD-text}} alternate logos for season and rivalry articles where WP:LOGO wouldn't apply. While a clarification on WP:LOGO might be nice, I understand past attempts at consensus have been futile. --Mosmof (talk) 01:53, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
There was an absolutely enormous wide-ranging debate over this a while back. As I recall, it was agreed that a non-free logo that is the primary (most-recognizable, most-widely used, etc.) logo can be used on the "main" article to which it applies, even if there is a secondary logo that's free. So the non-free Kent State logo can be used in Kent State Golden Flashes. There was no consensus on using a non-free general athletics logo on a sport-specific article (e.g. Kent State Golden Flashes football). There was a very vocal and strong argument against using any non-free logo on an article about a specific season; the exception would be, of course, if the logo related directly to that season and the article discussed it (such as a special anniverary logo). So in this case, the non-free logo could probably be used on Kent State Golden Flashes, might be used (but be prepare for an argument) on Kent State Golden Flashes football, and should not be used on 2010 Kent State Golden Flashes football team; where the non-free logo is not used, the free "secondary" logo could be used. cmadler (talk) 15:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Cmadler, I don't think the applicable U.S. copyright law or the actual WP copyright and free uses policies are anywhere close to clear-cut. I work primarily on Florida Gators sports and general University of Florida articles, and not just Gators football. The University of Florida WikiProject has had several encounters with the WP copyright police over the last year, and we continue to use the primary Gator head logo on the "Florida Gators" article as well as each of the individual sports pages. As a group, we have given up fighting over the use of the Gator head logo on bowl game, rivalry and individual season pages; there is an available alternative, the script "Gators" logo, that the editors who work on the recent season pages use. This has been the unwritten compromise. Ironically, the use of the script "Gators" logo betrays the WP copyright patrol's distorted understanding of U.S. copyright law; words or letters written in distinct text, color or layout are absolutely subject to the exact same copyright restrictions as the graphic logos (such as the Gator head) that the more zealous WP copyright enforcers find objectionable. FYI, because the script "Gators" logo has only been in use since 1979, and because there were numerous "F" and "UF" logos before 1979, we are not using any graphic on the Florida Gators football season-decade pages. At least they are formatted consistently. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:49, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Here is at least one of the discussions about this. --JonRidinger (talk) 17:10, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Comment Yeah, this is an issue that keeps coming up. I think, rightly so. It's really tough to get to a consensus on the issue and both sides have valid arguments. If we ever make a decision on this, someone let me know.--Paul McDonald (talk) 17:13, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Heisman Trophy

In light of the developments regarding Obamafan70, alleged sockpuppets, and the College Football Performance Awards, I've placed a COI tag at Heisman Trophy#Scientific negotiations. The article was edited heavily by Obamafan70 in recent months. It's probably worth a few people taking a look at the whole thing. Jweiss11 (talk) 15:18, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I hadn't really even looked at the CFPA-related material until this little sock puppet dust-up occurred. The CFPA material in the Heisman article looks harmless, even if its origins may have had some COI issues. It does provide another interesting perspective on the usual Heisman voting controversies. I must confess that I am much amused by all of these Ph.D. types trying to come up with an objective standard for CFB position awards. Good stuff. It's only a matter of time until the Chicago School economists bring their regression analysis statistical methods to bear; we may all wish we had paid more attention in our stats classes. LOL Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:49, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
My sense is that CFPAs are complete B.S. The website is extremely vague and cagey about the specifics of its methodology. 30 years ago when Bill James was developing new metrics and analysis to measure the performance of baseball players, he explained exactly what he was doing. I wouldn't be surprised if Smith manipulates whatever algorithms he might be using (assuming they really exist and are meaningful) to produce results that are sufficiently differentiated from traditional awards and thus validate his arguments for why his awards should exist. We know two important things about Smith from what has happened here on Wikipedia. 1) He is totally unethical. 2) He has no qualms about making absurd and nonsensical quantitative manipulations to support his aims, e.g. taking the cumulative attendance at events where CFPAs were presented, packaging that as an "on-site attendance property" and then treating it as though it were home football attendance for a single team. Can we consider Coca-Cola as as an "on-site attendance property". What was the total attendance of college sports events where Coca-Cola products were present? I'm going to guess more than the CFPAs! I think air was actually the leading "on-site attendance property"! And as for his academic review and endorsers, some cursory research on Andrew Zimbalist indicates that he's a professional hired gun for sports-related law proceedings and that he's had his testimony thrown out by courts multiple times. I think college athletic departments all over the country have fallen for a rouse. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:45, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
I would (and was going to) delete the whole section. It is not written from a neutral point of view and heavily promotes the CFPA. Eagles 24/7 (C) 02:29, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. —bender235 (talk) 11:39, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
Eagles247, I see you deleted the whole "Scientific negotiations". I think that was a good move. The lead still contains mention of the CFPAs along with some gobbledygook about meaningless differences in the verbiage of various awards. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:28, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

En dashes or em dashes for null fields?

I recently made an edit at Template:Winning percentage to have the zero divided by a zero case display an em dash, but my edit was reverted with this commment: "per WP:DASH, endash is more appropriate for this purpose." However, on featured lists like List of Oklahoma Sooners head football coaches em dashes are being used for null fields including winning percentages that would have a zero denominator. Seems we should be using either en dashes or em dashes in all these cases, not a mix. Thoughts? Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:18, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with using em dashes. I don't see anything in WP:DASH that addresses null sets. —Ute in DC (talk) 03:42, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
Here's what I was referring to: "Use emdash to indicate interruption in a sentence" and "use em dashes sparingly" in WP:EMDASH. From reading DASH, it appears endash is the only thing that is allowed in this case. — X96lee15 (talk) 04:11, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
In context, the admonition to "use em dashes sparingly" refers to their use within paragraphs in prose writing. Too many tangential clauses — which is what em dashes tend to signal — can be distracting and make an article more difficult to understand. If I understand correctly, this is the template that calculates a team or a coach's winning percentage and is used primarily in infoboxes or tables — not in prose. Based on the fact that featured lists use em dashes to signal a null set, the em dash is appropriate for this template. —Ute in DC (talk) 09:06, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
Template:Winning percentage could be used in prose, but I seriously doubt it would (or should) in cases where the denominator is zero. Those are likely only going to crop up in tables. Jweiss11 (talk) 10:56, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
Ute in DC makes a very good point. X96lee15, are you good with that? Jweiss11 (talk) 02:25, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, I guess so... Stylistically, I like the endash rather than the emdash; I think the emdash is just too big. However, if Featured Lists use the emdash to signify "null" or empty cells, then I suppose I'm ok with using emdashes in the winpct template. — X96lee15 (talk) 17:02, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I just changed the win pct template to show em dashes for 0/0. I'm not sure which dash (en vs. em) I prefer aesthetically, but we should be consistent for sure. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:52, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

WP College Football in the Signpost

"WikiProject Report" would like to focus on WikiProject College Football for a Signpost article to be published next month. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 21:15, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Categories for Div-II, Div-III, NAIA seasons

I've noticed that Category: College football seasons has a separate season category for Division I FBS/I-A and Division I FCS/I-AA, but no entries for Division II, Division III, NAIA, junior college, etc. The point isn't that these categories are neccessarily warranted right now, but that some season-specific articles have been created outside of NCAA Division I, and they don't have any season-specific category to go to, other than "<year> in American football", which is not ideal.

Therefore, I propose that Category: College football seasons contain more general categories such as "<year college football season", and can contain the current NCAA Division I seasons as subcategories. This way, non NCAA Division I articles can have a season category to go in, and if enough articles are created to warrant it, we can then create, for example, a "2010 NCAA Division II football season" category.

Unless I get strong objections, I'll go ahead and throw them in myself. Thoughts? DeFaultRyan 23:50, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Go for it. I'd suggest that the eventual "full" category tree would have "YEAR college football season" categories in it and "NCAA football seasons". Then, "1910 NCAA football season" would be in "1910 college football season" and "NCAA football seasons". "1970 NCAA University Division football season" would be in "1970 college football season" and "NCAA University Division football seasons", which in turn would be in "NCAA football seasons". And so on. cmadler (talk) 15:07, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Change Proposal to Assessment

I'd like to propose the following change to Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Assessment, specifically the section "Can I review my own article?" I would like to add the following exception:

Exception: editors who create articles and/or files can assess the following classifications: Start, Stub, List, Current, Future, Book, Category, Disambig, File, Portal, Project, Redirect, or Template. Self-classification of "start" articles should be used sparingly as most new articles tend to be "stubs" -- the remaining classifications are procedural in nature and can be applied as apporpriate.

Let's keep all our comments here but I'll also put a notice on the page in question.--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:56, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

  • My reasoning for proposing this change is that a "file" is a file and a "disambig" is a disambig, and a "list" is a list: no real need for a second person to come look at it and say so. As for "start" and "stub", pretty much anything can be a "stub" and "start" class articles are easy to spot as well. The other classifications such as C, B, A, GA, FA, and FL should really be assessed by another editor and some such as FA and FL have teams assembled to classify them. This will help us to assign a "stub" class to new articles as they are created and help us to maintain the classification of other files while avoiding "unclassified" pages.--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:56, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Paul, I agree. Good call on this. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:11, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
  • I generally agree, with the caveat that, if an article creator thinks their article should be C, B, A, GA, FA, or FL, they should leave it unassessed and request an assessment. cmadler (talk) 15:13, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Hillsdale College

Hey, guys, who is working on the small college coaches navboxes? I need one for Hillsdale College, where Charlie Bachman and Muddy Waters both coached. If some one is grinding these out, I would be grateful if you could create this one, too. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:14, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing

I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 20:16, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Copyedit request for 2010 PapaJohns.com Bowl

Hello. I have nominated 2010 PapaJohns.com Bowl as a featured article candidate. It has been requested that the article be copyedited by another editor before it can pass as a featured article. If someone from the project would be willing to take a look at the prose and then comment at the FAC page, I would be truly grateful. –Grondemar 03:50, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Mass AfDs on college football articles

There were 10 college football articles nominated for deletion in a quick span of 20 minutes today. I usually go through them, do some research and figure out if they're worth saving. That is time consuming. I did the first three (Derrick Strong, Zach Ville and Michael Harden) and found that all three had played professional football in the NFL and/or Arena Football League. A fourth article (Byron Hardmon) had a recent AfD closed as "Keep" with nobody voting to delete (and no basis stated for re-opening after the "Keep" decision. These types of mass nominations, made without first researching the grounds for deletion, serve as a major time distraction. I don't have time to research all ten of them this afternoon. If anyone has time to review any of these to determine whether or not they are worth saving, the complete list can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/American football. Cbl62 (talk) 22:38, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

The rest of the articles I nominated are about players who definitely did not play professionally in any league. Eagles 24/7 (C) 22:45, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Comment the problem with mass AFDs is that many good articles can fall through just because of the sheer volume. A few years back, about 70 articles were nominated under the West Incident and many were deleted. When proper defensable research was made, at least half of those have been restored so far. "Ten" we can handle, but more than that is tough--especially on historical articles with bowl season coming up.--Paul McDonald (talk) 22:49, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

1972 Michigan vs. Navy football game

I nominated this new article for deletion: 1972 Michigan vs. Navy football game. Don't think this needs its own article. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:42, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

List to review

Hey gang, please take a look at List of Carroll Pioneers head football coaches. What I've done here is added to the bottom of the list the additional information gathered on several of the remaining coaches deleted from the WP:CFBWEST thing a few years back. I think it needs some help with word-smithing and could use a fresh set of eyeballs.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:36, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Scoring summary

I've been working on 2003 Eastern Michigan Eagles football team and found full box scores, including scoring summaries, for 11 of the 12 games, but I can't find one for the final game of the season. Any suggestions on where this information might be found? It doesn't make sense to leave off this information for the other 11 games just because it's not available for 1, but it looks incomplete without that. Thanks, cmadler (talk) 15:15, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Best I could come up with is this, but it does not include times. Still looking.... Fjbfour (talk) 17:13, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I've added what I can based on that, and if you can find the times, or if I find them at some point, I'll add them in. cmadler (talk) 17:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

2006 Texas Longhorns football team

Hi

I have posted a note on the talk page about page size - can someone consider cutting down the extremely high amount of refs as they make up almost 60% of the article size. It is, at the moment, a little large to say the least !

  • File size: 506 kb
  • Prose size (including all HTML code): 89 kB
  • References (including all HTML code): 290 kB
  • Wiki text: 128 kB
  • Prose size (text only): 51 kB (9164 words) "readable prose size"
  • References (text only): 43 kB

Chaosdruid (talk) 22:29, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I have trimmed it a bit, but it is going to need a lot more work (specifically 20K bytes more cut). Eagles 24/7 (C) 23:48, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Wait. Why would be remove references? Too many references is not a bad thing. Considering how big a problem linkrot is, we should encourage having many references, not fewer.»NMajdan·talk 16:08, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
I got the article down to below 100K bytes. The problem was that some pieces of information has five or seven references, which is overkill, especially for information that is not very controversial. Also, most of what was removed was fluff not directly related to the individual games or even the season. Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:33, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Yeah, when a single statement has many citations, they should be winnowed down to the one or two best (reliable, authoritative, and accessible) sources. cmadler (talk) 12:47, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

What does everyone think about nav boxes for teams that did not win a nat'l title, but only a conference title, such those recently created for Nebraska? See: Category:Nebraska Cornhuskers football templates. My feeling is leaning towards overkill. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:20, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

If there are enough relevant articles to justify a nav box, I have no problem with it. cmadler (talk) 14:11, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Survey says, "overkill." We have too many navboxes already, and we should be looking for ways to cull the existing herd. With the proliferation of navboxes for minor awards, starting positions, etc., it's damn hard to find the navboxes that are actually useful on some pages, especially coaches with long careers. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:23, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
P.S. If you want to do a comprehensive program navbox (e.g. Nebraska Cornhuskers football), that may be an appropriate vehicle to tie it all together, but we do not need navboxes for individual team seasons for non-championship seasons (IMHO).
I also vote overkill. For well-crafted statement on this topic, see WP:LINKCRISIS. A single-season article does not need a navbox that points a reader at any article that might be tangentially related to the season. Good heavens, if we start creating navboxes for every season, things are going to explode. Going to some veteran coach's article is going to have a pile of 40 navboxes at the bottom for his seasons as a college player, a pro player, assistant coach seasons, head coach seasons. Totally out of control. The season article should already mention notable players and coaches. Will already mention its record and final rankings (since navboxes are for navigating between related links, the conference, and rankings should absolutely not be links). Similarly, if the season is notable in the context of some former player's article, the player article should have a simple wikilink to the season article, in prose, in a statistics table, or both. It doesn't need to be a navbox. I'm not convinced we need navboxes for national championship single seasons, let alone the rest of them. I vote we mass-delete these single-season navboxes altogether. DeFaultRyan 17:53, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
As DeFaultRyan explains above, we are really opening a Pandora's box here. "Enough relevant articles" alone should not be a justification for a nav box. Take Michigan for example. We currently have 540 players and 115 coaches with articles. That means just about every, if not every, season going back to the late 1800s is going to have at least a handful of player and coach articles to link to. Even if we just limited the nav boxes to conference championship teams, we'd be adding 13 nav boxes to Bo Schembechler for his Michigan tenure; he also won two MAC titles with Miami (OH). LaVell Edwards won 19 conference titles with BYU. And what do we do with Joe Paterno, whose Penn State teams were independent for 27 seasons, but ranked just about every one of those? Paterno already has 20 nav boxes in the footer of the article. For the time being, we should limit team season nav boxes to only teams who won a recognized nat'l title. Then we can open a debate about the necessity of those alone. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:14, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
DFR, your comments above, together with the problems described in the WP:LINKCRISIS update, makes me re-think some of my own recent linking efforts. Before reading the LINKCRISIS update, my major objection to the recent proliferation of navboxes was based on aesthetics of the graphics, the doubtful usefulness of the navboxes and the redundancy of many of the links. So, much of the WP culture encourages "wikifying," but it may be helpful for the WP:CFB project to begin to consider some real real standards for succession boxes and navboxes. Frankly, not every award, starting position or conference- or even nation-leading statistic merits a succession box or navbox. We need some rules, or at least some standards. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:24, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Well... all right then! I'm the guy that made them (thanks for letting me know you brought it up, Jweiss11). Obviously I did not research this issue hard enough first. I don't recall exactly why I stumbled onto it, but I first saw this done for the 2003 Kansas State Wildcats football team (Template:2003 Wildcats), and thought it was a neat idea. Not clued in to the problems before proceeding though. I'm fine with the overkill decision and would not object to whacking them. Though it was a fair amount of work that will go down the drain.... but that is no one else's fault but mine. I agree with Dirtlawyer1 as well, I would love to see more rigidly-defined standards that would make compliance easier. Fjbfour (talk) 22:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
My 2 cents: Single-season nav boxes are fine for national championship teams but not conference championship teams. My opposition to conference championship navboxes is aesthetic. As an example, I think the Henry Schulte now looks very cluttered. Other than NC's, there might be some other truly exceptional cases that would warrant a single season nav box, but none come to mind right now. Cbl62 (talk) 22:57, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
I don't care enough to really debate the issue, but FWIW, I think WP:LINKCRISIS actually argues in favor of such navboxes. "Use a set of smaller navboxes to cover a topic, and only link to each smaller navbox where directly related, such as cities or counties, but rarely linking both." To me, that argues that, within a broad topic (e.g. Nebraska Cornhuskers) we should use sub-topic navboxes (e.g. by year) as opposed to one single massive connective navbox. cmadler (talk) 19:01, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
What the spirit of WP:LINKCRISIS is arguing is that, for example, Henry Schulte does not need links to every other element of the Nebraska Cornhuskers football program, e.g. seasons, bowl games, stadiums, players, via either one big navbox like Template:NebraskaCornhuskersFootballNavbox or a series of many navboxes like Template:1937 Cornhuskers. Shulte was a Nebraska coach and Template:Nebraska Cornhuskers football coach navbox ought to be sufficient. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Hmmm. Interesting. Does this mean that it's "overlinking" to have a general "University of Florida" navbox at the bottom of the Florida Gators seasons-decade pages (e.g. "Florida Gators football, 1910–1919")? Should these be removed? As mentioned above, I had previously considered the navbox proliferation problem to be one of "graphics" clutter at the bottom of the page . . . . Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:30, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Dirtlawyer1, yeah, I'd say that neither Template:University of Florida nor Template:SEC football are needed for Florida Gators football, 1910–1919. Those two nav boxes belong on Florida Gators football, but not on any other Florida Gators football page. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:13, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
OK, so I count four votes against, one conditional vote for, and my own willingness to go along with killing them. As the creator willing to go along with the consensus, is there any express method of deleting the templates? I know the articles will all have to be manually edited.... I'll take care of it at some point. Fjbfour (talk) 06:04, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I've listed the nav boxes for the 24 non-nat'l championship Nebraska teams for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:59, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

These templates have all been deleted and all hosting pages updated accordingly by helpful bots. Issue closed. Thanks Jweiss11. Fjbfour (talk) 21:41, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

"Retired" rivalries

With Nebraska's move to the Big 10 after this season, their noteworthy rivalries (Colorado, Missouri and Oklahoma) are essentially going to die. While the teams may eventually meet in future noncon or bowl games down the road, these rare meetings are probably not going to sustain a "rivalry". Presently there is no talk of MU or CU setting up a future non series, though there have been hints that the OU series might resume at some middle-to-long term future date. I'm trying to figure out how to manage how these rivalry pages are included after the end of the season. Of course, they should not be deleted, because the rivalries are historically noteworthy, but they will no longer warrant inclusion on the team's infobox, yet they don't seem to warrant their own section in the team article, either. Suggestions on how to handle making them "inactive" and less prominent without burying them into obscurity? Fjbfour (talk) 17:54, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

There is somewhat of a precedent for this sort of thing. Battle of the Palouse is still maintained despite WSU and Idaho's moribund rivalry. The rivalry is still listed in WSU's navbox (I don't believe Idaho has a navbox) and the page just lists "No Game" after each year the game isn't played. If after a while has passed and no plans to schedule rivalry games is resurrected, it might be best to simply cut the game listing off after their last meeting.― El Cid ∴∵ 05:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Coach Navbox colors

Okay, I get it that sometimes schools have two colors and one of them isn't white... like the Kansas Jayhawks. But coach navbox colors with blue background and red letters like this one Template:Kansas Jayhawks football coach navbox just are hard to read... what can be done about this?--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:09, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Readability ought to trump exact color representation. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:18, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
Fixed, and changed to exact team colors per the team's main WP page. Fixed these as well: Template:KansasJayhawksFootballNavbox, Template:Kansas bowl games, Template:KansasFootballSeasons. Fjbfour (talk) 19:43, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
Here's another absolutely hideous example: Template:Loyola Marymount Lions football coach navbox. I have no idea what Loyola Marymount's proper team colors are, but from a graphics and legibility standpoint, this is as bad as it gets.
Also, if someone can provide me with a source list for the full names and years of service for the LMU football coaches, I would like to make some substantive changes to this template, too. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 23:34, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
I handled the LMU color/readability problem, per the official school colors on the school's own web site. Armed with that, I also fixed the hex codes for the school colors on the WP page for LMU athletics (Loyola Marymount Lions). Fjbfour (talk) 13:12, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
You're a good man, Charlie Brown. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:22, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
Wondering would it be a good idea to have a page like Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Coach Navboxes ?? We could then have one place to visually review all coaches/colors/etc.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:15, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:00, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I'll work on it.--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:00, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
  • I've started in on this. Frustratingly, as soon as you go out to a university's site to get their official colors, go fix the coach navbox, then you have to troll for all of the other navboxes for that school and fix/align them as well. This is a bigger project than it appears at first scratch. Here's what is done so far:
Fjbfour (talk) 13:49, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

IP editors making sweeping formatting changes

I've noticed a couple of IP editors making widespread formatting changes of late:

  • 75.131.32.247 has been editing head coaching record tables by adding em dashes to the poll fields where the team was not ranked; see Steve Spurrier. My understanding is that standard practice is to simply leave that field blank where the team is unranked. Template:CFB Yearly Record Entry makes no mention of using dashes or notations of any kind for un-ranked seasons.

What are everyone's thoughts on these two formatting issues? Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:29, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

As long as the outcome of the game is there, I am indifferent. Meaning, as long as the W or L precedes or succeeds the score, I don't care. If it was text and the outcome wasn't explicitly mentioned, then I would put the main subject first, whether they won or lost.»NMajdan·talk 20:09, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
IMO, the highest score should always be first. It seems very awkward to list the lowest score first for losses. When someone asks you a score, you don't say, "it's 3 to 14", you say, "it's 14 to 3". — X96lee15 (talk) 23:28, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree that lowest score first is very awkward, especially in prose. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:07, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
In the schedule box, I like listing the score of the team the page is about, first. It keeps the team's score in a nice, neat column. (I am not in favor of doing this in prose.) —Ute in DC (talk) 07:51, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
I also vote for subject's score first in the schedule box and in the infobox when referring to league championship games and bowl games, ie. W 24-14 and L 14-24. Don't mind changing if the consensus goes the other way. Fjbfour (talk) 11:47, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Standings templates

I think a policy on this issue is needed, but I can't find it articulated anywhere. In the standings table templates, will we use league tiebreakers to order tied teams? It is my feeling that this is too complicated, and that teams should be ordered (a) by conference record, then (b) by overall record, and then (c) alphabetically. Many leagues have tiebreakers that do not apply (or might even be impossible to apply) to teams outside of 1st place, and it puts us (Wikipedians) in a position needing to parse each league's tiebreakers, and I don't think that's a good idea. Anyway, a statement from the CFB project would be helpful here. MrArticleOne (talk) 22:22, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I have always done it this way as well (1-conference, 2-overall, 3-alphabetical). The most common alternative tiebreaker I see is by Poll ranking, which IMO is almost totally irrelevant to league standings. That said, I do believe some of the conferences will use a poll or the BCS to sort out a triple tie when 1 beat 2, who beat 3, who beat 1, etc. I fix it when I see it wrong sometimes, but not always. It hasn't been a fight I have put much into. Fjbfour (talk) 11:03, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
I think it's fine to list them in any reasonable order while the season is ongoing, but once the season is over we should really try to put them in the right order. One thing to note, however, is that most league tie-breakers only (technically) apply to determining the division/conference champion(s), since, from the conference's point of view, that's the only meaningful outcome. Bowls choose in sequence but don't necessarily follow any ranking. cmadler (talk) 15:29, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
I just think it's important to be consistent. It's something I'm dealing with in the Big Ten a lot; people want to put Wisconsin ahead of OSU because Wisconsin won head-to-head, even though they're both 5-1 and 9-1 overall. I think Cmadler's point is the one I'm getting at: because tiebreakers only properly apply at the top of the standings, it is hopeless to try and apply them from top to bottom, and it's important to take a stand against it. I can see at the end of the year making a point of placing whichever team won the tiebreakers in the top position, regardless of whatever conventions are followed for the rest of the list, but until the year is over, I don't think we should be trying to parse the league tiebreakers. It's complicated for the top spot that they're designed for, let alone the subsidiary positions that they aren't designed for. MrArticleOne (talk) 17:31, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Facebook group for WikiProject College football

I was inspired to create this mostly to tinker with Facebook's new group functionality, but maybe this can be of use for the project. See http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_128692627187062 and join if interested. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:35, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Hires and fires

It's time now for the annual "hiring and firing" of head coaches to start up. Anyone have a good source or watch list?--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:48, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

ESPN's College Football RSS feed is usually pretty on top of things from that perspective--Aran101 (talk) 20:09, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Maybe www.coacheshotseat.com. —bender235 (talk) 03:33, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
While not "official" or cite-able, I maintain a running tally here. There is also the Rivals/Yahoo page here. Fjbfour (talk) 03:35, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Move discussion

This kind of thing should be uncontested, but for some reason there's now an issue moving Eastern Washington Eagles football team over the redirect Eastern Washington Eagles football. Support and comments welcome at Talk:Eastern Washington Eagles football team. Thanks. Geologik (talk) 18:11, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

CFB Yearly Record End/legend

An IP user keeps changing Template:CFB Yearly Record End/legend by adding an option for "Arch Rivalry Winner." I don't think that's an appropriate change, but if I undo the change again, it's going to be an endless revert war. I am soliciting the opinion of others. I'm opposed because 1) whatever an "Arch Rivalry Winner" is, has not been defined; 2) many teams do not have an "Arch Rival"; 3) Winning a rivalry game is not as important as a National Title, Conference Championship, or Division Title, which are the other designations. If a coach wins a rivalry game, that can and should be listed elsewhere in the article. —Ute in DC (talk) 00:03, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

  • Continue to remove "Arch Rivalry Winner". It's inappropriate to add a single rivalry (Arch Rivalry) to a template added throughout college football. I think our grammar-challenged IP user is trying to refer to an "arch-rivalry winner" but 1) that's not an adequately precise term, 2) some teams have no real rival while others have two or three, 3) it simply has no place on this template. cmadler (talk) 01:28, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Agreed. DeFaultRyan 17:24, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Just don't worry about it. It's very necessary for the Paul Johnson page. If it bothers you, make it only applicable to Paul Johnson's page. Do you know how to do that? Thanks.—Preceding unsigned comment added by ChaseFWilson (talk • contribs)
  • ChaseFWilson, it would take some significant re-engineering to customize which color boxes show in the CFB Yearly Record End legend. I don't understand what "State Title" you are referring to regarding Paul Johnson and Georgia Tech. Can you explain? And what's up with Georgia Tech beating UCF in the Military Bowl? That game isn't being played until December 29. Have the teams for the game even been selected yet? Jweiss11 (talk) 03:25, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

RfC input requested

Hello. There is currently a request for comment at Michael Vick, an article that falls under this WikiProject. It is requested that members of this WikiProject comment on the article's talk page. Thank you. Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:26, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Cam Newton controversy

There's an ongoing discussion about the Cam Newton controversy and whether Wikipedia is the appropriate place to report facts about the investigation. See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Cameron Newton and Talk:Cameron Newton. It doesn't seem that anyone else from the College Football Project has commented so I thought I'd call it to everyone's attention. —Ute in DC (talk) 18:11, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Torrey Smith GA nomination

I've reviewd the GA nomination for Torrey Smith, however the nominator has not edited in the past few weeks. It's probably not far off a pass, but I was going to fail it because the matters haven't been addressed in two weeks now. However, I wondered if someone from this project might be able to wrap things up. Any takers? Brad78 (talk) 00:09, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I'll jump in and do what I can, but my time may be limited the next few days and then I'll probably be on wikibreak for a week. So if someone else wants to help it might be good. cmadler (talk) 00:36, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. There's just two points that need looking at. Brad78 (talk) 22:17, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks to cmadler and Eagles247 for working on this in my absence. I think I addressed the final points. Strikehold (talk) 00:40, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

AFD for head coaches

Please weigh in on this AFD for recently created articles for head coaches: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John H. Rice (American football). Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:33, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

This AFD nomination has been withdrawn. Nice work by everyone who helped out. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:12, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
High five! great job on the quick research, everyone!--Paul McDonald (talk) 17:33, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

RfC: endashes and set-off spaces

If any of you would like to weigh in on a personal pet peeve involving the silly inconsistency in the use of endashes in article titles, please do so here: [11]. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:29, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Reminder: last 15 hours of voting in the ArbCom elections

Dear editors,

Now is your final chance to vote in the December 2010 elections for new members of ArbCom. Voting will close just before midnight UTC tonight, Sunday 5 December (earlier for North America: just before 4 pm west coast, 7 pm east coast). Eligible voters (check your eligibility) are encouraged to vote well before the closing time due to the risk of server lag.

Arbitrators occupy high-profile positions and perform essential and demanding roles in handling some of the most difficult and sensitive issues on the project. The following pages may be of assistance to voters: candidate statements, questions for the candidates, discussion of the candidates and personal voter guides.

For the election coordinators, Tony (talk) 09:53, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Two column layout for multi-sport head coaching record

Check out the head coaching record section for Bennie Oosterbaan. I reworked the layout so that his football and basketball record tables sit side by side instead of one after the other vertically. Perhaps, this could be a standard solution for managing article length for coaches who worked multiple sports. Thoughts? Jweiss11 (talk) 02:28, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I like it. You have a lot less white space the way you've laid it out. —Ute in DC (talk) 03:04, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
We could do the same thing for guys who coached at multiple levels of football (e.g. college and NFL) too. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:45, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Guys, this looks good on my 19-inch monitor, but I've gotten in the habit of test-driving these sorts of graphics and layout questions by simulating how the changes would look on a smaller monitor. Try reducing the width of your browser window by 1/4 to 1/3 and see if you still like the appearance of the two-column coaching records. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:34, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
My laptop monitor just isn't that big. I regularly increase the text size to see if that messes up the formatting. Even with the text on the largest view setting, it still looks better, to me, than a lot of white space. —Ute in DC (talk) 20:03, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Reducing the width of the browser will condense the tables by wrapping any fields that are populated with content that contains spaces. This is true for tables in a one-column layout as well, but, obviously, the two-column layout will be stressed sooner by reducing the width of the browser. I generally view webpages will a fully-expanded browser on my 15-inch laptop. Bennie Oosterbaan does not wrap at all for me under those conditions, but Nick Saban and Lou Holtz, the other two coaches I've tried the two-column layout on, do. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:17, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Yep, with stints at six colleges and with one NFL team, plus a host of awards, Holtz is a classic example. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:21, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Succession boxes for major CFB awards?

Hey, guys. Are we keeping the redundant succession boxes for major awards like the Heisman? The Heisman navbox has the recipients' names and the years the award was received. Is there any reason to keep the succession box when the same information is provided in the navbox? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:07, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely not.»NMajdan·talk 00:47, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Cool--Green light. I am deleting the Heisman succession boxes from Steve Spurrier, Danny Wuerffel and Tim Tebow articles now. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:45, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Just to elaborate on my position now that I'm not at work. Having succession boxes is completely duplicate information in a more space-consuming (height-consuming) fashion. These are one year awards. I don't mind having both a succession box and a navigation box if the length of term varies (i.e. monarchs, politicians, band members, etc).»NMajdan·talk 05:51, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Band members?? Seriously? They get succession boxes----like "Nugget the Drummer (1967–1971)," with before and after drummers? Wow. There are times when I'm glad that I don't wander too far from my chosen Wikipedia subject areas. LOL Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:18, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Template:Broaddus Battlers football coach navbox up for deletion

There are no coaches made that {{Broaddus Battlers football coach navbox}} useful, and so I can't really argue for keeping it, but I thought WP:CFB would like to know in case anyone wants to initiate articles and make it a template worth keeping. Jrcla2 (talk) 01:04, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

If they delete it I've asked them to move it into my workspace for future reference and work. It will make it easier in the future to chase it down. I'll check though!--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:29, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Jeff Cottam

Jeff Cottam is up for deletion. Worth saving? Jweiss11 (talk) 06:20, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Added 3 references, cleaned up, removed deletion requests since they were prod and BLP related.MECU≈talk 19:54, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Noting bowls in Template:NCAA team season

In Template:NCAA team season, I've noticed that the Champion field is often populated with "X Bowl Champions" in cases where that team won their bowl game. This strikes me as redundant because right below in the BowlTourney/BowlTourneyResult field, you have the bowl result and you can clearly see if the team won their bowl. See 1985 Michigan Wolverines football team for an example. My opinion is that the Champion field should be used to note only national, conference, and division titles, not bowl wins. What do people think about this? Jweiss11 (talk) 00:07, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I missed this comment before now, JW. I agree that including a bowl victory score banner and "bowl championship" banner is redundant and serves no purpose other than to make the blob of golden yellow at the top of the infobox bigger. I might also add that I feel including both a conference championship banner and a conference division championship banner is also redundant. Because a team can't be the conference champion without being the division champion, the first implies the second. The "division championship" is the consolation prize, IMHO. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:34, 10 December 2010 (UTC)response

Interim head coaches

What are everyone's opinions on interim head coaches? I think they are clearly notable as a de facto head coach if they coach a game, but what if the HC is fired after the season and the interim is only acting during the offseason? An example would be Eddie Faulkner, who is now the interim HC while Ball State searches for a replacement for Stan Parrish. Should these coaches be added to the navboxes? Strikehold (talk) 00:08, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Strikehold, if the interim coach never coached in a game, and only assumed temporary off-season administrative duties before being replaced by a permanent successor, then I would suggest that should be omitted from coaches navboxes and coaches infoboxes. I would suggest that it may be included in the text of the subject's article (if the subject is otherwise notable), but I do not believe that being the off-season interim head coach makes a career assistant coach notable in and of itself. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:18, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I think having coached at least one game as the "head coach", "acting head coach", "interim head coach", or similar position is a reasonable criterion for inclusion in a head coach navbox, and with no expectation that Faulkner will coach a game for Ball State he should be left out. A similar case that comes to mind is Steve Addazio, who was the "interim head coach" during Urban Meyer's leave of absence from Florida (approximately 12/27/09 to 1/1/10). I can conceive of possible exceptions to this rule, but they should be exceptions and this should be the rule. cmadler (talk) 20:50, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Cmadler and Dirtlawyer1 on this. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:51, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
After this football season, Steve Addazio has bigger problems to worry about. Like finding a new job. LOL Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:47, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Previously, I had used what the school defined as a head coach. For example, Colorado fired Gary Barnett and Brian Cabral was the interim head coach for the bowl game. However, Colorado doesn't recognize bowl game statistics, and generally doesn't recognize "interim" coach status either. So before Dan Hawkins was recently fired, they never showed Cabral as having a record (of 0-1) as a head coach at the school (the loss is accounted for on Barnett's record). I'm waiting to see how they handle the recent 3 games that Cabral was the interim again and see if he gets credit for those since they were regular season. My guess is not, since they announced the "24th head coach" mEbree, and if you count, that leaves Cabral off the head coaching list. Thus, the 3 games get "charged" to Hawkins and go on his record. I'm waiting for the formal media guide to be updated next summer/season for the official details. I think applying the school standard and referenced statistics should be the ideal standard to implement. If you can't reference it, don't have it here. Your opinion doesn't matter. (Sorry to be so blunt.) MECU≈talk 20:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Referencing is critical, but the school's statement should not necessarily be the final word. If reliable independent sources state that Cabral coached those games, then Wikipedia articles should reflect that, possibly with a note indicating that the school does not recognize interim head coaches. The school can do whatever they like, but if reliable independent sources say Hawkins was fired and Cabral coached the last three games, we should go with that. cmadler (talk) 20:17, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
To MECU (if you were addressing my original post): Actually "opinions" have everything to do with determining how to handle cases that may not be clear cut. Who is charged with an interim coach's results could potentially conflict between the school's, opposing teams', the NCAA's, and other reliable sources' records. In cases like that, the project members would need to form some kind of consensus on how to address it—based on opinions, not facts.
As for my original post, it appears everyone agrees with my own conclusion. I asked because I added a couple of interim coaches who had not (yet) coached a game to navboxes. I thought about it for a minute and then reverted myself, but wanted to check to make sure everyone agreed with my conclusion. Strikehold (talk) 00:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

"Underline"

I was looking at Template:Oregon bowl games -- first time I've looked at these navboxes at all -- and I noticed the text at the bottom, "Underlined denotes National Championship Game". You can't use underlining like that to good effect; underlining is one of the things browser users get to control for themselves, and a very common choice is to underline all links. Even the Wikipedia preferences let us do that (see under Appearance/Advanced options/Underline links). I suggest changing this wherever it appears, perhaps to bold or italic. --jpgordon::==( o ) 07:18, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I came across the underlining for national championships the other day in the Gators bowl games navbox. From a layout and typographical viewpoint, the underlining is hideous. Can we substitute an asterisk or dagger footnote for the underlining, with a corresponding "BCS National Championship Game," or similar wording, at the bottom of the navbox? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:12, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Since the game already has "National Championship Game" in its title, isn't any special annotation saying as much redundant anyway? Strikehold (talk) 00:35, 10 December 2010 (UTC
Good point; that's probably not the best example. LOL Perhaps we should address the somewhat less obvious national championship games, such as the 1997 Sugar Bowl, and all of the other championship games played before 2007, when the stand-alone BCS championship was played for the first time, and not as part of pre-existing bowl game. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:04, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Style preference: Miami University and University of Miami

I'm sure most of you know where this is going from the title. Our WikiProject Style guide doesn't address this issue, so I wanted to raise it here. I simply wanted to suggest that in most—perhaps all—cases, there is no need to disambiguate the two schools as "Miami (OH)" and "Miami (FL)". Consider, for example, the second sentence of the second paragraph of 2010 Mid-American Conference football season (permalink). In addition to the context strongly suggesting that any "Miami" mentioned in this article is likely to be Miami University, the sentence immediately prior referred to the Miami RedHawks and linked to 2010 Miami RedHawks football team. With that in mind, I suggest that for purposes of this wikiproject, there should be a strong bias against using the state to disambiguate these two schools. They can generally be distinguished based upon the following:

  1. School name. One is Miami University, one is the University of Miami.
  2. Mascot. One is the Miami RedHawks, one is the Miami Hurricanes.
  3. Context. One is in the MAC, one is in the ACC. In articles (such as the above) dealing specifically with one of these conferences, it should generally be taken that, absent an indication to the contrary, we're referring to the one that's a member of the conference in question.

Within this WikiProject, I don't think there's normally a need to use the parenthetical state disambiguation when there are other, better alternatives available. I know that disambiguating them in this manner is common elsewhere, but Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia or a newspaper subject to physical space constraints, and so there's no harm and some good in using the other descriptors. Thoughts? cmadler (talk) 20:37, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Cmadler, in the example you give, I agree there is no need to disambiguate Miami with a parenthetical "(OH)" as the context is defined in the preceding sentence. In general, I think such parentheticals should be avoided in prose by using one of the methods you suggest above. However, in infoboxes and tables, Miami (OH) and Miami (FL) and other analogous parentheticals are useful and appropriate; see for examples, George Blackburn and List of College Football Hall of Fame inductees (coaches). Jweiss11 (talk) 20:47, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
It's completely based on my own personal preferences, but I think the parenthetical postal code abbreviations look cheesy. Maybe this is an exception where we use the full names, "Miami University" and "University of Miami," in infoboxes. Also, calling the Ohio school "Miami of Ohio" is a little unfair, since it's arguably the better school academically, has a larger undergraduate student body and was founded almost 100 years before "Miami of Florida." The confusion arises in most people's minds because the have never heard of the Midwestern Miami Indians for whom the Ohio river and county were named (and indirectly the university), but they have heard of Miami, Florida. IMO, these teams should always be referred to by their full mascot names (Miami RedHawks vs. Miami Hurricanes) in text. Good trivia: before the Hurricanes became a renowned football powerhouse in the 1980s, Miami and Miami played a series of home-and-away games. They called it the "Confusion Bowl." BTW, you will get some resistance from the NFL project guys who uniformly refer to the two schools as "Miami (FL)" and "Miami (OH)." Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:42, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Well, seeing as how it's primarily a college sports issue (going beyond football, however), it seems that it should be decided by the college sports wikiproject(s). The only other active college sports wikiproject of which I'm aware is Wikipedia:WikiProject College Basketball; I'll post a note on their talk page inviting comments here, since ideally we would strive for uniformity across related projects. cmadler (talk) 12:30, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Here's one other small style point regarding the Miami University RedHawks. Until very recently, they were called the "Miami Redskins," and should be referred to as such in writing about the team's history prior to the name change. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:13, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

My two cents - I agree that we should adopt a formal position on this since it is an issue that came up before. For previous dicussion of this issue see Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Atlantic Coast Conference Men's Basketball Coach of the Year/archive1. The result was to use Miami (FL) in the article and have a note about the names (See [Atlantic Coast Conference Men's Basketball Coach of the Year]). I am not suggesting that we need to do this for every article; I just wanted to let people know what discussions had occurred in the past. Remember (talk) 14:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. That's exactly the sort of case I'm talking about. Rather than referring to "Miami (FL)" and then offering an explanatory footnote, I see no good reason not to simply refer to the school as "University of Miami". Just as Boston College and Boston University are always called Boston College and Boston University, as opposed to say, "Boston (Chestnut Hill)" and "Boston (Boston)" and the articles are Boston College Eagles and Boston University Terriers. Likewise we don't disambiguate as "Green Bay (NFL)" and "Green Bay (NCAA)", we refer to the Green Bay Packers and the Green Bay Phoenix. cmadler (talk) 18:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Again, in prose we should avoid the state code abbreviations, but in infoboxes and tables, where economy of size is a virtue and certain general standards of abbreviation have been adopted, the state codes are useful and apt. Again, take a look at the infobox for George Blackburn or any of the other Miami (OH) football coaches. We are paring down all of the other schools like Army, Cincinnati, Virginia to short names by convention. The issue goes well beyond the two Miami's as you delve on past DI FBS. A great segue example is Jack Harding who coached at Miami (FL) and at the University of Scranton when it was known as St. Thomas College. But there are a lot of St. Thomas Colleges in the U.S., so a "(PA)" qualifier is needed. There are two Augustana Colleges in the U.S. and they have the same fight name, Vikings, see: Augustana Vikings. There are many other examples. John Gagliardi has coached two schools with ambiguous short names. Boston College and Boston University are a special case because they are in the same state and, moreover, neither is ever referred to simply as "Boston" they way the University of Cincinnati is called simply "Cincinnati" or the University of Pittsburgh is simply called "Pittsburgh". Jweiss11 (talk) 19:48, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Miami (OH) and Miami (FL) is how they're usually set apart, especially in news articles. I see no reason to change this. ~EDDY (talk/contribs)~ 02:01, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

The AP Style Guide does not govern Wikipedia. That's the origin of the "Miami (OH)" abbreviation; the AP Style Guide notwithstanding, the "Miami (FL)" designation has been largely dropped from use in wire articles in the past 20 years because of the far greater recent fame of the Hurricanes football program. Like Jweiss wrote above, neither abbreviated form should ever be used in prose/Wikipedia article text; it's stylistically grotesque to use the postal codes in prose.
We should always remember that Wikipedia football articles are not written for only American college football fans. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a sports magazine or a fan boy website. Any English-speaking readers should be able to read one of our college football articles without asking themselves, "What the hell does than mean?" My test of how extensively American sports jargon and obtuse sports abbreviations should be used in Wikipedia college sports articles is whether an Australian woman, with no substantive knowledge of American sports and college traditions, could follow and understand the text. Thus, undefined abbreviations such as "QB," "WR," "HR," "ERA," etc., should not be used in text without a previous full stated use of the term with a wiki link (e.g. "wide receiver") and a parenthetical definition of the abbreviation following the first use of the full term (e.g. "wide receiver (WR)"). Frankly, given the brevity of most Wikipedia articles, it's simpler just to avoid jargonish sports abbreviations all together. Our readers deserve, at a minimum, the full term with a wiki link to an article where the meaning of the term is explained. That's the basic Wikipedia policy underlying wiki links.
As for the present issue regarding Miami (OH) and Miami (FL), notwithstanding the great respect that I accord Jweiss, I think the more closely analogous situation is BU-BC, not the multiplicity of colleges named St. Thomas, or, heaven forbid, the plethora of universities named Loyola of Something or Other (at least the Jesuits have the decency to include their locality in most of their full university names). The logic being that the full names of these two universities are relatively short, especially in comparison to even some other abbreviated university names like "Oklahoma State" or "Washington State." I don't think we have a standard CFB info box where "Miami University" or "University of Miami" presents a real problem, do we? That being said, I can live with postal code parentheticals in the infoboxes (if I must), but the CFB project should have a stated policy of eliminating all such uses in prose. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:53, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
Regarding infobox/table space, we already use "Northern Michigan" (17), "Boston University" (17), "George Washington" (17), "Southern Illinois" (17), "SE Missouri State" (17), "North Dakota State" (18), and "North Carolina State" (20), just to pick a few, so I don't see that "Miami University" or "University of Miami", at 16 and 19 characters respectively, would really present a big problem. cmadler (talk) 13:40, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Bowl games are not considered "non-conference"?

User:Bsuorangecrush has changed this field from all of the schedule templates for the 2010 season with the edit summary "bowl games are not considered non conference games, they stand on their own" (For example: [12]). The only definition of a "non-conference game" is that it is not a "conference game", i.e. one played between two members of the same conference—every postseason bowl I can think of fits this criterion. Also, probably every previous season article displays bowls as non-conference games with the "*" (i.e. 2009 Arkansas Razorbacks football team, 2001 Georgia Bulldogs football team). Unless I'm missing something... Is there any basis for him changing those 2010 team articles? Strikehold (talk) 23:50, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

A non-conference game is a non-conference game, regular season, bowl, playoff, tourney or whatever for all college sports. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
On a more subtle note, I suppose conference championship games should not get a "non-conference" asterisk, but they should not be included in conference records. Another one to consider is the curious, rare instances when bowl games have featured two teams from the same conference, e.g. 1960 Sugar Bowl. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:03, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
When I think of a non conference game I think of scheduled games during the season. Although technically a non conference game I believe that since it is a reward earned by what a team did during the season then its not a non conference game, its a bowl game and should stand on its own merits. Plus it is listed as a bowl game in the table and is ALWAYS the last game of the year with a link to the bowl so its not like anyone whould have any question on if its a bowl game or not. So call it a non conference game if you want, but in my eye its not a non conference game, its a bowl game and should stand on its own.Bsuorangecrush (talk) 00:38, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Bowl/not bowl and conference/non-conference are simply two separate parameters that define a game. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:41, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
And I'm just giving my reason to why I changed them. A bowl game is a bowl game, not a non conference game. A bowl game is what you earn based on what you did during your non conference and conference games, thats why I dont think it should be considered a non conference game.Bsuorangecrush (talk) 00:46, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for changing them back without even considering or caring about my argument. Bsuorangecrush (talk) 00:55, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I have always thought of bowl games as non-conference games. After considering this issue, I checked the Category:GA-Class college football articles to see how "Good articles" marked the bowl games. There are 5 team-season articles that reached GA status: 1 (2006 Oklahoma Sooners football team) lists the bowl game as a non-conference game; 3 do not list it as a non-conference game (2005 USC Trojans football team, 2007 Texas Longhorns football team, 2008 Maryland Terrapins football team; and 1 did not play in a bowl (2009 Michigan Wolverines football team). I'm in favor of the bowl game being listed as a non-conference game, but I think it's most important that articles be uniform. While looking into this issue, I saw an old discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Yearly team pages format. At some point it was proposed to mark bowl games with a "‡" marking. Perhaps that would be a suitable compromise. —Ute in DC (talk) 01:03, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Well if you checked 5 pages and 3 don't mark it as a non conference game then wouldn't that be a majority? And I would say I'm for using that mark and against using that mark for a bowl game. If it is used then yes it would help to fix the issue, but I would also say its not needed. The bowl game is already listed in the table with a link to that bowl games page, to me that should be enough for it to be known as a bowl game and that symbol would just seem to state what the bowl link is already doing. Bsuorangecrush (talk) 01:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Well, first off, there is a sixth GA season page, 1997 Michigan Wolverines football team, and it notes the bowl game as non-conference. More importantly, looking at just those six articles isn't a very good sample. Article tends to get promoted to GA status based on their comprehensiveness, quality of prose, and adequate sourcing, not on their adherence to standardization of minor details in tables and infoboxes. If you check out the teams with the most complete series of season pages, e.g. Michigan, Ohio State, Nebraska, you will see that they overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, denote bowl games as non-conference. If you take as look at the FCS season pages like 2007 Appalachian State Mountaineers football team, they analogously denote playoff games as non-conf, as do college basketball season pages like 2000–01 Duke Blue Devils men's basketball team with post-season tourney games. I agree with Bsuorangecrush above that a special symbol for bowl games seems redundant when we already have a bowl link in the table. If you look at the way teams tend to list their seasons on their own websites, they usually use an asterisk to denote conference games. On Wikipedia, we have it the other way around. All that said, what's most instructive for the issue at hand is the strict meaning of the term "non-conference", not any our own idiosyncratic interpretations of the relative qualities and merits of different types of college football games. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:36, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
And I wrote and nominated 2008 Maryland Terrapins football team as a good article, so I can say it was just an oversight not marking the bowl as non-conference (I usually have done it in articles I've written: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9), because I think any game against a team that is not in the same conference is by definition a "non-conference" game. I'm not sure another field to display a dagger for bowls is really necessary, since there is already a special field for 'game name' which should tell a reader that it is a bowl game when the table is properly and completely filled out. Conference title games are an interesting case as Jweiss noted, and we should figure out how to handle them. They are intra-conference games, but they don't count towards conference records. Strikehold (talk) 01:43, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Well yes I agree, if you are playing a team thats not in your conference in a bowl then yes, its non conference, I'm not arguing against that, if that all we are looking at then yes. I'm arguing why it shouldnt be considered a non conference game. I would say that playoff games or NCAA tournament games should not be considered non conference games aswell. Conference games and non conference games are part of the season and you earn your post season based on those games. So its not a non conference game, its a bowl game. Its not a non conference game, its a playoff game. Its not a non conference game, its an NCAA tournament game. So yes, mark it as a non conference game if we are simply just going by strict definition, but I think its a completly seperate catagory on its own, its post season, not non conference.Bsuorangecrush (talk) 01:50, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
The short answer is yes, that's all we are looking at. The longer answer is that you have two semantically different concepts (all games played against non-conference opponents vs. regularly scheduled season non-conference games) that you are labeling identically and you are arguing for the narrower, more obscure interpretation. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
I went ahead and changed those 3 GA articles so they all list the bowl game as a non-conference game. —Ute in DC (talk) 02:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
After reading a discussion about the schedule format, I couldn't find how it was decided to label non-conference games with an asterisk. Why not label the conference games with an asterisk? It seems like that would solve this problem, and it would be consistent with the official listings from team websites (as noted above by Jweiss11). If this was decided somewhere else, could someone link the discussion here for me? thanks, Cmcnicoll (talk) 04:10, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
A switch to labeling conference games would require a bit of reengineering at Template:CFB Schedule Entry and Template:CFB Schedule End, but the real pain is all of the maintenance that would have be done at the more than 1,500 articles that employ these templates. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Yes, it would definitely be more work to change the format. If we think it's better, though, it might be worth changing for clarity purposes. It might be possible to get a bot to re-write the 1,500 articles. I'd like to hear what others think of the idea. —Ute in DC (talk) 04:50, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Given a choice, I think the conference games should have probably been the ones marked, but at this point, I'm not sure it's worth the effort since it really is a trivial difference. I don't know how hard it would be to write the code for a bot or change the template, though, so someone else will have to weigh in on that. Strikehold (talk) 04:55, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
If this sort of change is made, it should be done in concert with an analogous change to Template:CBB schedule entry and Template:CBB schedule end. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
I also agree that the preferable solution is to mark regular-season in-conference games with an asterisk, and have non-conference games and post-season games (bowls, conference championship games, tournaments, etc.) unmarked or marked differently, particularly if there's a way to have the change made by bot. If it would require manual changing, then we might want to think about it some more, because that will be an awful lot of manual work. cmadler (talk) 13:09, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Am I missing something here? We don't need to hit every article that uses {{CFB Schedule Entry}}. At most, we just need to hit articles about teams that played bowl games. As long as we're going to have to walk the list and mark bowl games as conference/non-conference, I propose we come up with a solution that will fix things permanently in the articles, and leave formatting discussions solely to template edits. Let's add a new template parameter that can be set as |bowl=yes. Then we can format the bowl games however we want - identical to non-conference games, or distinctly if desired. DeFaultRyan 18:21, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Just a friendly reminder, but there are also editors working on FCS, Division II, and lower level programs as well. Templates should be inclusive for polls, bowls, playoffs, etc. It has been my practice to mark all playoff games with the non-conference asterisk, and that seems to standard practice on other FCS team seasons as well. Geologik (talk) 18:38, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Geologik, yes we should keep all divisions in mind when building templates and policies. I've noticed that often teams will play other teams from their own conference in the DI, II, and III football playoffs. This also happens a lot in basketball, as in the historic 1985 NCAA basketball finals between Georgetown and Villanova, both from the Big East. Those games fall into the same category as conference championship games (or conference tournament games) as they are played against conference opponents, but don't count toward a team's conference record. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
*thumbs up* Yup, playing conference foes happens quite a bit in the playoffs. In 2005, Appalachian lost to Furman in the regular season and won against the Paladins in the semifinals. The game is marked as non-conference as it has zero impact on the regular season standings. The CAA (Delaware vs. New Hampshire) and SoCon (Wofford vs. Georgia Southern) will be playing against each other in the quarterfinals this weekend. Again, these will be considered non-conference. Just wanted to chime in before wholesale changes occur! Geologik (talk) 18:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
DeFaultRyan, what we're talking about here in these last few posts is not marking bowl games with a new parameter, but rather inverting the existing system of marking non-conference games with an asterisk to a new system of marking conference games with an asterisk instead. Even if you add a dedicated symbol to mark bowl games, they're still going to need to be marked with the non-conference asterisk as well in the existing system. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:29, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
I understand what we're talking about. I'm proposing a more future-proof method for implementing whatever formatting convention we decide on for marking conference/nonconference/postseason games. My point is that if we have a separate template parameter for post-season games, any future formatting decisions won't involve revising hundreds or thousands of articles. We can just change the template code itself, because it will already be given all the information it needs to perform the formatting. Want to mark a bowl game with the same marking as a regular season nonconference game? Just change it in the template. Want to give postseason games their own unique marker? Just change it in the template. What if we want to flip the behavior and leave nonconference games blank, but put the asterisk on the conference games? Just change it in the template. This is why I added template parameters to {{CFB Standings Entry}} to indicate conference champions, co-champions, division champions, etc. If we decide down the road that the little curly 'S' thingy is a bad choice for co-champions, we can change it once in the template, and all the articles will automagically display the new formatting. DeFaultRyan 19:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
I really like this way of addressing this issue. It leaves the project more flexibility to address changing dynamics and rule changes that may be unforeseen, without having to worry about creating a large workload. —Ute in DC (talk) 19:49, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm all for dynamic solutions. If were going to invert the conference game marking system, it's still going to involve an effort that hits every instance of the templates one time, unless we want to live with a system where we are counter-intuitively marking non-conference games (including all bowls and post-season games), and then rendering marks in articles on all games except for those marked in the code. We'd also have the template footer field for "Conference Games" counter-intuitively named "ncg". Jweiss11 (talk) 20:17, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
Here's a thought. Let's add a |conference= and a |postseason= flag to the CFB Schedule Entry template. We can then file a bot request to run through all transclusions of the CFB Schedule Entry template and change all instances of "non-conference=yes" to "conference=", and "non-conference=" to "conference=yes". We can put a catch in the bot so that if the date of the game is December or January, it instead adds "postseason=yes". We could also do the same thing with CFB Schedule End to change the "ncg" flags to "conference" flags, and add a "postseason=yes" flag where applicable. Does that sound like it would catch the vast majority of the cases? Are there any conference championship games or FCS playoff games that take place in November? DeFaultRyan 20:09, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
I like the first part of your idea with the bot. I don't think adding a post-season tag is a good idea. Remember that some teams play regular season games in December. However, a bot could add January as a bowl game without worry of making a mistake. More importantly, as alluded to above, there has been at least one discussion about giving the bowl game a separate color or a mark like the double dagger. However, this idea was discarded in favor of just leaving it as a non-conference game. I would be in favor of giving it a mark, but not a separate color. The red for a loss and green for a win keeps it simple and easy to read. It really isn't necessary though, since there is a field for game name, which lists the bowl. Cmcnicoll (talk) 20:27, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Cmcnicoll. If a bot can discriminate based on date, then it could be set to mark anything after, say, December 18, as postseason. That may miss some, but shouldn't yield any false positives. If it can only discriminate by month, then December should not be marked by bot, and only January games should be bot-marked as postseason. cmadler (talk) 21:07, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Semi-professional football

I've put up a discussion on semi-pro football at Wikipedia:WikiProject American football/Semi-professional football discussion. Please participate.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:05, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thomas A. Barry

I've been working on early Tulane coaches lately, and figured out that Thomas "Berry" is actually the Thomas A. Barry of Notre Dame fame. He also had an article at J. A. Barry, which was a misspelling from College Football Data Warehouse. In fact, he has a separate CFBDW entry for every school he coached at: Tulane, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, and Denver. Strikehold (talk) 04:29, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

S/H, good work, mystery solved. Do CFBDW a favor and notify them; there is a link for email ("collegefan101@hotmail.com") at the bottom of the main page where you can send corrections. You will find them to be very responsive, especially for a free service. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
Strikehold, nice work. I'll email this in to David DeLassus at the College Football Data Warehouse Football. I've been finding lots of errors there over the past few months and sending them in to him. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:13, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Tennessee athletic directors

Guys, does anyone know how to find a complete list of Tennessee Volunteers athletic directors? I've searched the UT sports website, and can't find anything beyond the current AD(s). Just for giggles, the Vols apparently have two separate ADs, one for men and one for women. I would like to put together a UTK AD navbox so I can get the last of the succession boxes off the Bob Woodruff and Doug Dickey article pages. Thanks for your help. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:55, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Most athletic departments don't seem to have a convenient list of ADs. I suggest trying Google News Archive. Search something like "'athletic director' OR 'director of athletics' AND tennessee", and then go through articles by decade. Also, yearbooks are a good source for this kind of information, and often the school or http://www.archive.org has electronic versions online. Past issues of the UT yearbook, the Volunteer, are online here. Strikehold (talk) 20:38, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, Strikehold. That did the trick. If somebody wants to do in-fill behind me, we now have complete and upgraded navboxes for the Tennessee Volunteers football coaches and athletic directors, and they can be added to the article pages together with the properly named "Category:Tennessee Volunteers athletic directors." Accordingly, all Tennessee head football coach and athletic director succession boxes may now also be deleted from those article pages, too. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 23:22, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
That's interesting, because I just came across an example of separate men's and women's ADs from the late 1940s, but I figured that practice had ended long ago. cmadler (talk) 21:04, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

NCAA yearly game uniform parameter

I noticed that a few NFL games such as the Tuck rule game had a section to display the two teams' uniforms and I was wondering if it'd be possible to add a parameter to the NCAA game template to allow for the addition of uniform images. Several single-game uniforms, like Oregon in the 2006 Las Vegas Bowl and Arizona in the 2009 Holiday Bowl have been done and it shouldn't be too hard to draw up the uniform images for the bowl games, especially since few teams wear special uniforms like those two examples. I don't really have much experience with coding templates, so can someone help me out? --Kevin W. 20:10, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

If the only intellectual property in the uniforms is trademarks, then it could be done, but if they are copyrighted or contain copyrighted images within them, then it should only be done if it's a uniform just for that game, and the special uniform is discussed in the article. Otherwise this could run afoul of our non-free content criteria. cmadler (talk) 21:02, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
You'll have to excuse my questions, since I'm not well-versed in NFCC policy (only copy-and-pasting the correct stuff when I post the uniform images), but if I add a section to the article discussing the uniforms, I could add the image? --Kevin W. 21:29, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
By and large, yes. Make sure the file description page has an appropriate copyright tag (this is only if you upload it; existing files should already have this) and make sure to add a non-free use rationale statement to the file description page (this is specific to each page on which the image is used, so even if the image is already on Wikipedia, you will need to add this). I recommend using the provided templates for both. Again, an article about a game should probably only show the uniform(s) if they were used specially for that game (single-game, or first use); an article about a season could reasonably display the uniform used in that season, particularly if it's different from uniforms used in prior/subsequent seasons and the difference(s) is/are discussed. But if a team used the same uniform for most/all games for 10 years, there'd be no justification for adding an image of the uniform to a single-game article somewhere in the middle of that span. Make sense? If you need more help with any of this (other than creating the images), let me know, and I'll be glad to help. cmadler (talk) 19:03, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
Oh, I know all about the licensing stuff (as you'll see from the images I've uploaded) but I'm not sure about the correct usage of them outside of the individual teams' pages (see Oregon Ducks for example). However, I'd like to include a parameter in the template that would allow for the uniforms to be included in there like the NFL page. I don't know how to code it, so that's why I need help. --Kevin W. 20:03, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Fair use photos for deceased coaches

I've uploaded three images (File:Francis Schmidt.jpg, File:Fred Thomsen.png, File:Harold 'Red' Blair.jpg) that I pulled from Hall of Fame sites or media guides to give us infobox head shots for deceased coaches. I think these are okay under fair use, but can anyone with insight into image licensing comment? Thanks. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:25, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I searched for and added a few public domain coach photos recently (File:Robert Zuppke.jpg, File:Philip King FB coach.jpg, and File:Henry L Williams.jpg). But if a public domain replacement cannot be found for a notable deceased person, it is reasonable to use a non-free image under fair use. Here is one discussion on it: Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/Archive 37#Non-free images in biographies of deceased people? Strikehold (talk) 23:20, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Just a few suggestions: Since Francis Schmidt was a head coach by 1919, there's probably a photo of him somewhere that was published before 1/1/1923, which would be public domain. In fact, since he looks possibly younger than 38 in the photo you added, that photo might itself be PD, but you'd probably need to check with the HoF to be sure. Since Red Blair and Fred Thomsen were 23 and 26 as of that date, if you can track down team photos from their playing days, those would probably be PD and you could crop them out of the group photos. For example, we have a PD photo of Elton Rynearson cropped from a team photo from before he became a head coach (in this case he was an assistant), and a PD photo of Henry Schulte from his playing days at Michigan. But for many mid-century coaches who were born after 1905 (meaning they wouldn't have played college ball until after 1923) and who are deceased, we may have to settle for fair use images. cmadler (talk) 13:32, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
That's all true, however, you sometimes have to invoke fair use even if you know that the image must have been taken before 1923, because it is not automatically public domain unless it was first published before 1923. It can sometimes be difficult to prove that if you can't find a contemporary source. But if the individual is dead, and you cannot find a definitively free replacement, it would be advisable to err on the side of caution and claim its usage under fair use. Strikehold (talk) 22:23, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
Theoretically, yes, but 1) a team photo for 1921 or earlier was most likely published prior to 1/1/1923 (a 1922 team photo might be in doubt), because they're designed for publicity, and/or would have probably been in a yearbook, and 2) in practice, I've never been asked to prove that a pre-1923 photo was actually published pre-1923. I can imagine a Commons purge at some point, and if/when I have such documentation I certainly add it, but I wouldn't let the lack of publication date documentation stop me. At worst, if it were to be questioned, it could then have fair-use templates slapped on it. cmadler (talk) 14:15, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
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