Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Archive-Feb2007

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents 1 Cool Trick 2 Coaches year-by-year record template? 3 BCS National Championship Game article 4 Barnstar 5 Please Review 6 Article Quality 7 Template Section, new template system idea 8 Premature content fork 9 WikiProject Big Ten 10 Small form templates and banners on talk pages 11 NCAA Resource on Infractions 12 AFD of 2010 BCS National Championship Game 13 Sponsor names on bowl games 14 Fifth Down for GA (almost) 15 Coaching history template 15.1 New coaching history suggestion 15.2 New templates - CFB Yearly Record 16 University of Pittsburgh 17 TfD nomination of Template:UODucksCoach 18 Infobox National Championships 18.1 Hang on 18.2 NCAA Division I-A national football championship 18.3 Possible approaches 18.4 New Idea 18.5 Brand New Idea 19 2007 team pages 20 AfD of 1987 Fiesta Bowl Play-By-Play 21 All the Mugshots gone 22 Naming conventions of notable football games 23 Division I-Bowl Subdivision 24 AFDs 25 Schedule Template? 25.1 New Problem? 25.2 Collapsible? 25.3 Attendance 26 Template:Linescore Amfootball 27 Semi-recent discussion 28 Bit of a rant and a challenge 29 Conference championship in team season schedule

[edit] Cool Trick

I discovered this cool trick that making linking easier: If a link has a ( ) in it for disambig (or whatever) reasons, you can link like this: [[Blah (darn brackets)|]] and it will show up as "Blah" (no "(darn brackets)"!). For example: [[Dan Hawkins (coach)|]] looks like: Dan Hawkins. Awesome, huh? --MECU≈talk 03:01, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Another thing I just discovered about this, is that when Wiki saves, it will change the link internally from [[Dan Hawkins (coach)|]] to [[Dan Hawkins (coach)|Dan Hawkins]]. So, when you edit it again, it will look like normal. So, changing them from the displayed way to the | formatted way is useless since it will just put it all back anyways. --MECU≈talk 15:30, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Very neat. Thanks for the tip! Johntex\^talk 15:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm.....thats interesting. That may make templates easier to create, correct? Now, instead of having, say, a coach's display name and a coach's link, we would only need to ask for the link and then have all coach's links fed into that format. Since [[Dan Hawkins (coach)|]] and [[Bob Stoops|]] will both link to the correct article.--NMajdan•talk 16:01, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

It would seem that way NMajdan, but until I see it work, I won't put it in. And, it may be less clear for non-advanced editors like us. The extra coding for that is minimal. --MECU≈talk 19:47, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Related to this is another cool trick I just discovered. Instead of linking to templates like this: {{tl|NAME}}, you link like this: {{[[Template:NAME|]]}}, and the Pipe trick will know that just NAME should be the displayed link, so when it saves it will look like {{[[Template:NAME|NAME]]}}. Why is this way better? Because it doesn't force wikipedia to make a inclusion of the {{tl}} template, so for pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/MasterTeamTable where that's hundreds of times, it starts to drag on the server. While this way is better, there's nothing wrong with using the other way once in awhile, on a page that doesn't get used a lot or talk pages like this. Seems like there should be a template that does this, subst: the tl template doesn't work. --MECU≈talk 22:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coaches year-by-year record template?

Is there any sort of template to be used for display a yearly record log for coaches? I'm working on one for Joe Paterno to tidy up the one already in that article and want to make sure I'm not duplicating efforts already completed elsewhere. PSUMark2006 20:04, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I have seen many. Some are broken up into time at one school. Others are for entire career. Some have conference record and others don’t. It would be nice to have a standard that included the following: School, Year, Record, Conference, Conf record and place, Post season (bowl or playoffs) and Remarks 09er 22:03, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Really? Where?--NMajdan•talk 22:11, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and created a more streamlined table format for season-by-season records at the Joe Paterno article. Anyone with more template expertise than me is more than welcome to mess around with this in the hopes of making a template out of it. PSUMark2006 22:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I like that one. The only thing I can think to add would be conference record? In a template, would have to make Ties optional since newer/new coaches you could then omit it since they will never have a tie. Would have to do it like the succession box I believe. --MECU≈talk 13:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a bit too compact. That makes sense for someone like Paterno, who's been around forever, but I prefer tables as part of the article, as in the Jim Tressel article. I think it gets more information across more clearly.

I proposed at Talk:Mark Richt using that table as more of a standard, with some modifications. I got some good feedback from User:Autiger, who suggested looking at Tommy Tuberville, which I also like. With that in mind, I would like to propose using the Tuberville-style table as standard, with the following modifications:

• List final conference or division ranking (as in Tressel)
• Possibly list final poll ranking -- and if so, which ones?
• Possibly give bowl game column (outcome, opponent) (also in Tressel)

Any thoughts? --SuperNova |T|C| 22:59, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I do like the Tressel version of the table - my biggest complaint about how we had it on the Paterno article was that it was too tall considering how narrow the table was. But, if we're able to populate it with more information, like conference/divisional rankings/standings, national polls, etc., then it'll be much more useful to have it within the article. I'm still a bit concerned about having it in-text for someone who's coached for decades, but as far as establishing a standard for the majority of coaches to whom this won't apply, this is a great start. I'm going to be bold and take the initiative in developing a template for this over the next couple days and report back when I have something somewhat workable. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BCS National Championship Game article

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

I did a quick check and for all prior years that I saw, the style was <BCS National Championship Game 200X>. So, for the sake of consistency, BCS National Championship Game 2008 would seem to be appropriate. However, we seem to have been using a different format for other bowl games: 2006 Rose Bowl, 2007 Rose Bowl, 2007 Orange Bowl. Perhaps we should use a standard form for all bowls. If we do, putting the date first may be the better solution.--Tlmclain | Talk 21:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The games are generally known as the 200X ???? Bowl game. The article should list the year first. General125 22:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I actually prefer "<Year> BCS National Championship Game" because it agrees with the rest of the bowl games and it just seems more natural. But I think there was a discussion about this before and they decided to put it after, but I can't remember why. At the least, "<Year> BCS National Championship Game" should be created as a redirect to "BCS National Championship Game <Year>". --MECU≈talk 22:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to be bold and move this year's BCS article to the <Year> Bowl format.--NMajdan•talk 22:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

As a side note, it is WAY too early to be making the 2008 page. For all we know they will switch to playoffs this offseason. VegaDark 00:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It's pretty safe to assume the BCS will last as long as one cycle through the 4 BCS Bowls. Next year, I believe the Sugar Bowl will host the game. I do agree the first BCS National Champ game should be played first before a new article is made. General125 04:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

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

[edit] Barnstar

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

What about this image? CJC47 15:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Not bad.--Tlmclain | Talk 15:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Can you do it without the background or antialiasing the barnstar? --BigDT 00:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Changed it... does that work?CJC47 02:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I like it ... I have added it for consideration at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals. --BigDT 05:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please Review

Hello, I am getting ready to propose 2005 Texas Longhorn football team for consideration as a featured article. The article has had one reveiw already and I believe all issues raised there have been addressed. I have also used the semi-automated review script to look for small things that need to be changed. The article is meticulously referenced with 121 in-line sources. It contains both free-use images and appropriate fair-use images. It attempts to follow the standards set out by the relevant wiki projects.

In watching the nomintaion of the OU football program, I see that the OU article has received some objections on the grounds of supposedly being overly positive and for listing too-many awards. I have reviewed the 2006 UT article in light of those objections and I am prepared to argue that every positive thing said is relevant and attributed to a specific source. As for the awards and accomplishments, I think all the ones listed in the UT article are notable and justifiable, but I'd like to get more feedback from other editors so I invite you to review the article if you please. Johntex\^talk 09:53, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I have requested peer review here. Good luck to everyone still playing college football as I head into the off-season. Have a Happy New Year! Johntex\^talk 00:23, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• My request for a Peer Review has generated a few comments. I would welcome a lot more. Some of the comments made so far I have agreed with and already acted upon. In regard to certain other comments, I disagree with the suggestion given and I have attempted to explain my reasoning. I am hoping other people will chime in on these to help me know if my view is unique or if it is supported by others. Thanks again, Johntex\^talk 01:38, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article Quality

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

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

[edit] Template Section, new template system idea

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

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

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

[edit] Premature content fork

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

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

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

I've gone on and made the redirect. This is a brand new article that is largely a copy/paste. Copy/paste moves cause GFDL problems because we can't reliably credit all of the authors. Unless I'm missing something, I don't see any reason not to just be WP:BOLD and do it. --BigDT 20:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Why should there be two versions of the same article, with on supposibly going to have "detailed" information and the other not. We're not talking about a Template:main usage. This is just ridiculous. --MECU≈talk 21:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not that worried about it ... it was created by an inexperienced user ... none of us knew exactly what we were doing when we were new. --BigDT 21:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Big Ten

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

[edit] Small form templates and banners on talk pages

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

| small=yes

So the code will now look like:

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

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

I'm not sure it worked properly. Everything is small and on the right side, but all the comments are still pushed down and rhere is a big chunk of white space before the table of contents. VegaDark 21:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

What page are you referring to?--NMajdan•talk 21:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Jim Thorpe. Is there a way to make all the boxes off to the right go alongside the text instead of pusing it down? VegaDark 21:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

It is. On my screen (Firefox 2.0), the templates are aligned on the right and the actual Talk text is directly left of it, much like our WPCFB template above.--NMajdan•talk 21:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm using Internet Explorer, and both on the Jim Thorpe talk page and this talk page there is a big, annoying white space before the TOC. VegaDark 21:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Easy fix: Use Firefox. --MECU≈talk 23:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NCAA Resource on Infractions

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

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

[edit] AFD of 2010 BCS National Championship Game

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

I nominated the 2009 article as well for the same reasons as the 2010 article.--NMajdan•talk 16:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

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

[edit] Sponsor names on bowl games

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

[edit] Fifth Down for GA (almost)

I'm ready to try and put Fifth Down up for GA. I had a peer review on it a month ago and believe I covered everything quite well. I'd like some looks from some more CFB oriented folks before I try. Any comments are appreciated. Thank you. --MECU≈talk 14:14, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• Looks good. It might be better to wiki Colorado to Colorado Buffaloes football--Tlmclain | Talk 14:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Fifth Down has made it to GA as of today! Who hoo! --MECU≈talk 00:17, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Congrats!--Tlmclain | Talk 20:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coaching history template

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

Are you talking about something different that [2]? I'm not really clear what you're talking about. Can you show us your working project? --MECU≈talk 02:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

No, that's the template I'm working on. Sorry for the confusion - I'm going to resume work on the template after I finish watching the Sugar Bowl and I'll post what I have so far after that. My basic premise is that if a coach has coached for multiple teams, there needs to be a way, within the table, to differentiate between each team coached, and I'm looking to determine which way is more effective - having a row spanning the entire table that sections the table by teams, or having a column for each year to specify the team. Like I said, I'll post examples as well as a 'working' template later tonight. Thanks! -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 03:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

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

That looks fantastic! I'd like to see it with some longer-tenured coaches, just to make sure, but great work thus far. Thanks! --SuperNova |T|C| 08:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Your template uses the AP Poll. That should be optional or changeable. As a WikiProject, I still say we should stick with the Coaches. Also, when you start getting into older seasons, who is to say what poll to use? What if I put this template on Fielding Yost's page? I may want to use Helm's. But overall, a very good start.--NMajdan•talk 13:05, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The footer template now has an added parameter to specify a poll source (or "no" to remove that footnote altogether). -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 15:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Wow. That does look awesome. Nice work. Though you should remove the "NA" from the rankings. It was agreed upon when discussing the schedule table that "NA" wouldn't be used if there was no ranking. I also don't know if I like that orange color, but we could change that latter since it's a template. But I like everyone else generally! --MECU≈talk 14:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I just took the information straight from the existing table for Jim Tressel, but I'll make that change on the 'sample.' -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 15:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

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

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

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

You shouldn't be making that decision, it should be from another source. The whole WP:NOR issue there. The College Football data warehouse would be a good source, or ESPN if it's current. Also, I put this on Dan Hawkins (coach) and it looks good. I copied the template usages from the sandbox page, and I'm wondering why there are the bgcolor and fontcolor for the start template, because they don't seem to be used. But it looks good and is easy to use. Good work. --MECU≈talk 17:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion - I had originally planned to have the ability to change the coloring for the team sub-header, but decided against it. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 17:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

No problem. Could we add an option to Template:CFB Coaching Record End that makes the BCS symbol optional? I put the schedule on Homer H. Norton and it seems silly to have BCS on it since he was a coach until 1947 and the BCS wasn't invented for another 50 years. I'd like something like "BCS=no", and otherwise it would add it. I know having negatives in a template is difficult, but it'd be the best I think. Also, please add the blank forms for all the templates, it would make it easier for new people to the template to use. Still, I'm impressed by this template. --MECU≈talk 20:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I added a parameter in {{CFB Coaching Record End}} to remove the BCS footnote. I also added blanks for each of the templates and started a page within the WikiProject at Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Using the career coaching record template to demonstrate various uses of the templates. I am working on ways to allow for the removal of the "optional" columns (team, conference, bowls, etc.) without "breaking" the rest of the table that presently has hard-coded colspans, but for now the only way for everything to work correctly is to use all of the available columns. I'll add examples when I get a chance to figure out the best way to give editors more flexibility over this. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 21:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that subpage would be better served either on one of the template pages or on a subpage of one of the template pages (such as Template:CFB Coaching Record Start/Using the career coaching record template. And why is the 'Team' column optional? I would think that should be required. I mean, the coach will always have a team, correct?--NMajdan•talk 21:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough, I'll make that move. I felt that if an editor is going to use the {{CFB Coaching Record Team}} template, it would be redundant to also list the team on each subsequent row. I'm more than happy to keep that column as required, however, if others disagree. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 21:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Ahhhh.....ok, that is why you were making it optional. I guess you could do whatever you want. I see what you're saying about only listing the school on the first occurrence then leaving it blank until the end or at the beginning of a new school, but my personal preference would be to always have the school. But again, thats my personal preference, do whatever you think is best for the template. Or let's get some more opinions.--NMajdan•talk 22:05, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

(reset)I put it on Rick Neuheisel. Can we make the "endyear=" in Template:CFB Coaching Record Team optional? Or make it not default to "present"? Colorado switched conferences at the end of Neuheisel's first year so I covered that by reusing the Template:CFB Coaching Record Team. But having 1995-1995 looks silly and if I leave it blank it says 1995-present. Maybe something so that "endyear=single" or "endyear=none" would then not put the - and second year? Otherwise, it's still working awesome! --MECU≈talk 01:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I updated {{CFB Coaching Record Team}} to accept "single" as a parameter for "endyear" which will permit display of the value for "startyear" only. I also updated the Rick Neuheisel article to demonstrate usage. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 04:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

On Mark Richt, it is listing his conference record (confrecord parameter) as his overall record at Georgia, when his record at Georgia should be the same as his overall overall, since he's only ever worked there. It's not printing anything for conference record. Bob Stoops does the same thing. I don't know anything about editing templates, or I'd look into it myself, but I'll just report it here instead. Thanks for the excellent work so far though. --SuperNova |T|C| 02:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that - it should be fixed now. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 04:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

With a few changes, this template system could be used also for year-by-year results for a team, by replacing the team column with coach column, the team entry "<team> (<conf>) (Year-Year)" to just empty or "<Conference>" and the "at <team>" end closure to "Under <Coach>". Would probably need to make new templates for easiness (or reworking the existing ones for a variable to switch to this style). This way, all the data on tables could easily be added, cut and paste practically, to team articles to improve them. I hope I was clear enough, if not I can give more examples and explain in more details what I mean. --MECU≈talk 21:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea. Before I get to work on it, though, one thought - if we're going to expand the use of the template as you described, are we going to want to rename it either now or in the future? "CFB Coaching Record" doesn't really describe your intended use on team pages - maybe we need to change it to "CFB Yearly Record"? -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 22:03, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Does it have to be CFB? Whynot just "Football Yearly Record"? See Chuck Fairbanks it would be very useful to be able to have some NFL entries on this. I will limit myself to football stuff, we don't need to have every sport played under this (though that would be awesome!). Then the NFL folks could use it as well. --MECU≈talk 23:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Given the Bowl Game columns, yeah, I'd say it's pretty college football specific.

Actually, that's one of my few issues with what is a generally kick-ass template; the weight given to bowl games. There are three separate columns to cover the bowl name, opponent and result - are all those really that important in a summary table? Can they be consolidated somehow? Of the three, opponent could be pretty easily dropped IMHO; let people click through to the bowl's article to find out the detail.

Something I'd really like to see is a final free-form Notes column to cover random items of note, like Division Champion, Walter Camp Coach of the Year, or SEC Coach of the Year, or whatever random stuff that is notable.

Finally, a pet peeve for me is that the column widths are being driven by the header (label) width rather than the data width, resulting in a lot of wasted space. I'd love to see some effort at either reducing the header label on Final Ranking especially, or changing to two lines of header text (less preferable) to fix those issues. Thanks! --AUTiger ʃ ^talk/_work 23:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

All great points. I'll look into consolidating the Bowl columns - namely, probably a note on the template page suggesting that the editor truncate the bowl name (for example, Fiesta instead of Fiesta Bowl) - and removing the opponent name. I think we'd be fine reducing Final Ranking to Rank, especially since we have the explanatory footnote. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:12, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for listening and for your hard work. AUTiger ʃ ^talk/_work 05:39, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

While you template gurus are at it, how about something year by year for rivalry games? Templates for games like those in the Bedlam Series or The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party could be handy, particularly if they could be designed with color so that you could tell at a glance who won in a particular year. Could be a challenge though - some rivalries alternate years and others are at neutral sites.--Tlmclain | Talk 23:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you thinking adding a column for a team's yearly record to indicate the outcome of that team's big rivalry game each year (as was the case on the old table for Jim Tressel's OSU record) or are you thinking about a new template altogether just for the series history of a rivalry game? -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:32, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I was headed off down the tangent path mentioned by MECU when he said that this template system could be used also for year-by-year results for a team. I don't think I would list the year-by-year results of a team in a team article (to me, the XXXX XXXX football Team should be a little more summary in nature), but I would be interested in creating a year by year table showing the results of rivalry games. However, since I think it might look best if it were color coded to the winning team's colors, a template may not be the way to go. On the other hand, when you start mixing team colors, the resulting blend of colors could get hideous. I don't know - just a thought.--Tlmclain | Talk 23:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, it's certainly possible to add that functionality to the yearly template - we would just have to add a 'rivalry' parameter of some sort that would strip out all of the other columns like bowl/ranking, etc. Are there other columns besides year, coach, outcome, and (possibly) location that would be useful? I'll also consider adding two parameters for the color of each team. Hopefully I'll have something after I get back from watching the title game tonight. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 00:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Right now, all I can think of is designating the home & away team (even the neutral site games tend to alternate home & away teams), year, coach, location, score. You'd have to come up with something for ties (maybe just leave it with a white background). Optional fields might include ranks (for more recent games). Some folks might want to include the records of the teams and/or the running totals, steaks or maybe just a note field. I think the best thing to do is to start with something with the basics and then add to it if others have ideas.--Tlmclain | Talk 00:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

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

I'd say have two separate tables - college table in a college coaching career section and NFL table in an NFL section. AUTiger ʃ ^talk/_work 05:39, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense. I noticed that WikiProject National Football League doesn't have any sort of standardized format, either. It might be worth suggesting over there in the near future, once both of our seasons wrap up and we have more time to devote to cleaning up and maintaining. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 05:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I put the NFL years into this template on Chuck Fairbanks and I think it looks okay. Though "Bowl" doesn't apply. If he hadn't gone CFB->NFL->CFB, I think splitting them is just fine. --MECU≈talk 17:17, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New coaching history suggestion

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

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

Okay, I think I've got this one figured out too. See here. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New templates - CFB Yearly Record

College Football Yearly Record Table
{{CFB Yearly Record Start}}	links talk view
{{CFB Yearly Record Subhead}}	links talk view
{{CFB Yearly Record Entry}}	links talk view
{{CFB Yearly Record Subtotal}}	links talk view
{{CFB Yearly Record End}}	links talk view
Usage examples

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

• Well done! I've started experimenting with the rivalry template HERE and have run into a couple of issues (yes, I know the colors may be a little too eye-popping). First, the footer showing national and conference championships is not needed for rivalry games. Second, the "Total" footer may need reworking as well - I've put the total in at least one way that would make sense.--Tlmclain | Talk 22:20, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I added a parameter for the footer that should remove the championships key. I added it to your example as well. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 22:36, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Works well, I'll let you know if I see any other problems beyond the "total issue." You guys do awesome work on these templates. Thanks--Tlmclain | Talk 22:49, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I also just tweaked the template to provide a different label for the "total" row for rivalries - again, you can see it in action on your example. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Also, as demonstrated on the Red River Shootout and Michigan-Ohio State rivalry articles, it's not necessarily required to include the footer template - just using |} after the last entry will close out the table just fine. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 01:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Aha! Thanks.--Tlmclain | Talk 20:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

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

[edit] University of Pittsburgh

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

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:UODucksCoach

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

[edit] Infobox National Championships

An issue I've encountered time-and-again with respect to infoboxes in program pages is what number to include in the national championship section. A number of pages have ludicrus national championship counts because users have used a number reflecting every single year that at least one usually obscure selector chose the program in question as "national champion." Michigan's page, which claims 11 national championships when most credit the Wolverines with just 7 (and certainly no more than 9), immediately comes to mind. We need to settle on some kind of uniform standard for purposes of the infobox. Otherwise, if we allow a number to be used just because it's what the university claims, when it is a number that is not given credence in the college football world, we risk turning these pages into nothing more than pulpits for propaganda. Seeing as how Wiki has an article on Division I-A national championships that has a table of recognized national champions, I suggest we bring the program pages into conformity with the numbers in that table. Clearly some solution is needed because right now many readers coming to Wikipedia for information about a particular program are instead encountering hype from its public relations department.-PassionoftheDamon 03:25, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

There was some discussion about this here, above, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football#Tennessee Volunteer Football but in there is also a link to the page where a little more discussion occured. I believe that should satisfy your questions. --MECU≈talk 15:27, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'm not sure that discussion really settles the issue, as the NCAA does not officially recognize any national champion and its listings merely list every poll or ranking that selects a national champion, including the very obscure sources we are all hoping to filter out of the infobox equation. [3] For example, if we allowed schools to claim national championships for every year they are listed in the NCAA listings, Oklahoma could claim a national championship in 2003, Florida State in 1996, Miami in 1988 and 1986, etc., even though each of those teams lost in their bowl games to the accepted national champion and no one in their right mind would consider them national champions. My point is that we need to settle on some reliable source for purposes of listing recognized national championships in the infobox. Perhaps cfbdatawarehouse.com?-PassionoftheDamon 17:11, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea, and looking at [this page makes it clear that LSU and USC should only be the "recognized" champs while Oklahoma received some "also-rans" votes. But we should remain impartial on this and merely selecting CFBdatawarehouse.com isn't valid. I guess it's time to find some sources as to what "selectors" are the major and what should be considered "respectable" sources for NC declarations. This page might cover it, but it's also like saying we should trust CFBdatawarehouse.com because they say to trust them (even though I do anyways). --MECU≈talk 17:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

1936-present is easy. The AP poll should be for 1936-present and the Coaches from 1950-present. The question is what is a valid source for declaring national championships before 1936. Personally, I have no problem using the same sources that CFBdatawarehouse.com uses (National Championship Foundation, Helms Athletic Foundation, and College Football Researchers Association [4]).--NMajdan•talk 17:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of using NCF, Helms, and CFRA as the sources for pre-1936 championships listed in the infobox and tables in program articles. References to other claimed/non-widely recognized "championships" could still be made in the body of the article, but the problem of misleading/using the infobox and tables as advertising tools would be solved. If the number listed is simply allowed to be the number claimed by the school, we are effectively allowing the schools to violate WP:COI policies.-PassionoftheDamon 09:29, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be good to come to a consensus for the project on how to handle this situation. If we can reference a consensus decision for the project it should hopefully resolve content disputes similar to the one occurring on the Michigan Wolverines football page. I believe User talk:PassionoftheDamon has started this discussion as the next step in resolving a content dispute.

I will contribute to the discussion that I also believe that the school info boxes should conform to the criteria cited on the NCAA Division I-A national football championship page to avoid breaking the WP:COI guideline. Terryfoster 15:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's another thought: we could modify the infobox to specify wire national championships, so only AP and Coaches national championships would count for purposes of the infobox and article tables. Then, within the body of the article, references could be made to claimed pre-1936 national championships. I think this would promote uniformity and reliability across infoboxes, mostly resolve WP:COI concerns, and allow us to remain impartial as to weighing the sources. The way I see it, the current proposals are to (1) use the sources CFDB uses to count national championships, or (2) count only AP and Coaches national championships in the infobox. Thoughts, guys?-PassionoftheDamon 22:11, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with that.--NMajdan•talk 22:21, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

As no one has voiced any opposition, I've gone ahead and altered the template to specify wire national championships in the national championship field. If anyone objects, please do let it be known.-PassionoftheDamon 20:26, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed this interesting (and commendable) idea was being put into force (first time I've paid attention). As you all know, this is semi-problematic because the wires didn't start awarding championships until 1936. As soon as I saw the adjustment to the USC football page, I tried to make a happy medium by writing "7 wire<br>(11 claimed)"; do you all think that would be a problem? I think it will certainly help find middle ground with programs that get extra-defensive about this sort of thing. (doesn't Bama claim something like 16 championships?) --Bobak 20:56, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Also: if this is considered a good idea (and it may not), it would also be a good idea to removed the "Wire" in front of the "Wire National Champsionships" --Bobak 21:00, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that's necessary because the school can still make reference to its claimed national championships within the body of the article. The goal is to increase reliability and eliminate WP:COI concerns in the infobox national championship field, since it has unique prominence. We can't say USC is in fact an 11-time national champion, but we can say unequivocally that USC has won 7 wire national championships.-PassionoftheDamon 21:01, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

• (the Elis are going to be crushed by this) but onto the current big boys: how is it a COI to clearly demarkate "Claimed" vs. "Wire"? The over 60 years of college football played before 1936 get a bit of a shaft here. In the alternative: There should at least, the very least, be a wikilink on "Wire" to something that explains exactly what a "Wire National Championship" is --since I think it's safe to assume that many non-cfb fans may not know what that refers to. The other suggestion would be to place "(post-1936)" but that would get crowded. --Bobak 21:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

The pre-1936 era doesn't get a shaft because pre-1936 national championships are still represented within the body of the article. Putting "claimed" national championships in the infobox raises serious WP:COI because it allows the individual schools to be the arbiter of how they are perceived; a school is held out as an X-time national champion simply because the school says it is an X-time national champion. It's also important to remember that most of the pre-1936 national championships are retroactive, i.e. claimed well after the season in question. Thus, we're not ignoring anything that the players actually earned on the field during that season. By making the field specify "wire national championships" we give a number that is concrete and verifiable, instead of allowing these infoboxes to essentially become the product of a school's public relations propaganda. We can say definitively that school Y is an X-time wire national champion. I do agree, however, that it would be a good idea to define "wire national titles" within the infobox. Perhaps somebody with the syntax know-how could put a symbol next to the phrase, followed by small text at the bottom of the infobox explaining what wire national championships are. Alternatively, I could just rephrase the template to read, "AP/Coaches National Titles," rather than "Wire National Titles."-PassionoftheDamon 22:26, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hang on

I’ve been out of town, so I am just catching up on this discussion and have several concerns. First, a limitation to “Wire National Titles” is too esoteric for the non-college football fan. One of the things that we learned from the comments in the recent FA nomination for the Oklahoma Sooners article is that we have to write the articles for people who are not college football fans. We cannot expect the non-college football fan to know that “Wire National Titles” excludes anything before 1936, is limited to one poll from 1936 to 1950 and limited to two polls after 1949.

Second, the idea that, from 1936 to 1949, the only “national champions” that will be recognized in the info box are those who were selected in the AP poll will lead to a conflict between the College Football Data Warehouse (if not other sources) and Wikipedia.

• 1936 CFDW recognizes Michigan and Pittburgh, but Wikipedia would only recognize Minnesota.[5]
• 1938 CFDW recognizes Tennessee and TCU, but Wikipedia would only recognize TCU. [6]
• 1942 CFDW recognizes Georgia and Ohio State, but Wikipedia would only recognize Ohio State.[7]
• 1946 CFDW recognizes Army and Notre Dame, but Wikipedia would recognize only Notre Dame.[8]
• 1947 CFDW recognizes Michigan and Notre Dame, but Wikipedia would recognize only Notre Dame.[9]

In each of these years, I think that the CFDW approach to joint national champions is pretty well accepted.

Even after 1949, the planned approach would leave Wikipedia at odds with CFDW. For example, the planned approach would allow only one school to list itself as national champion in 1950 (Oklahoma), when CFDW lists two (Oklahoma and Tennessee).[10]

Third, notwithstanding the fact that a school can explain these discrepancies in the body of the article, the limitations in what can be included in the info box does have an effect on the article and the perception of the school. The purpose of the info box is to provide a summary of information at a glance. Using these new criteria, Tennessee will no longer be able to list 4 national championships in its info box, which conforms with CFDW, but will only be able to list two (1951 and 1998). This seems to create unecessary confusion – why would/should Wikipedia diasgree with other sources? The problem is even more pronounced when a school like Notre Dame is considered. CFDW lists them with 12 recognozed national championships, [11] but, under the new criteria, Notre Dame can only claim 8 in the infobox. 1924, 1929 and 1930 are all ruled out because of the pre-1936 rule, which means that none of the three national championships under Knute Rockne can be included in the info box summary. In 1953, even the CFDW recognizes Notre Dame and Maryland as co-champs, Wikiepedia would disallow the listing in the infobox (Notre Dame was named #1 in over 20 polls, but not AP and UPI).[12]

In short, I think it is more misleading to limit the National Titles in the info box to “Wire National Titles.” There is no easy solution (after all, that's why we went to the BCS), but I have two proposals. #1 Agree that the CFDW data (or some other objective source) is as good a solution to the problem as any, have the info box match the number of national titles listed by the CFDW and provide a link to the CFDW page for the school. OR #2 Discontinue the practice of listing the number of national titles in the info box altogether – I’d rather have people be required to read the article to figure out the national title question that to give partial or misleading information in the infobox.--Tlmclain | Talk 00:26, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure why we should be concerned about a difference between CFDB's listing and the infobox. Is CFDB some kind of official authority? I think not. If we use CFDB's number in the infobox, it would essentially be taking sides and saying that CFDB is THE national championship authority. That's pretty darn arbitrary, especially when you consider your 1953 Notre Dame example: Notre Dame doesn't even claim that national championship because it only counts wire national championships post-1936. Using "wire national championships" as the infobox criteria provides a reliable standardized number without "invalidating" pre-wire national championships. I much prefer listing so-called wire national championships in the infobox to arbitrarily filtering out pre-1936 sources based on what CFBD says. And simply not listing national championships would be the worst idea of all considering everyone agrees on the legitimacy of AP and UPI national championships. Of all the ways the problem of counting national championships could be attacked, I think the wire idea is by far the fairest.-JDD18 04:23, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not suggesting that CFDB is THE national championship authority. However, CFDB seems to be a well-regarded source of information for college football data and I do think that it is relevant to discuss why our Project should elect to take a different approach than that taken by CFDB. Perhaps it is correct to conclude that "wire national championships" is the way to go in the post-1936 era because schools such as Notre Dame only "count" "wire national championships" in their self-tally of national championships. Unfortunately, I do not think that all schools are in agreement on that particular point. For example, Tennessee claims 6 championships in its media guide, not just the two "wire national championships" and Michigan's website asserts 11 national championships, including 1947, when Michigan was listed #1 by 28 selectors and Notre Dame was listed #1 by 10 selectors (including the AP). (By the way, I am NOT advocating that a school's media guide should be the determining factor). The point that I am trying to make is that the limitation in the infobox to "wire national championships" seems to create some inconsistent results as well. Additionally, this still leaves a gap in the infobox as to pre-1936 national championships. --Tlmclain | Talk 14:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the internal inconsistencies that you speak of. The national championship article has explicit sections on most AP and most UPI national championships. I also think you misunderstand the rationalé behind using wire national championships: they're being used not because schools like Notre Dame and Oklahoma only count wire national championships, but because they are the most widely accepted national championship selectors. Nobody disputes the legitimacy of an AP or UPI national championship the way they do with those other claimed sources. For better worse, the AP and UPI polls are the accepted determinants of Division I-A national championships. Nothing equivalent existed pre-1936, but that's not our fault. If non-wire championships are listed, we're confronted with 2 problems: (1) allow the schools to dictate how many national championships they've "won" by going with the claimed number, which allows for counting fictitious retroactive national championships and conflict of interest problems, or (2) start listing "recognized" titles, which involves making a subjective determination of who the championships need to be "recognized" by. I also know that if we were to list pre-1936 national championships, even based on CFW's numbers, we're going to have a ton of edit warring. Fans of the school in question will revert again and again to their claimed national championships if it's a larger number, while fans of rival schools will probably revert to a different number, creating a sort-of arms race. I find the wire approach by far the most appealing proposal.JDD18 20:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I must have been writing my new comments when you posted this, so I missed it. Some of the inconsistencies are outlined in my comments below under the new heading. Clearly AP and the Coaches Poll are widely recognized, but I don't think the inquiry ends there. Its interesting that the NCAA has chosen to resolve this issue by not resolving it at all - they do not list national champions and provide all information regarding who was voted #1 by which poll in each year. My point is that if we are going to move beyond what the NCAA is willing to do we should be uncomfortable in saying that the only national champions that we are going to recognize are the ones reflected in the AP poll since 1936 and the AP and Coaches poll since 1950.--Tlmclain | Talk 20:51, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree entirely. We are not only "recognizing" wire national championships right now; we're only listing wire national championships in the infobox. The current infobox takes a completely neutral stance to non-wire national championships. If we do as you suggest and adopt the CFW number, we will, in fact, be invalidating certain pre-1936 national championships. As such, that's the more troubling approach. I also strongly contest the claim that listing wire national championships is somehow misleading. It's not. It would be misleading to keep the field "national championships" and then proceed to list only wire national championships (or CFW recognized national championships); it's not when the field claims to represent only wire national championships.JDD18 22:19, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it may all come down to what information is supposed to be conveyed by the info box: If it is supposed to be a summary of the contents of the article, then limiting the national champ info to "wire" championships is potentially misleading. If the info box has a different purpose, then perhaps "wire" championships is not potentially misleading. My overall concern relates to the perspective of the reader - i.e., what does the casual college football fan think/expect is included in the infobox regarding national championships? When it says "Wire National Titles," you and I know what that means and I'm not worried about us. But do people who are not members of this Project know what it means? It seems pretty clear that you and I will not resolve this issue by ourselves - we really need to hear from others. If the final solution is to leave "Wire National Titles" in the info box, then there has to be an explanation of what that means. A decision will also have to be made with respect what to do about non-compliance with whatever standard is adopted in the end.--Tlmclain | Talk 22:52, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm for using wire national championships, as well, and I think the lack of edit warring on articles like Alabama, Notre Dame, Michigan, and USC football since the change was instituted is testament to its utility, fairness, and acceptance.-PassionoftheDamon 01:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I certainly understand the appeal of setting a simple standard on what goes into an infobox and agree that "wire national championships" provides such a standard - Either a team is listed #1 in a wire poll or it isn't. However, I am concerned that picking "wire national championships" as the standard is itself a bit arbitrary. By definition, it means that no national championship prior to 1936 can be listed in the infobox only becuase there were no wire service polls prior to 1936. If the goal of college football infoboxes is to provide a summary of a football program, isn't a limitation to "wire national championships" misleading? While "wire national championships" might mean something to those of us who are involved in this Project, does it have any meaning to a casual college football fan who is looking to Wikipedia for quick information? Would a non-football fan know that they need to read the entire article to understand that Notre Dame has 11 national championships, not just the 8 shown in the infobox? Even though it may be difficult, shouldn't the Project be trying to create a infobox that reflects "consensus" national champions? 1947 provides an example of what I am talking about: Michigan was listed #1 by 28 selectors, while Notre Dame was listed #1 by 10 selectors. However, since Notre Dame's selectors included including the AP and the AP was the only wire service in operation in 1947, the proposed policy would only allow Notre Dame to include 1947 in its inbox tally of national championships.

There are also internal inconsistencies within Wikipedia on this point. NCAA Division I-A national football championships lists both Michigan and Notre Dame in 1947 and does not follow the "wire championships only rule." --Tlmclain | Talk 14:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Ehh, I wouldn't go as far as saying the lack of a edit war over a change instituted over a holiday weekend is a testament to its utility, fairness and acceptance. If it makes it through maybe this week you could say that, but i'm sure i'm not alone in coming into work today and finding this change put in place without a consensus. Watch out for edit wars and try to direct any opposition to this discussion so they can voice their opinion.

I agree with Tlmclain that articles need to be written for non-football fans. I also agree (now after seeing Tlmclain's explaination) the article needs to agree with the info box as it should summarize some points of the article. The big problem here is any method of counting National Championships is going to come under scrutiny and the important thing is to provide an easy way for the reader to understand how that number was reached. I'm not sure why the NCAA Division I-A national football championship article should or would be exempt from this discussion as it also lists "recognized" national titles. The rational listed on the NCAA Division I-A national football championship article may agree with the method CFDW uses, but there doesn't seem to be as much conflict over this listing. I really don't think there's anything wrong with that listing of championships and it would be easier to make the individual school/team pages agree with that article than to devise an entirely new recognizing system. If we change the "National Titles" header in the info box to link to the NCAA Division I-A national football championship article then the reader should be able to follow that link if they have any questions about the number displayed. Terryfoster 14:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Does anybody else feel that CFBDW may be incorrect in following its own rules? According to this page, it clearly states that to be a CFBDW "Recognized National Championship" after 1936, it has to be selected by the Associated Press Poll. The Helms and CFRA end at 1935 and AP starts at 1936. So why in the world is Pitt a CFBDW Recognized National Champion in 1936 when it wasn't selected as the NC by the AP? Same thing for Army in 1946. I think we should follow the CFBDW's criteria but obviously with more scrutiny.--NMajdan•talk 22:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I've looked at this several times and still don't know what to make of it. The actual policy statement is: The following selectors are utilized for determining National Championships throughout this site. These selectors are recognized by College Football Data Warehouse as the most acceptable selectors throughout history. The first sentence makes it sound like the list is exclusive. The second sentence seems to back off from it. A literal application of the first sentence would mean that the ONLY authority post 1950 would be the Coaches poll. Clearly, CFDW uses some other criteria in determining National Championships. It seems to me to be based more on whether there are multiple selectors making the selection. That would explain the 1947 National Champions. Notre Dame was listed #1 by 10 selectors, including the AP and Michigan was listed #1 by 28 selectors. CFDW names both as National Champs.[13] In summary, I don't know if its clear what the CFDW criteria are.--Tlmclain | Talk 23:05, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I emailed the admin on CFBDW requesting clarification on the matter. We'll see if I get a response.--NMajdan•talk 14:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Here is the response I received from CFBDW:

“	I think everyone that puts a list together like I have is mostly personal opinion. No one controls a master yearly National Champion List because there has been no authority for it. I think it is safe to state all AP and Coaches Poll Champions should be on the list but beyond that is opinion. What I have failed to include in the notes on my site is I have added additional teams to the list outside of that criteria stated. I reviewed each season from 1869 and added 10-15 teams. The reason they were added was quite simply because I thought they should be based on this revised criteria: Any team receiving 25% or more of the selectors for any given year would be added. I added Pittsburgh (1936), Army (1946), Arkansas (1964), and others. For example I have listed 37 selectors for 1937. Minnesota was voted #1 by 17 selectors for 46% and Pittsburgh was selected by 11 selectors for 30%. I am surely not saying my list is the best or only one out there but this is just how I chose to do it. I am always open to suggestions and would like to review your list when you complete it.	”
	— David of CFBDW, email

• His 25% rule confirmed what I had guessed he was doing. I like his approach because the thing that I found troubling about the "all or nothing" approach of AP/Coaches was that it occasionally left a team out that had convinced a significant number of selectors that they were deserving of a #1 ranking. Requiring a certain percentage means that a team with one or two votes would not be able to list a Nat’l Champ. in the infobox, but they could still talk about it in the main article. The other thing about an approach like this is that it provides certainty – a team is either #1 in AP, Coaches or 25% of the polls. Although I haven’t researched it thoroughly, my impression is that there will be very few close calls (i.e., a team complaining that 25% is arbitrary because they were #1 in 23% of the polls). I am in favor of using these criteria.

If we use something like this, we would need to explain it clearly in the inbox template instructions. I also think that the NCAA Division I-A national football championship article will need to be redone in a manner that is consistent with this approach. This means that its year by year and other charts should be developed based upon the AP/Coaches/25% rule and the criteria should be spelled out. Finally, I think that we need to provide an additional chart that is developed from the NCAA & CFDW charts that shows the selections of all selectors in each year. This is a great off-season project!--Tlmclain | Talk 15:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

At the risk of complicating things further, I would actually like to up the percentage to something like 33% (⅓). 25% seems a little low to me. I honestly don't know if this would affect anything at all but it might.--NMajdan•talk 15:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It may matter. Maybe an example will help. Lets look at 1936. AP selected Minnesota. According to the NCAA site, the votes were:

LSU: Williamson Minnesota: AP, Billingsley, Dickinson, Dunkel, Helms, Litkenhous, National Championship Foundation, Poling Pittsburgh: Boand, Football Research, Houlgate. This is a total of 12 selectors. Pittsburgh got 3, which is 25%. Under the 25% rule they would be in and under the 33% rule they would be out.

But, CFDW lists more selectors. According to CFDW, the votes were:

Alabama: Cliff Morgan, Mel Smith, Ray Bryne Duke James Howell LSUSagarin Ratings, Soren Sorensen, Williamson System Minnesota Associated Press, Billingsley Report, Bob Royce, Century Football Index, College Football USA, Dickinson System, Dunkel System, Edward Litkenhous, George Trevor, Harry Frye, Helms Athletic Foundation, James Whalen, Jim Koger, Montgomery Full Season Championship, National Championship Foundation, Newsweek Magazine, Nutshell Sports Football Ratings, Poling System Northwestern Bill Libby Pittsburgh 1st-N-Goal, Angelo Louisa, Boand System, Bob Kirlin, College Football Researchers Association, Earl Jessen, Esso Gas, Houlgate System, Jim Koger, Loren Maxwell, Patrick Premo Santa Clara David Wilson, Massy Ratings. This is 38 selectors. Pittsburgh got 11 or 29%. Once again, they'd be in under a 25% rule and out under a 33% rule.

So, is 3 out of 12 or 11 out of 38 enough? I think probably so. However, this little exercise points out another decision to be made - in calculating the 25%, do we use the NCAA list or the CFDW list? Since the NCAA list only includes selectors accepted by the NCAA, I think that list makes the most sense. However, in the early years, there are only 3 or 4 selectors. I think in those early years, it takes at least 2 votes AND 25% in order to have a Nat'l Champ. So, my new proposed criteria: AP or Coaches or at least 2 votes and 25%, all based upon NCAA records.--Tlmclain | Talk 15:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I can see the compromise like this AP and Coaches polls existed, but prior to 1936 when neither polls existed if a school can site the organization that rated them number one, the national championship should be allowed in the infobox. This rule shouldn't necesserally extend to today's era in college football because even though oklahoma was rated number one in a poll in 2003, not even the school claims that year as a national championship. We may have to come to the realization that an arbitrary number or a single rule will not work for the entire history of college football. General125 17:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NCAA Division I-A national football championship

As suggested by Terryfoster, NCAA Division I-A national football championship should be a part of this discussion. I have spent some time looking at that article and it seems to be full of related problems. For example, after seeming to conclude that the College Football Data Warehouse is authoratative here, it goes on to ignore CFDW in a number of places. Here are just two instances: #1 the article asserts that Notre Dame has 13 national championships here, when CFDW only claims 12 for Notre Dame and Notre Dame itself only claims 11 in its Wikipedia article or in its 2006 media guide; #2 the article lists Wisconsin as a national champion in 1942 here, when CFDW instead recognizes Ohio State and Georgia as National Champions and Wisconsin was named #1 in only one poll and did not even win the Big Ten Championship.

In order to achieve our Project's stated goal of making Wikipedia one of the premier online resources on college football, I think we are going to need to make sure that complete information regarding national championships is made available and understandable (to even the non-football fan) in the various relevant articles and in team infoboxes. This will not be easy, but we cannot limit the definition of national championships to "wire champions only" on the one hand and we cannot expand it to include any team that is named #1 in even just one poll. I remain opposed to the "wire national championships" approach and think that NCAA Division I-A national football championship ought to present a listing of consensus national champions (including pre-1936) AND also present all possible national champions as reflected in the various polls. The article could explain how the consensus champs are named (CFDW represents one way, there may be others). Team infoboxes should match the consenus national champs that are in NCAA Division I-A national football championship and any differences between the team infobox and the number of championships claimed by the school itself (if any) could be explained in the article and/or in notes.--Tlmclain | Talk 20:40, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

For the reasons outlined in the discussion above, I am categorically opposed to any weighing of the sources and attempting to divine a "consensus" champion. Not only does this suggested approach raise serious OR concerns, there is no accepted way to define a "consensus" national champion to begin with. This proposal is bound to result in tabulations subject to considerable controversy and edit warring. I believe this suggestion raises far more problems and controversy than it figures to solve.JDD18 22:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

There's also been a lot of negative sportsfancruft vandalism on that page (i.e. LSU fans deleting USC's '03 share, etc). Frankly, when it comes down two it, I think it's pretty acceptable to all parties involved in this extensive, important discussion to have a combination of "(wire) national titles" and "Claimed national titles". That would allow each page to sort out the arguments for the disputed claims. --Bobak 23:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible approaches

This topic is beginning to wear me out, but I thought it might be helpful to summarize some of the possible approaches so that we can start to move this to a consensus. There seems to be at least two issues in play at the moment: (1) what should be used in the info box for each team; and (2) what should be included on the NCAA Division I-A national football championship page. Some of the possible solutions include:

• Wire National Champions. Advantages: easy to determine; everyone at least acknowledges the AP and Coaches polls to be authoritative; perhaps the most defensible. Disadvantages: Does not address pre-1936 champs; effectively determines that all other polls are invalid, even when the majority of other polls agree.
  • Blended approach. More than one website seems to blend the Wire National Champions approach from 1936 to present with pre-1936 approaches to provide full coverage. See this website and this website.

• NCAA list.[14] Advantages: easy to determine; “official” record for college football; completely inclusive; addresses pre-1936 issue. Disadvantages: All possible national champs are listed, even if only named #1 in one poll; NCAA provides no interpretation of who is a consensus champ; would have 5 or more “champs” in a given year. This approach seems to be the one taken by Sports Illustrated in 1970 when it concluded that Notre Dame had 17 national championships. See, here at page 176

• CFDW “Recognized National Champions.”[15] Advantages: easy to determine; addresses pre-1936 issue; seems to be based upon some sort of objective criteria; does not seem to include teams that won only one or two polls. Disadvantages: determination method is unclear; does include non-AP champs from 1936-1949 and does include non-wire champs after 1950 in some instances.

• Hickcock Sports National Champions.[16] Advantages: easy to determine; addresses pre-1936 issue; seems to be based upon some sort of objective criteria; does not seem to include teams that won only one or two polls. Disadvantages: determination method is unclear; does include non-AP champs from 1936-1949 and does include non-wire champs after 1950 in some instances.

Whatever conclusion is ultimately made by the Project, I feel very strongly that we need to communicate it in a way that is understandable to the college football fanatic, the person who is crazy about his or her team, the casual college football fan and the person who knows nearly nothing about football. Let me give a personal example: From 1980 until now, as a Georgia football fan, I have taken it as certain fact that the Bulldogs had two recognized national championships: 1942 and 1980. The "Wire National Title" approach would require the Bulldogs infobox to reflect only 1 Wire National Title (1980). If thats how it works out, fine. However, other Georgia fans visiting Wikipedia for the first time may be expecting to see 2 titles and probably have no idea that there was only one recognized wire service in 1942. So, how do we present information in the info box and NCAA Division I-A national football championship in a way that doesn't confuse such future visitors?--Tlmclain | Talk 02:49, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I like the blended approach. It is too difficult to determine the one national champion especially before 1936. We should not get into the business of what is and what isn't worthy of determining who is a national champion in a sport where the title is purely subjective. Granted some years it's easier to determine than others, but it's been a problem debated in the sports pages even as recently as 2003 with USC and LSU. My solution is if a school can find a source that awarded them the best team in the land and reference it prior to 1955, they can place that NC in the infobox. I selected 1955 because the AP poll and the Coaches poll submitted their final ballot prior to the bowl games. In 1955, the FWAA submitted their ballot after bowl games. In 1958, the coaches final ballot was after the bowls, and in 1965 then 1968 to the present the AP submit their final ballot after the bowl games. Are there any arguments about national championships after 1968? General125 22:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

All I have to say with the way this policy was instituted was "Thanks for the non-stop edit battle on University of Southern California Trojans football!" :-p --Bobak 03:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I am glad that you mentioned that the change to "Wire National Titles" has been causing edit wars at USC football. Do you have a view on what we should do? In other words, do you think that any of the suggested approaches (or any other approach) would quiet the edit wars?--Tlmclain | Talk 04:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we can please everyone, and some readers will act before they are even aware of whatever we decide. Therefore, I doubt we can prevent all edit wars. We just need to pick one and stick to it. I am not sure yet which option I prefer. I need to re-read this discussion. Johntex\^talk 04:14, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Nothing we do will prevent edit wars. However, we may be able to slow them down. Changing the template to "Wire National Titles" didn't seem to take care of it. Of course, I tend to believe that the reason it didn't work is because of everything I've been arguing (how's that for myopic). I think what we are working against is that people see "National Title" in the info box and do not naturally assume that it is limited to "wire titles," particularly in the case of older programs that count titles before there were wire services. And I still think we need to make an effort to gear the info box to the non-football fan.--Tlmclain | Talk 04:24, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a completely subjective subject. Since there is no one authority on what constitutes a "national championship" in college football, all nat champs should be labled as "claimed" or understood to be that way. I don't expect there to be much abuse because not even the OU athletic department claims the 2003 Sargain NC. If we come up with some arbitrary way to count NC, I doubt it'll be followed and it will only encourage edit wars. If a school can back up a #1 ranking and reference it, they should be allowed to place that NC in the infobox. This issue has been debated for decades and is one of the unique aspects of college football. We are not the final authority on what exactly constitues an NCAA Div I-A Football NC. No one source is. General125 04:29, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi General, I would like to disagree with three of your statements:

This is a completely subjective subject. - I agree there is a component of opinion that goes into discussing the solutions, but that is not the same as being completely subjective. It is not like we are taking our own straw polls to determine who had a championship, we are discussing the merits of various sources, just as we do about all sources of sources, all the time.

I don't expect there to be much abuse... - I disagree completely. I have seen long edit wars between USC and LSU fans over 2003. Notre Dame on their website claims a huge number of retrospective titles.

We are not the final authority on what exactly constitues an NCAA Div I-A Football NC. No one source is. - Remember that we are not a primary source. We are really a tertiary source. We report what others have reported. We do have the freedom and responsibility to choose our sources. So, while the rest of the world may or may not follow our example, we (and I mean the big we are all Wikipedia users - not just those who are a member of this project) are the final authority on what is deemed credible to report in Wikipedia.

We need to do our best to chose a well-reasoned solution and then to stick with it. Johntex\^talk 04:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

By the way, please remember that I think we are poised to try to agree on well-reasoned solutions for two issues: (1) what should be used in the info box for each team; and (2) what should be included on the NCAA Division I-A national football championship page. I think there needs to be a consistent approach to both.--Tlmclain | Talk 05:04, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

JohnTex, you caught me using hyperbole while trying to make an empassioned persuasive argument :). I know that this is not a completely subjective subject, but since there is no one single source of determining a true national champion in Div I-A football, how can we determine how many polls or #1 awards constitute a national championship? There is no one place or even reliable multiple sources we can cite that say here are your national champions for Div-IA football. Most college football websites apply their own method of determining a national championship. We should allow schools that can cite the source of their national championship awarded to place that in the article and the infobox. General125 00:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree entirely with the contention that use of "Wire National Championships" has not slowed edit-warring considerably. There still appears to be some reverting on the USC Trojans football article due to misunderstanding of the term, but it is substantially less so than before. Likewise, edit-warring has been all but non-existent on other articles where the national championship tally would otherwise be called into question (ex. Notre Dame, Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, etc.). The lack of edit-warring is testament to the efficacy of specifying "Wire National Championships."-PassionoftheDamon 06:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Upon reflection, whether "Wire National Titles" slows or ends edit wars is not the central issue. In fact, would could end the edit wars altogether by narrowly defining the field as "AP National Titles" or "BSC National Titles." I doubt anyone is in favor of making it even more narrow. The central question is whether limiting the infobox to "Wire National Titles" as opposed to a broader, well-reasoned approach (assuming there is one) is appropriate. I feel very strongly that we have to keep the average reader in mind when designing infoboxes and that the average reader expects the infobox to summarize the article. Moreover, now the the discussion has expanded to include things like the year by year list on the the NCAA Division I-A national football championship page, "Wire National Titles" does not provide a overall solution. As Johntex suggests, we need to do our best to chose a well-reasoned, integrated solution and then to stick with it.--Tlmclain | Talk 13:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally I think we should have two listings in the infobox: CFDW (or another, similar site) National Titles, and "Claimed National Titles", and then expand on this info in the article. Dlong 22:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the statement that the edit warring re NCs on the USC Trojans football is "substantially less so than before"; I police that article and it's been just a seesaw mess since this was instituted. Normally I'd be reverting the occasional opposing-fancruft that you get with most sports programs, now it's all about an infobox. I'm keeping policy in line, as are others, but when people continually break policy --it sometimes says something about the policy. --Bobak 17:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I can confirm what Bobak has witnessed on the USC Trojans football page. Whether due to ignorance of the meaning of "Wire National Title" or due to disagreement and protest, there has been a sudden and steady surge of edit warring since the 'Wire' policy came into effect. Why this has been limited to the USC Trojans football page is beyond me. We should strongly consider some of the compromise ideas listed in the section below.--HistorianCP 20:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I think I still believe we should have one field for the number of titles the school claims via a source backed by the school and another field that is one we determine (I'm still partial to using teams that were voted #1 by 2/3rds of the voting agencies).--NMajdan•talk 22:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Idea

Since it looks like it will be difficult to reach agreement, I have a suggestion for the infoboxes. Why don't we just have two line items? The first would be Wire National Titles and the second would be Other National Titles Claimed. Does that work for people?--Tlmclain | Talk 21:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I think "Wire National Championships" (though I dislike Wire, but I can't think of a better term) in the infobox, with the text explaining wire and how many they claim and by what sources. Let the user decide if a 1950 NC from "Jimbob's" is really worthy of their consideration if the school claims it. This topic (of generally recognized NC's vs. school claimed, vs. others) could be a great expansion topic on Mythical National Championship, or perhaps on the NCAA DI-A NC article as well or instead. --MECU≈talk 22:02, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The reason I was proposing two line items is that there appears to be disagreement as to whether it is appropriate to list Wire Titles only in the infobox. Since it may be very difficult to gain a consensus, I was suggesting the two line items as a compromise. Quite simply, in my view, "Wire Titles" do not tell the whole story - they did not exist before 1936 and there are quite a few years after 1936 where teams can stake a significant claim to a Title (not based just on "Jimbob's Poll and Barbershop."--Tlmclain | Talk 22:34, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

What if we just report what the school claims? There's only the issue of WP:COI then. But then it's verifiable, not up to us (so not WP:OR) and requires only one line. We could state some kind of disclaimer that this is the school's view/claims and they are generally recognized as having #, if it was different. --MECU≈talk 22:50, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Or we could have both. Wire National Titles and National Titles Claimed.--NMajdan•talk 23:13, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

MECU: By default, I think that was the effective policy before this first section of this thread (the part above the heading "Hang On") resulted in changing the infobox to "Wire Titles." Thus, I'm not sure that the group will embrace this idea. Beyond that, it may be difficult to determine exactly what a school "claims." For instance, take a look at this page and tell me whether Georgia claims 2 or 5 national championships? As a Georgia supporter, I only argue for two (1942 & 1980), but think the other three are interesting to note.

NMajdan: I beginning to think that may be the best compromise.--Tlmclain | Talk 23:24, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I still feel if a school can cite the source of their claimed title, it should be allowed. Perhaps the best compromise is to have two lines in the infobox. Maybe we can call it National Poll Championships and then have a line that says Total Possible National Championships. We could then have the Total Possible NC line link to the Mythical National Championship page. If the world of college football has a hard time deciding how to get a NC, we are going to have a hard time agreeing too. General125 00:06, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

That GA page also says "the official NCAA Football Record Book". We need to find that book. (PS, I would say 2 consensus)... so maybe that's what we say "Consensus National Titles" and "Total National Championships"? -MECU≈talk 00:49, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

This looks like what that page is referring to. There are no mentions of 1-A championships, though, as far as I can tell - just 1-AA championships. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 00:53, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, my bad - on pages 73-81 they list a section on "consensus national champions" indicating the selectors used. This may indicate that these are the indicators recognized by the NCAA - a good starting point, if nothing else, for us. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 00:57, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the NCAA really provides no help other than to limit the number of polls to be considered. In fact, on this page, they state: "The NCAA does not conduct a national championship in Division I-A football and is not involved in the selection process. Since 1998, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has conducted a contest between it's two top-ranked teams to determine a national champion. A number of polling organizations also provide a final ranking of Division I-A football teams at the end of each season. Below is a year-by-year history of Division I-A football national champions as determined by the BCS championship game and these polling organizations."--Tlmclain | Talk 01:08, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Someone said before that the NCAA keeps the Div I-A poll list ambiguous on purpose. I agree with that completely. They declare a champion for all college sports, except Div I-A football. General125 01:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Brand New Idea

Oh, how the ignorance has become rampid! To solve the "title dispute", all that must be done is give credit where credit is do (meaning give the unviersities the amount of titles that THEY THEY THEY---did I mention THEY CLAIM!!!!!) Forget all this business about wire championships, because that limits the years, what about college football's early years, do those champions not deserve to be recognized? My point is twofold: 1)ELIMINATE THE WIRE CHAMPIONSHIPS and revert back to NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS and 2)stop worrying about what other people think and give the university credit for whatever it is that they claim.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.181.133.254 (talk • contribs).

We don't wish to simply list what they university claims as this violates WP:COI. Please try to be civil in your contributions.--NMajdan•talk 22:08, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Why not how does is this a conflict of interests......who's interests?......why not give give credit to the university if they claim x amount of titles?....please answer these questions specifically Alex Huntz—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.181.133.254 (talk • contribs).

[edit] 2007 team pages

moved from main page

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

• CFN also has a preseason top 25, located here that needs to be added. I've created 2007 NCAA Division I-A football rankings which this info should be in. VegaDark 17:06, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AfD of 1987 Fiesta Bowl Play-By-Play

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

[edit] All the Mugshots gone

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

I had uploaded many, many, many (50, 60?) of these and had them all deleted as they were all classified as "replaceable fair use." The images can be un-deleted, but if it's an existing head coach, they will be "replaceable" and thus not useable under fair use. The best option is to search [17] under advanced search and checking all three boxes under "CreativeCommons" so they will be useable on Wikipedia. If you find an image, upload them to commons. I kept the few coach images that were from past teams. For example, a picture now of Dan Hawkins at Boise State wouldn't be replaceable since he's at Colorado now. Those fair use images we could use, though free would still be preferred. --MECU≈talk 16:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't you think a slower move would have been advisable? All of these articles now are pictureless with red links in every infobox. CJC47 16:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

No I don't. The policy is very clear on this issue. Pictureless isn't a problem. Some people have problems with red links, but I think they're fine, as they encourage someone to upload an image. Who knows, we may get a free image out of it. I'm fine with removing the red link, but I won't specifically edit a page just to remove the red link. If I'm doing something else on the page I will. --MECU≈talk 17:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I personally think the deletion was ill-advised. Wikipedia needs to focus more on being an informative encyclopedia, including making legally-permissible use of fair use photos, rather than over-crusading on a free content mission. We have commons to champion the cause of totally free images. Also, if the images were actually deleted, that cannot be undone. Unlike deleting an article (which keeps the article and its history visible to administrators) deleting an image gets rid of it completely. It cannot be brought back unless someon re-uploads it. Hopefully the climate at Wikipedia will change back to being more permissive of appropriately used fair-use images and the images can be re-uploaded. Johntex\^talk 00:56, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The biggest problem is that too many people were taking "promo photo" to mean "any photo I find on the internet". If a photo is legitimately, actually from a media guide or press kit, that's one thing ... but 99% of the photos in that category were essentially "I found it on the internet therefore it's a promophoto". --BigDT 01:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you that those types of photos should be deleted no question. However, there are too many people who want to go to the other extreme and say that we should not use any promophotos.

This image: Image:Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel with his team.jpg, which I took with a long-range zoom lense from in the stands, is not a suitable replacement for a photo taken by a professional photographer on behalf of the university's PR department.

The universities specifically post promophotos to have them used - we should do so. To avoid copyright issues, we should stick to images posted by the actual institution, and not taken from Associate Press or other websites. Johntex\^talk 01:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Amen... Almost every coach has a photo put out by the SID deparment that you can see nose hairs in. They are for promotional use, and are used by news outlets at the like. To use grainy photos when the others are available just doesn't seen to make sense. CJC47 02:29, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Images can now be undeleted. They have been able for months. You can request undeletion by the same methods as undeletion of an article. Free images are better than stock promophotos by the universities. In some cases, they were so small to be of little value anyways. Look at Gary Barnett. That's a free image and it's MORE interesting that a stock photo of him posing for the promo press photo. --MECU≈talk 02:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to disagree again. If the photo of Gary Barnett was from a PC or practice or a game, I can see the intrest. Him standing in the parking lot wearing gear of a team thathe doesn't coach for anymore or didn't gain fame with makes the photo seem a bit out of place in the article. In my opinion, that picture would make the article better if it was moved to the discussion of his time at Colorado, and a stock photo was the infobox picture. CJC47 02:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Mecu, thanks for correcting me about images being undeletable now. I didn't know that. So much changes here all the time, it is hard to keep up.

Regardless, I still disagree with your assertion. Free images are not inherently better. If someone takes a free image and wants to add it to the article, more power to them. I have certainly contributed (I think) my share of free images and I have nothing against free images.

However, it should be up to the editors of the article to decide which picture is better, or if they both contribute something to the article and both should be kept. They are in the best position to judge what will be most informative for the article. With regard to the Barnett photo, again I agree with CJC47. The background of that Barnett photo is very distracting. The average publicity photo would be much better.

Our articles should not suffer and languish without photos when perfectly usable publicity photos are available. Johntex\^talk 04:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone ever considered asking their SID if they would release a photo of the coach under the GFDL? When Jimbo first initiated the process that led to the end of promo photos, his reasoning was that Wikipedia had grown to the point where we could now ask for this. I don't if this theory has actually been tested anywhere yet. It's one thing for someone of borderline notability ... they will jump through any hoop for the potential advertising ... but it would be interesting to see if a major school would cooperate and release a photo of their coach. --BigDT 05:01, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I've not only considered it, I've tried it. I have contacted not only the UT athletics department and also the student newspaper (The Daily Texan) and two other newspapers that cover UT sports. None were willing to release any photos under GFDL. If I were them, I wouldn't do it either. The GFDL allows for any modification of a photo. Why should they give us their photos when we (or those who re-use content from Wikipedia) could legally edit them to make the people all look like they had a skin disease or were speaking at a pro-nazi rally or something? The UT atletic department did say we could use any image on their website under fair-use - not that we legally need their permission, but they were very cooperative about fair use. Johntex\^talk 05:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I've thought about that ... and that's one of the reasons there's no picture of me on my user page. I wonder what the legality of that would be ... because even if the image is free, you still have certain rights to what's done with your likeness that are independent of what the license on the photo is. I would like to try it with a smaller, potentially more internet friendly school. Syracuse, for instance, has a very forward-thinking AD. --BigDT 05:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Here is another prime example of what is wrong with deleting promophoto images. Another image I took with a zoom lense, Image:Colt McCoy on a quarterback keeper vs Rice - 2006-09-16.jpg, was cited as justification for removing this promophoto from Colt McCoy. I'm somewhat fond of the photo I took, but it shows him in full uniform and helmet from across the field - you can't see anything of what he looks like. The fair-use promophoto should have been kept along with the free action shot. It would make a better article. Johntex\^talk 05:14, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Yeah ... I've often wished I had a better camera. I got a pretty decent shot of Sean Glennon, but I can't come close to getting decent shots of on-field action. --BigDT 05:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I love my camera set-up. I have the Canon digital rebel XT and several lenses. For games, I use a 70-300 meter zoom that is fairly compact for that amount of telephoto. Compact is needed because different stadiums (and different gate guards within a stadium) have different ideas about what kind of lenses they will allow. Unfortunately, one of the compromises of that zoom is that it is not that fast, which means it is sometimes hard to get crisp telephoto action shots - especially at night. I have higher quality telephoto lenses, but they are bigger and would be impossible to get into the stadium. Johntex\^talk 15:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

"Perfectly useable publicity photos" isn't true. Wikipedia has decided and it's policy is that these images aren't useable here. I agree they are probably useable legally, but Wikipedia has decided they don't want that. I agree that your Colt McCoy isn't a good replacement of a promophoto showing his face, but that image doesn't have to. It's still possible to find or create a free image that would show his face in a suitably replaceable manner. See Mason Crosby. The free image in the infobox shows his face reasonably well. It's from the side, but you get the point.I wouldn't be opposed to getting another image that shows his face better, but for now, it's suitable, especially since it's in compliance with Wikipedia's policies. The only argument I can't defend against is m:eventualism. Eventually, every head coach will be fire or retired and then the promophoto headshot because useable under Wikipedia, since it can't be replaced anymore because the coach likely won't wear school items, and probably won't be freely publicly available. Further, in 40 years, is a free image of Dan Hawkins going to represent how he looked while he coached at Colorado? Would you want a picture of Joe Pa from his early days as a coach there? Would the current image of Joe Pa be suitable for an article talking about him coaching in the 1970s? (And there is sufficient material to have a single article on that topic, let alone the 60s, 80s, 90s, 2000s). In conjunction with this, try to find an image of Dan Hawkins at Boise State now. I found one or two that could be used under fair use, but most were deleted from the servers (I found them via google search) or the image had been altered to make it unusable (one newspaper had made the entire image so blurry it was useless). Shouldn't we be able to keep a promophoto of Dan Hakwins as a Boise State Coach since eventually he will be fired/retired/dead and that will be impossible to then be replaceable? My only guess is that the thought goes that by not using the promophotos now, perhaps we get a free image of Dan Hawkins as head coach at Colorado that would invalidate the use of using the promophoto. That works for all future terms, but what happens for past images? What happens if we never do get a free image of Dan Hawkins at Colorado? It then becomes difficult to find an image. But no one ever said editing Wikipedia would be easy. --MECU≈talk 16:52, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem, and my main point of contention, is that your desired result of all the promo photos being replaced by user photos has not frequently happened, and I don't think it would happen. On the scale we are talking about: EVERY coach and EVERY player, photos will not come. We won't get free images. I could go up to Peyton Manning at a practice and ask for a picture, but he's going to do the normal stand close and smile. I could get an action shot of a player like Erik Ainge (I did), but unless I have a super camera to lug around Neyland Stadium, it's just not going to happen. If a great, free image is found, then go with that. If its not, this policy will lead to blank pages. Who at Wikipedia decided that anyway? CJC47 18:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but the short term issue of not having pictures for every CFB person RIGHT NOW' is not justification enough. Wikipedia was not built in a day, neither will be the WP:CFB. What we should be pushing especially in the offseason, is to get more editors, and particularly photographers involved in the project, and for those of us already involved to think outside the box on aquiring new images. Games are not the only places to get pics of players and coaches. They do make other appearances, at alum/QB club meetings, fan days during spring and August, etc, etc.. Spring training will be coming up very soon (AU starts in late Feb.) and many teams are pretty loose on public access for those practices. Personally, I intend to make an effort to hit as many spring games/fan days as possible for schools close to me. And just because there is no pic, doesn't mean the person's article will be blank or have no value. AUTiger ʃ ^talk/_work 23:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

My point is that the current Wikipedia policy is bad policy. It hasn't always been this way. We used to happily accept promo photos. This being a wiki, hopefully the policy will one day change back and promophotos will again be welcome. Johntex\^talk 21:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm tossing my hat into the ring on this. Frank Beamer's picture was deleted as being replaceable. There are three users on flickr who have good pictures of him, but all three are marked as all rights reserved. I have messaged all three, asking them if they would be willing to release cropped versions of their images under the GFDL. I call it a test case ... if I get good response from this, let's try it for more coaches/players/whatever. If not, then, well, I wasted 20 minutes. Such is life. --BigDT 01:23, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

New free picture found of Greg Schiano. I think this is way more interesting than the standard pub photo. Sure, you can't see his full face, but we're not taking mug shots here either. --MECU≈talk 17:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naming conventions of notable football games

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

• 1966 MSU vs. ND football game and 2001 MSU vs. UM football game - Uses acronym for school names instead of spelling them out
• Georgia Tech v. Cumberland, 1916 - Names spelled out, but date is at the end, no indication that it is a football game, and has "v." instead of "vs.".
• Michigan State vs. Northwestern, 2006 - same as last, except this time uses "vs.".

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

I like your idea. I support putting away team first. So, I would support the format 1985 Washington vs. Oregon State football game. I think we should stick with "vs." instead of "at" because then we don't have to change the convention for neutral site games.

There is also the question of two teams playing twice in the same season. For example, in 2005 - Texas faced Colorado twice, once in the regular season and once in the Big 12 Championship. In that case, if both meritted thier own articles, I would say the regular season would follow the convention above: 2005 Colorado vs. Texas football game, and the other would be named according to the title of the game: 2005 Big 12 Championship Game. Johntex\^talk 21:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Agree with that. Also, OSU was the away team so if we went with away first the name wouldn't have to be changed for that one. For neutral site non-bowl or championship games we can list the schools alphabetically. Also, I found another one that needs to be changed: Nevada vs. Weber State. VegaDark 21:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with all of the above. Regular season games should be <year> <away team> vs. <home team> which postseason games should be <year> <conferences championship> game or <year> <bowl game>.--NMajdan•talk 22:30, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

My only small point of conflict is I think regular-season neutral-site games shoud still follow <year> <away> vs. <home>. (Not alphabetically order.) Neutral site games such as Red River Shootout still have a designated home and away team. This would keep our naming consistent with the linescore, any photos showing white uniforms, etc. Johntex\^talk 01:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

All articles in Category:College football games are now renamed accordingly. Someone may want to double check to verify I got everything correct. VegaDark 03:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Division I-Bowl Subdivision

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

Ok, I started the process and its proving more indepth than I realized. I cleared out Category:2007 NCAA Division I-A football season and put it up for speedy deletion (all articles moved to Category:2007 NCAA Division I-BS football season). Now I need to do the same thing for the 2006 category which is more populated. It is very important to stop using the Division I-A name and start using Division I-BS in articles. Just remember that 2005 and before = Division I-A and 2006 and after = Division I-BS.--NMajdan•talk 16:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Is everyone ok with this change to the 2006 articles?

Is it actually referred to as I-BS? I just can't see the NCAA allowing BS to be used. Is the official title "Division I Bowl Subdivision" and people just generally refer to it as I-BS (like ESPN)? I have a hard time with this change since it doesn't seem to be readily used anywhere, except here and NCAA promoted. --MECU≈talk 17:01, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

"Division I-BS" gets only two g-hits from non-Wikipedia sources, both from message boards and both sarcastic. Every NCAA source I see (ex. [18]) says it should be "Division I FBS". So I think if it is changed at all, it should be "Division I FBS", although honestly, my first preference is to go back to "Division I-A" because that's what just about everyone in the world calls it. --BigDT 23:40, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AFDs

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

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Keeley Dorsey (19 Jan)

I'm not sure. I would definitely watch list it if we had one, but my watch list is so long - I may be more prone to notice it here. Overall I'm neutral on the idea. Johntex\^talk 20:39, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Are there that many CFB-related AFDs at any one time that would make having an entirely new page necessary? Otherwise I think using this talk page or having a section on the main project page is sufficient. PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 20:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Schedule Template?

Per the recent discussion on my talk page, [19] and [20], and also the discussion regarding the standardization of the season page schedule table at (somewhere? if you know where, provide link please, I can't find it right now). Do we need a standard template form for the season schedule used on team season pages? It would be similar to the succession box and it's very doable, but do we need it? A template form would force them all into a standard form which would be good, but it seems we were generally unable to come up with consensus on what should be the standard. If we come up with a standard, I'd be fine with development of a template for it, but without one, I'd be worried that it would be unused except be those that agreed. --MECU≈talk 04:09, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• I think that making the season schedule table into a standardized template would make maintaining consistency across so many different pages so much easier, especially as more and more users begin to develop "their" team's past/present season pages. --PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 04:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• Since I more or less started this, I guess I should chime in. First, there is additional discussion on this topic here. I was originally just trying to figure out a way to make what I was doing easier, but now see the implications for the Project. To summarize, I have been working on the very early years of Georgia Bulldogs football and have been developing pages like this one and like this stub. So the bigger question is do we want to try to standardize these historic schedules like was done for the current season schedules? As PSUMark2006 says, it may help with maintaining consistency.--Tlmclain | Talk 05:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• A standardized template would help standardize all schedules across the project, but the only problem is we definitely will lose some flexibility. For instance, the template would have to have a set number of columns. You could leave Rank and TV blank, but the columns would have to be there. I think it is a good idea if we are 100% decided on the format for all schedules, schedules for games that took place within the last few years and schedules for games that took place a long time ago. I may start developing something but given the holiday season, it may take some time to complete.--NMajdan•talk 13:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• I take that back, there is a way to leave off columns.--NMajdan•talk 14:08, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• I have started working on a header for the schedule template. See the progress here: {{User:Nmajdan/CFB Schedule Start}}.--NMajdan•talk 14:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• Coming along quite nicely: User:Nmajdan/Schedule.--NMajdan•talk 15:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• Yes, it is. Thanks for starting on this. With respect to your comment about the holiday season, you are right about it being potentially difficult to get things done - I am starting a Wikibreak sometime today. A few comments/suggestions/questions. Should we take a position on whether it is appropriate to use team colors in the header and footer (if there is one)? Personally, I like doing it (here's a sample), but there may be others who strongly oppose it. Also, for these older games, do we want separate PF and PA columns? Again, I think its a nice feature to have them in separate columns with totals (this is also in the above sample), but am not totally committed to the idea.--Tlmclain | Talk 15:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• Personally, I'm against using team colors. I like the idea of all schedules looking the same. And some team colors would not look good in a template. Then you have to take into consideration font color as well. It can make a template get real complicated if you allow any color to be used as a background. Also, most people do not know what PF or PA means. My FA nomination is taking a hit because I didn't write it for non-football fans enough apparently. Having a simple score column is something that every person has come across before. Besides, what benefit does having PF and PA provide? If you look at that yearly team article format page I sent you, you'll notice there is a stats section. PF and PA would be best served in the statistics portion of an article. (And for anybody reading this that does not know what PF and PA stand for, PF=Points For and PA=Points Against. Just separates the score into two columns.)--NMajdan•talk 15:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• I tried to break the example/test, and I did. The time of the game may not be known, so I think it should be an "optional" field, mainly for historical purposes. I'm against the team color usage in the header. While it looks nice for some pages, like on Colorado Buffaloes football, others, like on the Georgia example it's just too much and distracts from the real purpose of the article. --MECU≈talk 15:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• You didn't break it. Its behaving as expected. Time is an optional field. But, it has to be defined as optional in the CFB Schedule Start template. On my page, it is included, which means on the entry pages, there has to be something there, whether its a time or TBA. If you turned off time in the header, then you can not have anything in the time field on the entries. Go look again.--NMajdan•talk 15:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• You guys just don't like Georgia red!! All kidding aside, both of you are probably right about leaving the color out of the schedules. Not only is there potential for color clash, it also gets pretty busy. I also agree on the PA, PF columns. After the holidays, I'll start fixing all the "Georgia Bulldogs football under X" pages that I have done. Of course, I'm now wishing I had asked somebody before I spent all that time adding the color!--Tlmclain | Talk 16:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• Haha. It would seem that way, huh? Mecu is against it yet employs it on the Colorado pages. I'm against it all together. If you're wanting to use the templates that I'm working on, don't modify your schedules just yet. I dont want you to remove the color on all of them and then go back and add the templates. Just wait until the templates get more feedback.--NMajdan•talk 16:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• No worries, I'll wait. I tried your template here with the UGA 1892 season and found three things that I want to mention. First, is there some sort of "neutral" | away=? In these early years, many teams played away from home but not at their opponent's field - some teams didn't even have fields. Second, whne you leave |site_stadium = blank, it inserts a dash in front of the city name - can the presence of the dash be dependant upon the presence of a stadium name? Third, is there a way to turn off the rank column? Better still, for these early years when there were no rankings, could we have an option to drop the rank column and the entire footnote regarding rankings?--Tlmclain | Talk 17:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• Thank you for testing. I knew I wouldn't remember everything. I'll work on adding something for neutral sites. And I'm pretty sure I can fix the stadium issue, I guess I just didn't think of a situation where there would be no stadium. But I guess in the early days, they just played on fields. I'll work on the ranking issue as well, but its low priority as it can just be blank.--NMajdan•talk 17:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• I fixed the first two issues (neutral site and dot before city/st).--NMajdan•talk 17:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• I took care of the ranking issue. I haven't made a guide yet, but you can see how it works in Example 3 on User:Nmajdan/Schedule. I'll work on a guide eventually, but basically just add "rank=no" to all the templates.--NMajdan•talk 01:46, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

(reset)I don't use it on the Colorado pages, I just didn't remove it. Another user put it in and I thought it looks good (which it does) but I didn't think about the applicability of all colors. I'm gonna leave it for now, and I'm not sure we should force schedules that already exist to switch to this format. If they match it, why switch? I guess I wasn't as smart as I thought I was Nmajdan. I think it's ready for publishing and use, you can still tweak the minor parts later. Be sure to update the season template to using this. --MECU≈talk 02:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Templates have been created. I may try to implement them on the OU article whenever I find the time. {{CFB Schedule Start}}, {{CFB Schedule Entry}}, and {{CFB Schedule End}}. As always, keep looking for bugs and let me know so we can get it resolved.--NMajdan•talk 17:53, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I have replaced the schedule on the 2006 Oklahoma Sooners football team article with the new template so you can go there to see the template in action.--NMajdan•talk 16:43, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Are those red/green colors the same as the ones used on the rankings pages? I think they should be if they're not (and they don't look like it to me). You could use the "template" I created {{CC}} "Color Chooser". The only bad thing about that is all the colors would be available then, including the yellow that shouldn't be on the schedule page. Also, does this comply with the schedule info discussion? Could we get some agreement from that discussion folks that this table information/layout is acceptable to everyone? --MECU≈talk 18:45, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

No, the colors were not the same. But they are now.--NMajdan•talk 04:22, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Example #2 and #4 in Template:CFB Schedule Entry show some empty cells. They would likely be there even if it wasn't colored, but they just show because they are colored. It's probably because it's just displaying the fields because the header isn't there to remove the empty, unwanted fields. You could cheat and subst: them and then edit them to hide this, or just leave a note of something to this effect that it's simply an artifact of using this template without using the header will cause these problems. Also, I made some changes to the entry template to remove some redundant #if calls (had to restore one because of the use of brackets, if those were eliminated it too could be removed). I recently re-read the Help:Templates and discovered that using {{{variable|}}} means if "variable" exists, use that data, if not, use the default value of "blank". So {{{variable|blah}}}'s default value is "blah" and if variable wasn't defined, it would output "blah". This reduces the need to use the "standard" {{#if:{{{variable|}}}|{{{variable}}} }}. Reduces server load and complexity. However, for any instance that something else comes along with the variable, like you want to "preformat" a # sign with a number (like a ranking), you still have to the the #if method, which means we could force the user to have to format things, but I'd rather keep formatting out of the user entry method and in the template itself, allows less chance of the user forgetting to put the # (for example) and keeping everything the same. --MECU≈talk 17:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The empty cells in examples #2 and #4 are associated with the TV column. They disappear if you enter the word "no" in the tv field when using Template:CFB Schedule Entry.--Tlmclain | Talk 18:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Minor problem - In implementing the new schedule template in some early years for Georgia football here, here and here, I have noticed one minor problem. When there are no opponent ranks, the opponent column still reads Opponent#, with the # representing a hold-over reference to the rnaking source. Can the # be dropped when there is no ranking information included?--Tlmclain | Talk 22:22, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Another minor tweak needed. Since this is being used with older games as well, we need to have a feature allowing for a Tie. For the more recent games, you may want to have an overtime designation.--Tlmclain | Talk 14:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I think I resolved the opponent ranking issue and overtime issue. Now, when you have rank=no in the start template, it also removes the '#' from the Opponent cell. Also, I added an overtime field to the entry template so you would say either 'overtime=OT' or 'overtime=2OT' in the template. I added this new field to one of the examples so you can get a better idea. Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to also add the overtime field to the 2006 Oklahoma Sooners football team page so you'll be able to see it there as well. I'll see what I can do about ties.--NMajdan•talk 14:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I think I got it. I didn't know what color to use for ties as I don't think that was ever discussed, but I went ahead and used the same color we use on the rankings articles for schools just entering the polls (#FFFFE6). This can always be changed later but I think it works fine. In the w/l field, use a lowercase 't' for ties. Let me know if you run into any more bugs.--NMajdan•talk 14:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Everything is looking great.--Tlmclain | Talk 15:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Rank -- Is there any way to get the wikilink for the Rank column header in Template:CFB Schedule Entry to link appropriately to the I-A rankings instead of I-BS rankings if the rankyear is 2005? Billma 18:37, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Problem?

Is there something about these schedule templates that limits how many times they can be used on a page? I have started an ambitious project to list all games play by the Georgia Bulldogs here, but the {{CFB Schedule Entry}} seems to shut down once a certain number of entries are made.--Tlmclain | Talk 20:40, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

First of all, WOW. Second of all, there might be. I clearly see where it is breaking down when you view the whole page yet it works when I only preview that section. I see nothing wrong with the code itself. I'll look into it some more and ask around.--NMajdan•talk 20:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Mecu found the problem. Yes, there is a limit and Congratulations, you reached it. If you look at the generated HTML source code of the page, you will find the following:

<!-- 
Pre-expand include size: 2046188 bytes
Post-expand include size: 53101 bytes
Template argument size: 17905 bytes
Maximum: 2048000 bytes
-->

So, of a maximum 2,048,000 you are at 2,046,188. Looks like you'll need to split the page if you wish to continue using the template.--NMajdan•talk 21:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Splitting the page sorta defeats the purpose of trying to create a list of all games played by a team. The way I was doing this was copying the schedules from the various historical articles on Georgia, like Georgia Bulldogs football under W. A. Cunningham, and then just dropping them into the correct decade in Georgia Bulldogs football (all games). Doing it that way wasn't too bad, although I was still doing a lot of clean-up to reduce repetitive wikis. However, if I can't use the templates, cutting and pasting is out, and the job becomes too massive. Anybody got any great ideas or was it just plain insane of me to imagine that I could put the results from 1135 games on one page?--Tlmclain | Talk 21:46, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

You can try subst'ing them instead. Of course, I'd try it on a sandbox page first. For instance, look at my test page: User:Nmajdan/Test/Georgia. So, you could complete a decade with the template and then after you've doublechecked your data entry, go back and subst it.--NMajdan•talk 22:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

It should work a-okay now. Apparently, having all that documenting text on the same page as the template made it larger than it needed to be. Putting it on a subpage made it much smaller. News to me too. Keep hacking away then and when you reach the limit again, we'll figure something out. Here's the new numbers:

<!-- 
Pre-expand include size: 352571 bytes
Post-expand include size: 69799 bytes
Template argument size: 28016 bytes
Maximum: 2048000 bytes
-->

:::--MECU≈talk 22:10, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Wow, who knew. And that /doc subpage trick is new to me. Glad that fixed the issue.--NMajdan•talk 22:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Gentlemen thank you for figuring this one out. I like this partnership of you make it, I break it. Also, thank you for being diplomatic and remaining silent on my insanity plea.--Tlmclain | Talk 22:27, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Collapsible?

Does it make sense to make these collapsible? I tested adding collapsible to the class in {{CFB Schedule Start}} and it seemed to work, but I am generally afraid to touch these templates. --Tlmclain | Talk 03:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely positively not collapseable. At least, they should always be forced open and have the hide/show option so someone could collapse them if they wanted I guess, but this data is generally important to whatever article it's included in. --MECU≈talk 03:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that would really be necessary - a team's schedule is generally a pretty important component of a yearly article, and it's not like they're exceedingly large so as to warrant collapsing them down. I can see how that sort of thing would be more useful if you were listing multiple schedules on one page, or when using the yearly record templates to describe a team's entire yearly history or a coach with a long tenure, though. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 03:11, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Attendance

Nmajdan: it looks like you added the attendance functionality, but the Schedule End template doesn't span correctly if I have both attendance and rank. Example: 2002 Penn State Nittany Lions football team -- Billma 18:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll fix that, thank you. I was wondering if that would be an issue but I couldn't find an instance where it was. Thank you.--NMajdan•talk 18:32, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Linescore Amfootball

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

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

[edit] Semi-recent discussion

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

[edit] Bit of a rant and a challenge

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

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

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

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

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

Proper referencing style, not just the mere presence of references, is a bit of a pet Wiki-peeve of mine as well. For me, that means more than just inline external links like this [21] but using a consistent citation style. That becomes the biggest challenge: in our haste to make sure articles are well-referenced, we need to make sure that those references make sense and are usable both to future editors but also to casual browsers. I've been working on the Favre article and it's great to see the work we're doing there is being viewed as at least some sort of a model. PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 04:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conference championship in team season schedule

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

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

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

Agreed. Seancp 02:26, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I was criticized for having the CCG in the Oklahoma schedule at the beginning of last season. Nevertheless, I agree. The CCG is typically on the schedules for most schools. I'll add it to the OU schedule for 2007.↔NMajdan•talk 13:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that was our reasoning last year as well, but it didn't fly for some reason. Personally, I prefer always having the CCG on the schedule, even for teams that can't make it. z4ns4tsu\^talk 14:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

This makes sense to me - still bitter about the fact my conference doesn't have a championship, but I digress. Just for clarity's sake, it might be helpful to indicate somehow that this game is listed on the condition that the team is eligible to attend. PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 03:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)