Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football

• The normal AfD process is adequate to deal with articles that truly fail notability standards.
• Major college football programs (currently known as NCAA Division I FBS) almost always generate sufficient SIGCOV to pass GNG and warrant stand-alone articles.
• Lower level college football programs (e.g., NCAA Division II and III and NAIA) generally don't receive the depth of coverage to warrant stand-alone articles, and our normal AfD practice has been effective at dealing with such articles. E.g, 2022 Shorter, 2022 North Greenville, 2021 Lock Haven, 2016 WPI, 2016 Hampden-Sydney, 2014 Chicago, 1998 Saint Francis, 1943 Massachusetts State, 1924 Michigan Mines. At lower levels, I generally believe that stand-alone season articles are warranted only if there is something truly extraordinary like a national championship.
• The quantum of coverage in the 19th century was far lower than in the 20th century. Moreover, teams in the 19th century often played very abbreviated schedules. For this reason, redirecting or combining multiple seasons makes a lot of sense for many 19th century teams. Our normal AfD process has also been effective at dealing with these situations. See 1881 Randolph-Macon, 1895 Pacific, 1884 DePauw, 1903 Western Illinois, 1884 Wabash, 1881 Georgetown, 1897 South Dakota State, 1893 Western Maryland, 1900 CCNY, 1896 Indiana State, 1879 Swarthmore.
• On your talk page, I identified several groups of articles that might be appropriate for deletion of merger. E.g., 19th century Amherst articles, Tufts (2016, 2018, 2022, 2023 and 2024), Merrimack (2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), Bryant (26 articles lacking SIGCOV), and Stonehill (2022, 2023, 2024).
• I have also nominated several for deletion this week. See 2022 Fitchburg, 2022-2023 Dakota State, 2015 Dakota State. Those with an interest in the topic are free to comment there.
• I have also been busy this week expanding some of the articles that you asserted were deficient. E.g., 1939 Duquesne, 1941 Fordham, 1956 George Washington, 1926 NYU, 1976 Rutgers, 1946 Cincinnati, Colgate. Article improvement is a time-consuming process, and I invite others to join in the work. Cbl62 (talk) 01:58, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment For now, I'd like to clear up a few misconceptions offered above in the RFC posting. First, the notability of college football didn't suddenly change in 1920 when the American Professional Football Association, later renamed as the
  Wikipedia:NOTIMELIMIT. And yes, we could use more help developing this content! Jweiss11 (talk) 02:02, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  I've been away from the project for a few years but some of you may remember me as an editor who contributed to the Season Articles Campaign. Let me add my perspective to what Jweiss11 said above about notability.

  The pages I worked on were generally

  WP:SIGCOV

  for each and every one of these teams. And I'll bet that's true of every Division I FBS and perhaps every Division I FCS program across the country.

  Yes, there are several college football season articles that lack references to SIGCOV. But the notability of a subject is not based on the presence of SIGCOV references; it is based upon the fact that SIGCOV exists. My experience looking for coverage of college football teams in the subset of contemporary newspapers that are easily available online leads me to confidence that for all Division I programs, the SIGCOV does exist -- often online. The solution is not to delete the page. The solution is to find the sources. _``` t b w i l l i e _{`</sub> $1.25 <sub>`} 02:37, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Toll Booth Willie: Truly great to hear from you. Hope you'll consider becoming a regular contributor again! Cbl62 (talk) 03:02, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment A few additional thoughts on the points raised by Szmenderowiecki in the "Background" section:
  • Re
    WP:SECONDARY
    ). I'm sure there are some references out there that cite newspaper boxscores or non-bylined writeups (which at some levels of play may, or may not, be based on nothing more than a desk editor's phone conversation with one of the coaches or some other university spokesperson). I agree that these would be primary sources. But the majority of what I've observed as newspaper-related sources on Division I team season articles are bylined stories written by professional sportswriters.
  • Re "Apparently articles like these are said to be within the consensus of AMF for ~20 years as acceptable": Let's be clear what is meant by "acceptable." Acceptable as an end-state, A-rated fine example of quality Wikipedia coverage? No. But nobody at WP:CFB is saying that. What they're saying is that many of these articles -- such as seasons of the NYU Violets, for years a top-tier college football program in the nation's largest media market -- are acceptable topics in terms of notability. So they merit having an article. If they deserve a better article than they have, that's a reason to improve the article, not a reason to delete it.
  • Re "The community is patently unable to maintain all of the articles at once without overstretching themselves": You'll find this problem all over Wikipedia. Not enough volunteers. Not enough expertise among volunteers. Not enough ease of access to sources. Many articles about state legislators and former mayors of midsized cities are woefully bare. Many articles about bestselling works of literature lack even the level of analysis that you'd expect in a contemporary newspaper review -- or the Wikipedia article doesn't exist at all. Many articles about scientific topics are written in such a specialized and obtuse language as to be incomprehensible to dolts like me -- in part because "the community is pantently unable" reliably to find wiki-editors who are both scientifically knowledgeable and engaging writers of English prose, "without overstretching themselves." Again, the solution is not to delete substandard content but rather to improve it, acknowledging that given the overstretched nature of the Wikipedia editor community -- not just the WP:CFB community -- this will take some time. _``` t b w i l l i e _{`</sub> $1.25 <sub>`} 03:18, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Re first point, in the articles cited, the reporters are close to an event. The original material is the game itself, but this line of argument would basically lead us to the conclusion that any game description is secondary, and the primary sources would only be videos. Necessarily, reporters at least until the 1960s had to be eyewitnesses of the events. And even after that, that would definitely fall within the breaking news reports. They must include some evaluation or interpretation, but this doesn't mean that such analysis makes a source predominantly secondary. A whole different matter would be if the editors unearthed a sports magazine that made a retrospective article on the performance of the college team in the season, but that's not what is happening.

  Re second point. are acceptable topics in terms of notability. So they merit having an article. -> and that's the issue here, because

  WP:N

  in general, says this needn't be the case. Notability is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition, for article creation. With the quality they have for now, they shouldn't be standalone. But they are free to split once they find enough time to expand it to the point splitting would be necessary.

  Re third point, better have no article than make a half-arsed attempt to cover something, not doing it well, and still wasting hundreds of hours unearthing hundred-year-old newspapers. Surely there must have been magazines that catered to the interests of football aficionados? It's capitalism after all, c'mon. Someone must have published something like that.

  I get the pain of not having enough time, having taken poor articles to GAs, but that's not an excuse for producing substandard content, either. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 03:43, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  On the first point, reporters are physically proximate to the event but they are not part of the event. The distinction between primary and secondary sources is not physical or temporal but rather a matter of perspective. An ex-president writing his memoirs decades later and miles away is still a primary source for events that happened to him during his political career. He was part of those events. But a reporter writing about a politician's speech, minutes after it was delivered, sitting at a folding table a stone's throw from the podium, is a secondary source; her journalistic account will pick and choose among what was said and her observations of how it was received in order to synthesize an interpretation -- the same process used by professional historians and other writers of unimpeachably secondary (and tertiary) sources. Professional sportswriters do the same thing. It's impossible in 700 words to describe every play, every bit of atmosphere, every implication of an entire football game. Necessarily sportswriters, and their editors, are standing apart from the action and picking and choosing what to tell.

  Regarding

  WP:PAGEDECIDE

  I can agree; and so, from my reading of comments here and at your talk page, can everyone else from WP:CFB. At each turn in this discussion, editors have pointed to some of your examples and said, "you're right, that program doesn't deserve independent season articles, we should consolidate those." The debate is over where to place the threshold for splitting a "era" coverage into several "season" pages. Though for what it's worth, I don't consider a single page covering 10 years of notable seasons, each of which is represented by a couple paragraphs and a game results table, to be much of a difference from having 10 separate stubs of the sort you seem to disfavor ... other than my impression that the "10 separate stubs" format would feel, to me, to be a better invitation to other editors to expand coverage of each year's team.

  Respectfully (and

  I mean it), I think we have to agree to disagree on the third point. If a topic is notable I'd rather have a stub than a redlink. _``` t b w i l l i e _{`</sub> $1.25 <sub>`} 04:11, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  Accounts by witnesses of an event are primary sources... that's what the game recaps are. They reflect the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer. JoelleJay (talk) 17:27, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Having re-read

  WP:PSTS

  closely I can see the point you're making, and I'm forced to admit that Wikipedia's definition of these terms does not support the bright line I've been drawing between "primary - part of the events" vs. "secondary - neutral observer of the events." So apologies to anyone put off by my strident tone elsewhere on this page.

  However, I also don't see anything in the PSTS definition to suggest that game reports are definitely primary sources. Definitionally they seem to be in a gray area between primary and secondary. Consider:

  Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on. Game reports are not written by people directly involved; they are written by neutral observers. Though both terms are inaccurate, working press function much more as trained "historians" of a sporting contest than as mere "witnesses."

  For Wikipedia's purposes, breaking news stories are also considered to be primary sources. This is the best PSTS argument in favor of treating game reports as primary sources. And as such I wouldn't consider a midgame tweet or "breaking news" headline a secondary source. But for a news event as simple as a football game, I think the time elapsed between end of game and publication of story, and the amount of third-party editing intervening at a professional news outlet like a daily newspaper, guard against the risk of error and lack of perspective that cause PSTS to classify "breaking news" as a primary source.

  [A secondary source] contains analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources. All true of game stories (the "primary sources" in this case including statements of coaches or players that the sportswriter interviews immediately after the game). Contra Szmenderowiecki above, I don't think considering game stories as "secondary sources" would mean all accounts of a game other than raw video are "secondary sources." A scorebook or listing showing every play that happened -- or even edited down to just every scoring play -- with no attempt to place these events in narrative context -- is definitely a "primary source." A series of interviews with fans after the game asking what they liked about it is a primary source. An indiscriminate collection of quotes from players or coaches is a primary source.

  Newspaper articles, because of their institutional distance from the subject, the fact that they are edited by a neutral person (i.e. a person who is neither connected with the subject nor employed by the writer), and their capacity for neutral analysis, interpretation, etc., are at worst somewhere in between primary and secondary sources, and to my mind function as secondary sources. _``` t b w i l l i e _{`</sub> $1.25 <sub>`} 19:02, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Toll Booth Willie, thanks for your comments here. Would be great to get you back in the editing mix! Dowlah-twenty-five! Jweiss11 (talk) 02:54, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Further. There is nothing extraordinary about the fact that many season articles are stubs. Per
  WP:STUB: "As of 2024, almost half of Wikipedia's articles could be considered stubs." However, they are not perma-stubs. A review of the typical college football season shows how active the project is at the incremental process of improving articles. E.g., 1941 Duquesne Dukes football team (10 different editors steadily working to improve the article since its creation in 2017). Cbl62 (talk) 07:11, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• A reminder notability is not about the current state of an article, and that something has to be done is a logical fallacy. I also looked at articles where there's the claim that something "must" be done and they all look like perfectly fine stubs to me, with the exception of two which only use primary sources: 2023 Delaware Fightin' Blue Hens football team which I can clearly assume is notable (I know that league gets GNG-qualifying coverage) and 2015 Central Connecticut Blue Devils football team which I can't. This also isn't a properly formatted AfC, but there's also not much to do here? I might require a season article to have at least one GNG-qualifying source to survive an AfD, but that's about it. SportingFlyer T·C 08:20, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree with this. If you believe that an article is underdeveloped or undercited, then please click the [Edit] button and

  WP:SOFIXIT. Wikipedia:Deletion is not cleanup and Wikipedia:There is no deadline

  .

  I do not think that anything approaching mass deletion is going to be accepted by the community. Attempts to do that in the recent past have produced acrimony instead of deletions. In some cases (e.g., smaller schools or short-lived programs), I think that "List of ____ College football seasons" should be merged to a broader article, "____ College football", but I suggest to the nom that this will be more likely to happen if (a) they use the Wikipedia:Merging process instead of AFD and (b) they offer to do the work and (c) they do it with the online equivalent of a cheerful smile – not a single word that could be construed as complaining that other editors aren't living up to your standards, that the articles aren't sourced to your standards, that sources don't exist, etc. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and a merge proposed with an assertion that it will make it easier for readers to find this Extremely Valuable™ and Important™ information will probably be accepted faster than one where others suspect you despise them and disdain their subject area. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Wikipedia shouldn't be a mirror for sports stats data like that found in Sports-Reference or in primary source pages. If those are the only coverage that can be found for a season, then I think there should be a policy that allows those season articles to be deleted. However, I am not for just assuming that reliable independent sources do not exist all of the season articles that currently lack good sources. I am against a general
  WP:AfD, which gives editors an opportunity to find reliable sources. Qwaiiplayer (talk) 13:17, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  Sports-Reference dot com is not a

  WP:SELFPUBLISHEDSOURCES such as College Football Data Warehouse, College Poll Archive, etc. PK-WIKI (talk) 18:47, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  Why isnt Sports Reference reliable? It seems to meet

  WP:USEDBYOTHERS. Though as a primary source database, it can't be used to establish WP notability. —Bagumba (talk) 18:57, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  It's

  self-published. Exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent, reliable sources. PK-WIKI (talk) 19:07, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  If we're calling Sports-Reference self-published, I'm not sure what's out there that wouldn't be considered self-published. They're clearly "subject matter experts". SportingFlyer T·C 20:36, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Well, certainly sources like the

  New York Times or Associated Press wouldn't be considered self-published. "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." It's not clear to me that the authors of Sports Reference have been published by reliable independent sources. Note: this is a different requirement than 3rd party sources using or linking to the SR material. PK-WIKI (talk) 21:22, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  Multiple scholarly articles have cited pro-football-reference.com in their work. SportingFlyer T·C 23:08, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That quote only says that self-published sources can be reliable. It doesn't support NYT or AP not being "self-published". Anyways, I think that's misapplying the "self-published" label. The reason to use stats databases sparingly is that we should rely more on secondary sources per

  WP:PSTS: Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources. Anyways, database sites are unrelated to the thread's main topic on notability. —Bagumba (talk) 03:28, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  Wouldn’t the databases/encyclopedias maintained by Sports Reference be considered tertiary sources, not primary? As for reliability and “self-published”, the college football site they have is riddled with incompleteness and errors as you go back to the early 1900s and 1800s, but Baseball Reference is widely considered a definitive source. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:55, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I believe it's primary because it's the raw, uninterpreted stats. Anyways, the bigger point is that we generally don't want editors mining for tidbits that are not mentioned by secondary sources. —Bagumba (talk) 02:02, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  From tertiary source: A tertiary source is an index or textual consolidation of already published primary and secondary sources that does not provide additional interpretations or analysis of the sources....Indexes, bibliographies, concordances, and databases are aggregates of primary and secondary sources and therefore often considered tertiary sources. The Sports Reference sites look like classic tertiary sources to me. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:34, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That's a looser def than

  WP:TERTIARY. Anyways, subject for another thread. —Bagumba (talk) 02:42, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

• Comment I would support a change at
  WP:NSEASONS, as that guideline does not accurately reflect the duality/co-existence of College + Professional football in the current or historic media landscape. As stated above, the college game was far more notable than the professional leagues for large periods of the sport's history. Although lower in viewership than the NFL today, the top tier of CFB is still a highly covered league with games on its own dedicated day of the week enforced by antitrust laws. The bullet "A national championship season at the top collegiate level is generally notable" fits for fencing or water polo but is rather ridiculous for college football. Being 'professional' is not what determines notability. And the bullet "For programs considered elite in a sport..." needs to be expanded to contain, at least, fringe teams such as Penn State and extremely notable but non-"elite" teams such as Rutgers (as explained above). Should probably discuss current and past conference membership to determine assumed notability. PK-WIKI (talk) 19:41, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  I also support a revision to

  WP:NSPORTS talk page. Qwaiiplayer (talk) 20:10, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  I've always just thought it's whether a season can pass

  WP:GNG. Most college football seasons can! SportingFlyer T·C 20:37, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  NSEASONS could use some updating, but it's next to impossible to get consensus for any new/revised sports guidelines. Ultimately,

  WP:GNG is the actual standard anyway. Cbl62 (talk) 23:19, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  Editors can fall back on GNG. New page patrollers and non-CFB experts lose out, needing to rely on

  WP:BEFORE, and being vilified if experts can dig up sources. Such is WP these days. —Bagumba (talk) 03:37, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  Bagumba, that sounds like a good feature, not a bug. I know next to nothing about cricket. I know and respect my ignorance of this topic. That's one major reason why I haven't waded into articles about cricket, and proposed mass deletion/merging of season articles like Kent County Cricket Club in 2010 or Cambridge UCCE and Cambridge University in 2005 without first familiarizing myself with the topic, and then talking to editors at Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket to understand the conventions the practices that regular editors there have been working with for years. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:39, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Mass deletions are a different animal. For an individual page though, do you think SNGs are helpful to stave off a potential AfD? —Bagumba (talk) 04:59, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  In regard to all of that, failure to pass

  WP:GNG is grounds for deletion (at least as a stand-alone article). Barely being able to pass GNG is not really grounds for keeping (as a stand-alone article); that is, something that is technically "notable" but about which virtually nothing can be written is best merged into a broader piece. Material that is encyclopedic but extremely short serve little to not purpose in a stand-alone page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:52, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

  ]

Cbl62 has nominated three NCAA Division III team season articles for deletion. Please see the discussion here:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2015 Dakota State Trojans football team
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2022 Dakota State Trojans football team
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2022 Fitchburg State Falcons football team

Cbl, when we come across run-of-the-mill sub-Division I team season articles like this, rather than nominate for AfD, it would be better to just boldly refactor such articles into decade articles, a la most of the articles found at Category:College football multi-season team articles. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:26, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A couple problems with refactoring into decade articles: (1) we don't have a run of articles that covers a full decade (e.g., there are only two Fitchburg articles), and (2) even a decade article has to have some level of SIGCOV, and I'm not sure it exists on this program. Unless these obstacles are overcome, deletion appears to be the only viable option. What's more, if we are going to assert with a straight face, in response to the mass-RfC above, that we can and will deal with articles that fall below our GNG standard, we need to be resolute in getting rid of season articles on run-of-the-mill Division II and III and NAIA seasons. Cbl62 (talk) 02:57, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

SIGCOV is a tricky concept for lists and

WP:SPLITs. You don't necessarily have to have SIGCOV specifically for "the decade" to be able to merge articles up to a larger unit. The purpose of SIGCOV is to make it possible to write a decent article. If you have enough independent sources that you can write a decent article, then you have SIGCOV – even if that media coverage is in the form of "2022" and "2023", instead of "the 2020s decade". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply

]

@WhatamIdoing: I agree completely. Year-by-year SIGCOV would be fine, but I have doubts as to whether this football team gets SIGCOV at all from reliable, independent sourcs. (I haven't yet seen any.) Cbl62 (talk) 03:47, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It would surprise me if the local Fitchburg, Massachusetts#Media never covered it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:16, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is another Tier 5 (NAIA) season article about a run-of-the-mill season: 3-7 record, no post-season play, no championships, no

No objection. Malone discontinued their program after a short time--they had bragged about wanting to make a big impact, go from NAI to Div II and possibly even further, it didn't work out that way.--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:55, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Paul. I went ahead and redirected to preserve the edit history. If SIGCOV is discovered, the content is not lost. Cbl62 (talk) 03:59, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just saw this warning banner at College Poll Archive, a site that is referenced heavily at pages such Category:College football rankings

Updated Section Paths and Page File Names

Part of this upgrade is a reorganization of some of the section and page file names. This will affect any existing links on Wikipedia, news/blog articles, message boards, etc. [...] Those older pages will be removed after the upcoming 2024-25 season.

https://www.collegepollarchive.com/important-info.cfm

PK-WIKI (talk) 18:55, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I feel this should be asked here before going hog wild making changes. Would it be acceptable to move the link for the List of XYZ seasons to the list section as has been done with the basketball navboxes? See this edit for an example. I don't want to necessarily break protocol here, but I endorse such a move. - UCO2009bluejay (talk) 03:21, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There was relevant discussion last year about the college basketball navboxes here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College basketball/Archive 10#Template for men's basketball navbox. I'm not sure we ever really got clear consensus there about adding "List of seasons" to the "Seasons" group, but it looks like BeFriendlyGoodSir went ahead a made that change for all the NCAA DI men's basketball team navboxes, e.g. Template:Duke Blue Devils men's basketball navbox. But now we have two links to List of Duke Blue Devils men's basketball seasons there, one in the "Seasons" group label and a second with the "Last of seasons" link in the navbox body. There should certainly only be one link. Also, it doesn't look like this change was made for women's basketball or any of the sub-Division I men's basketball navboxes. I think it's more efficient to just link the group label. Whatever the case about where we link to the seasons list, we should restore uniformity here between football, basketball, and the other college sports. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:44, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You know I am with you on the standardization train. However, I am a bit jaded about it the NFL project cannot even find a common format for schedule tables and draft tables in season articles. Makes me wonder how we can do this with multiple Projects?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 03:55, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support the change (full disclosure, i was the one who made the edit above as I thought it had the same consensus at WP CFB as it did at CBB. While it may be more efficient to list the link within the group label, I think it makes it incredibly hard to see that there's a link there, and would instead argue that for navigability sake that is is included within the list. - Epluribusunumyall (talk) 04:12, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pending AfD within the scope of this project. Cbl62 (talk) 05:30, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be a trend in recent months to creating "decade" (or other multi-season combo) articles that only cover a few seasons in the decade.

For example,

Another example is

Personally, I think that such articles should be created and maintained in "draft" space until there's at least some content on each season. Is there any objection to draftifying such articles? Cbl62 (talk) 16:40, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These are all creations by Iamsogoodatchess1469 (talk · contribs) or refactors by me of single-season articles created by Iamsogoodatchess1469 that don't hold up as stand-alone articles. He's done some good editing, and I've tried to mentor him, but he's still engaging in some bad habits. Some more mentoring by other veterans editors may help. I pinged a few of you to his talk page the other day regarding reliable sourcing. As for these articles, there's an easy solution. If the uncovered years bother you, flesh them out, just like any undeveloped area of any article. I'd like to get to these as well, but I've been busy cleaning up and filling gaps all over this project's scope. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:21, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These go beyond undeveloped articles. They purport to be multi-season articles, but they have zero content about most of the seasons. They have remained in that state for months. If someone thinks these non-notable (at best borderline notable) seasons are worthy of creating an article, they should not leave them in this sorry state, and it is not the responsiblity of me or others to clean up the mess. In their current condition, they are really not fit for main space, and this is precisely the sort of situation for which "draft" space exists. Cbl62 (talk) 07:04, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When I refactored and improved Iamsogoodatchess1469's work, I left some space for him to flesh out what he started and put my coaching of him into practice, but unfortunately he's abandoned those efforts thus far. Nevertheless, the Emporia, Haskell, Northeast Center articles have between 17 and 42 references each. Each article is rated as Start class. The Jonesboro article had 8 references when you draftiefed it and now has 11. The fact that you can pinpoint lack of development to discrete years doesn't make these articles less complete or sorrier than other Stub and Start-class articles where the gaps are more amorphous. You've issued a brand new editing standard this week, and enforced it in a way that has already caused problems on Jonesboro with deleted redirects and undue new red links at articles like Foy Hammons. It's not your responsibility to deal with this at all. But if you opt to address this content, please don't create any more busy-work churn for other editors, namely me, who will now have to recreate a bunch of admin work. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:37, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I stand by draftifying the Jonesboro decade article that had zero content for eight of the ten years. It remained in that sorry state for 3-1/2 months with no improvement. And draftifying has worked, as Iamgoodatchess is now working on building it out (see here). I have thanked him and encouraged him to keep it up on his talk page. My intention is not to create "busy-work churn" -- it is to address seriously deficient work, something about which I would hope we are all on the same page. Cbl62 (talk) 17:58, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am not Iamgoodatchess, but the point remains in that regard. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 17:59, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Just noting, I haven't looked at all these yet, but articles older than 90 days are generally not supposed to be moved to draftspace, per
  draftification policy. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:53, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply
  ]

You are correct that this article was more than 90 days old when I draftified -- albeit by only two weeks. Draftification in such a case seems preferable and less disruptive than an AfD, but if someone chooses to move it back to main space despite its obvious deficiencies, they can do so. But please... let's not create any more decade articles that have only two years of content! Cbl62 (talk) 18:08, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I restored to main space due to the 90 days. Hopefully, someone will add some content to the seven sections with zero content. Cbl62 (talk) 18:25, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I now see that it was User:Thetreesarespeakingtome who has been working to improve the Jonesboro decade article. Thank you for doing that! Cbl62 (talk) 19:36, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pending AfD within the scope of this project. Cbl62 (talk) 17:15, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback on the AfD for

It might be time to either expand the general manager page or create a new specifically tailored towards college football with recent notable GM hires such as Michael Lombardi at UNC, Andrew Luck at Stanford, and Ron Rivera at Cal. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 01:15, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like Hirolovesswords (talk · contribs) already made Category:College football general managers, which suffices for now. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 22:29, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Dissident93, I began a little subsection, but I am sure there is plenty more to be expanded upon. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 00:07, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Heisman compiled a list for the Atlanta Georgian and any help on expanding the articles is appreciated: 1)

Why do we have pick in the round in the tables? It isn't noteworthy is it?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 00:41, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• "Round" and "overall" tell the story IMO. For me, the "overall" number is most significant. Pick within the round doesn't seem necessary/helpful. Cbl62 (talk) 00:13, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relative pick in a round is trivial. —Bagumba (talk) 00:33, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Debartolo2917:-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 18:44, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The yearly draft articles, like 1990 NFL draft, don't have pick number within round. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:26, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree @

WP:FL status?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 19:35, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply

]

The FL notice on talk pages invites improvements:

If you can update or improve it, please do so

An issue might arise if that column was the product of a long-discussed consensus, or something counter to FL criteria, but is that the case? —Bagumba (talk) 02:24, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I won't strike my above comment because there is a notes section in some of the lists and not others. Also, there are many draft years that are not linked. In the spirit of standardization, I am also linking those when removing the pick in round columns. That all being said, the spirit of my above comment was off base. I was remembering how Debartalo's edits were to change the format. In reality, he cleaned up the formatting where we wouldn't have the same year repeated. Those were good edits IMO.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 22:39, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For most of the last 10 years or so, this project has had a consensus favoring individual season articles for major college football teams. I continue to support that consensus. However, as we have continued to expand our coverage into lower tiers of football, I've been persuaded that decade articles (or other multiyear combinations as may be logical) are a better approach in many cases. I'm still not sure exactly where the line should be drawn, but I currently believe the multi-season approach should be considered in at least two areas: (1) early years of college football, and (2) lower-tier programs. These are both factors that are associated with less depth of coverage. Where both factors are present (olden times plus lower level), the decision to adopt a multi-season approach is easiest. Of course, there might be exceptions (e.g., national championship seasons or other extraordinary circumstances) where there is good reason to create/preserve an individual season article.

The biggest virtue of the multi-season approach IMO is that it allows us to continue building our coverage of college football history while reducing concerns/disagreements as to whether individual season articles comply with

The biggest drawbacks of the multi-season approach include (1) a possible impediment to article creation (it's a lot more time consuming to create a decade article than a single-season article), and (2) it might be a deterrent to building out further details (e.g., roster, game summaries, etc.) on an individual season. I also wonder whether a reader might find it more difficult to navigate to the specific season/information they are seeking. I also would not want to see the multi-season approach be treated as a waiver of the need to add SIGCOV -- a multi-season article should still IMO have SIGCOV. Whichever approach we follow, the days of creating articles sourced only to databases should be behind us.

Recently, User:Jweiss11 and I have been working together to build out our coverage of the early years of the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (the oldest college football conference, but a lower-level one) using the multi-season approach. As part of this effort, we have redirected pre-existing season articles to the new multi-season articles. Examples of the newly-created multi-season articles include:

• Albion Methodists football, 1910–1919
• Albion Methodists football, 1900–1909
• Albion football, 1890–1899
• Kalamazoo Baptists football, 1910–1919
• Kalamazoo football, 1892–1899
• Hillsdale Dales football, 1891–1899
• Olivet football, 1884–1899

Runs of seasons where a team has played very few games are also ripe for the multi-season approach. E.g,, NYU Violets football, 1873–1889 (17 games played in 17 years).

Comments and suggestions are welcome on (1) whether this approach is desirable at all, (2) ideas as to how to improve such multi-season articles, and (3) most significantly, where and when we should draw the line between a multi-season vs. single-season approach. Help editing the articles is also welcome. @Jweiss11: @Patriarca12: @PK-WIKI: @MisterCake: @Toll Booth Willie: @Carrite: @Thetreesarespeakingtome: Cbl62 (talk) 21:06, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1. While time consuming, these types of articles are very important as many lower-level schools won't have enough individual seasons worth note for standalone articles, but grouped together add great context to the team. I am a firm believer in this approach as I have done a little work on the topic myself (Buena Vista football, 1898–1909; shameless plug but whatever).

2. I think that each year could be fleshed out as much as possible and still be accessible (especially on mobile when the years themselves can be collapsed).

3. It would certainly just depend on how important a season is, IMO conference champions, playoff teams, and undefeated teams warrant an individual season article regardless. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 21:16, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are game recaps considered a primary or secondary source? I believe I've seen that debate somewhere on WP, not necessarily directly sports related. Someone could make an argument that a topic based on stats DBs, school media guides, and next-day articles does not demonstrate GNG's requirement for independent, secondary sources. —Bagumba (talk) 23:41, 25 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This question was discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1987–88 Kilmarnock F.C. season where the result was "Keep". To rebut such a contention, we should ideally not rely solely on brief recaps that do nothing more than record plays run, scores, etc. It is best to have coverage that includes some analysis, commentary, or opinions. Post-season recaps are often good sources. And for many teams post- and pre-game coverage is extensive and includes such analysis/commentary. Cbl62 (talk) 00:06, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the sources that wrap up the entire season or at least analyze a few weeks are preferable to

WP:OR cherry-picking stats and plays from boxscores and game recaps. —Bagumba (talk) 03:31, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply

]

@

Left guide (talk) 03:25, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply

]

I'm not sure if game recaps are necessarily "breaking news", but I could understand the argument. —Bagumba (talk) 03:33, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note that we have an administrative category for these multi-season team articles: Category:College football multi-season team articles. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:43, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Darian Durant has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 02:00, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: for me, this is similar to Minor League Baseball, which plays a key role in professional baseball; regardless, it has long been agreed-upon practice only to list a player's Major League Baseball teams (or similar foreign levels of foreign play, such as NPB) in infoboxes. Dmoore5556 (talk) 17:49, 4 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]