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Looks like a bunch of editors have starting creating 2025 season articles already. I thought we had agreed not to create the next season's articles until the current season is over. That's doesn't happen until January 20. Nevertheless, I don't we should start deleting stuff that would just have to be recreated in a few weeks. But if and when you do create 2025 season articles, it would be helpful you could properly categorize any such articles, create any needed categories and standings templates, and properly tag and rate the talk pages for such articles, templates, and categories. By default, FBS team season articles should be set to mid importance. FCS and anything lower should be set to low importance by default. Also, please do not copy over offensive and defensive schemes in the infobox from 2024 to 2025 (ahem, looking at you Butters.From.SouthPark). No one knows what schemes teams are going to running next season. It may be the same thing as this season, particularly if the coaching staff stays the same, but we don't know. Please wait until you have a media guide or some other reliable source, likely not before late next summer, before populating the scheme fields. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 05:24, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Motdattan, heads up here regarding the offensive and defensive schemes in the infobox. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 04:51, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Got it. Will delete them from now. I get the point that they may not run the same scheme even though the staff doesn't change. Motdattan (talk) 21:20, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• I thought we had agreed not to create the next season's articles until the current season is over. That's my recollection as well, and we should not be creating season articles way in advance. However, I think it's fine once the "regular season" is over at the end of November. Especially with the new playoff system prolonging the season all the way out to January 20 (the championship game), I don't see a need to wait until January 21 to start creating 2025 season articles. That said, any 2025 season article will be vulnerable to deletion or draftification if it lacks appropriate sourcing. So any articles created should be supported by the best sourcing available. And if good sourcing is not available, probably best to create the article as a draft until the sourcing becomes available. Cbl62 (talk) 17:11, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder to Motdattan and anyone else, when you create articles like 2025 Washington State Cougars football team, please remember to properly tag the talk page with appropriate project banners. Failure to do so may lead to unfamiliar editors tagging the wrong project at Talk:2025 Washington State Cougars football team. Dclemens1971, note that college football season articles like this should be tagged for this project, WikiProject College football, not Wikipedia:WikiProject American football. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 19:12, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for clarification. I am indeed not aware of every possible banner available in Rater. Dclemens1971 (talk) 19:31, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I can do that. Motdattan (talk) 23:42, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Butters.From.SouthPark, please note the above about not copying over offensive and defensive schemes in the infobox from 2024 to 2025. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 02:45, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dogloverr16, heads up to you as well. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 02:52, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

User Ha2772a (talk · contribs) has undertaken an effort to make "standardizing" edits to a large number of bowl game articles. These include, from what I briefly have seen, adding "CFP New Year's Six" as an infobox sub-header of non-playoff games (for example, 2023 Orange Bowl) and adding "National Championship Game" as an infobox sub-header of various historical games, such as 1973 Rose Bowl and 1971 Nebraska vs. Oklahoma football game. All look to be good-faith edits, but I certainly question deeming them to be "standardizing" when it appears to narrowly be one editor's preferred style. More narrowly, I don't agree with either of the two specific examples, as NY6 sub-headers for non-playoff games are just infobox clutter, and retroactively deeming certain games which, in retrospect, yielded a national champion is very different than a game that is specifically played for that purpose. Other editors may like the changes. Comments welcome, as I feel this type of broad change deserves some attention. Dmoore5556 (talk) 01:31, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Additional comment on the 1971 Nebraska vs. Oklahoma football game, now deemed a "National Championship Game"—after Nebraska defeated Oklahoma, they still had a non-conference game to play (at Hawaii, which they won) and they then accepted a bid to the 1972 Orange Bowl (which is also now deemed a "National Championship Game"), where they defeated Alabama. That Nebraska's next-to-last regular-season game was a "National Championship Game", the first of two they played in the same season... this is not encyclopedic. Dmoore5556 (talk) 01:41, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, "CFP New Year's Six" stuff is at least technically accurate. We can debate whether it's a necessary subheader in the infobox. I believe we've recently discussed the topic of pre-1992 "national championship games here. The 1973 Rose Bowl was not a "national championship game". What if Ohio State had narrowly beaten USC, while Oklahoma had beaten Penn State in a blowout at the Sugar Bowl? Jweiss11 (talk) 01:44, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think either is necessary. The NY6 stuff will surely be present in the lead of those articles, and adding "national championship game" to any pre-BCS championship seems flatly incorrect to me. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 01:53, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No opinion on any of the particular games mention here; citations should be added and discussed. But there certainly were "national championship games" prior to the advent of the BCS. The 1932 Rose Bowl awarded two separate national championship trophies directly to the winner. The 1969 Game of the Century was proclaimed as a national championship game by the president of the United States. The 1972 Orange Bowl and 1973 Sugar Bowl both awarded the MacArthur Bowl, one of the most prestigious CFB national championship trophies, directly to the winner of the game. All of the above are no more and no less "national championship games" than the 1993 Sugar Bowl, 1996 Fiesta Bowl, 1999 Fiesta Bowl, or 2025 College Football Playoff National Championship. PK-WIKI (talk) 02:10, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

PK-WIKI, all of that stuff is appropriate for inclusion and explanation in prose in the lead and body of these articles, but "Richard Nixon national championship game" does not belong in an infobox. The 1993 Sugar Bowl what a very specific kind of structurally defined national title game and is noted as such, as the "Bowl Coalition National Championship Game". Jweiss11 (talk) 02:21, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Replying to this comment but have read the rest of the discussion (@Jweiss11 @PCN02WPS @PK-WIKI). My edits were only looking to standardize how the subheaders are formatted in the infobox. There were vast differences between bowls with how they handled BCS Championships and their predecessors as well as the CFP NY6 indicator and BCS Bowl Game indicator. For example most bowls had the CFP NY6 moniker when not a quarterfinal for the first six years, but didn't with more recent editions. It was a similar state for "BCS Bowl Game." I agree that it shouldn't just be the preferences of a single editor, I was simply looking to make a set of pages consistent within what was already existing for those boxes. The inconstancies confused me since all these bowl games are basically identical types of an event.

As for championships predating the Bowl Coalition, I did not add NCG to any box that it did not already exist in. Some of these linked out to the page about college football championships, some did not, I elected to link all of them so at least explanation could be ensured on that page. Although the list on that page raises questions because there are championship games listed there that did not have any mention on their page. Perhaps the pre-Bowl Coalition games need some kind of indicator like quotation marks if it isn't 1 vs 2 in a bowl game?

I delved into games of the century as well because there was a separate formatting method for those titles that was applied to the 2006 Rose Bowl that formatted the infobox title with the year at the end instead of preceding the bowl name. The same standard was used here, moving Game of the Century to the subheader and using the bowl name or teams as the game name. Again a similar problem exists with the GOTC page since it lists additional games that do not have the moniker mentioned on their page about the game. Ha2772a (talk) 03:39, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The generic term "national championship game" is a misnomer, given that the NCAA has never sanctioned a championship at the highest level of college football. All that has existed are championship games of specific structures, such as Bowl Coalition National Championship Games (e.g. 1993 Sugar Bowl) or BCS National Championship Games (e.g. 1999 Fiesta Bowl) or College Football Playoff National Championship games (e.g. 2024 College Football Playoff National Championship) and that is all the infoboxes should call them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmoore5556 (talk • contribs) 02:49, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I generally agree with you that we should title the infobox "BCS national championship game" or whatever, depending on the selector. However I'm not sure how to square that with the historic reality of national championship games in the poll era. Games such as the 1969 Rose Bowl were widely regarded as national championship games, so much so that the AP Poll delayed its final poll specifically to account for the game. It was regarded as a national championship game in the de facto / generic sense, but I think it would be incorrect for us to label the infobox as "AP Poll National Championship Game" when no such designation was made. "National championship game" with citations seems like the best solution. PK-WIKI (talk) 05:22, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal — infobox labelling of any "national championship game" that was not contested as part of a notable postseason structure (e.g. Bowl Coalition, BCS, or CFP) is WP:SYNTH and should be removed. Notable games of any era that led to one of the participants being named a national champion can be (and hopefully already are) highlighted as such in the article. Comments welcome. Dmoore5556 (talk) 04:46, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support proposal that such "national championship games" should not be noted in infoboxes. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:58, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Limiting NCGs to those within a "notable postseason structure" is WP:RECENTISM and WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH. The 1988 Orange Bowl and 1994 Orange Bowl were exactly the same type of national championship games: informal matchups within the existing bowl invite system that, through luck and fortuitous scheduling, happened to produce a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup. (The Bowl Coalition one was actually "worse": the Coaches Poll had it as a No. 1 vs. No. 3 matchup.) Both should be noted as national championship games. The powers that be have been scheduling those types of NCGs for the last 100 years. The media has called the qualifying ones "national championship games". Trophies have been awarded on the field to the winner of the game. National championship games did not begin in 1992 or 1998. PK-WIKI (talk) 05:12, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I think that "National championship game" should only be used in the cases where the winner of that game became the national champion not by being ranked No. 1 as a result but rather by the very act of winning the game itself. (I guess another way to frame this would be the fact that the game was played for the purposes of determining a national champion rather than having the game serve as a "national championship" if the participants happen to be No. 1 and No. 2 [or the clear top two contenders].) From what I can tell that first "National Championship Game" would be the 1993 Sugar Bowl. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 07:01, 11 January 2025 (UTC) — I am amending my vote to a soft oppose as I would support infobox inclusion of any game which is determined via rough consensus to have met the criteria at Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/National championship games. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 23:51, 13 January 2025 (UTC) — I keep changing my mind so neutral it is. Lots of good debate at the talk page. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 02:35, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly did Alabama win in New Orleans? The Sugar Bowl trophy, and that's about it. The Los Angeles Times reports the next day that after the game, all Gene Stallings could see was a scoreboard that read Alabama 34, Miami 13. This morning he will see another sight to cherish: the Crimson Tide perched alone atop the final polls, an improbable national championship of well-earned certainty.

How exactly was the 1993 Sugar Bowl a new type of national championship game? It wasn't. They waited for the polls the next day just like every other year. Who recognized them directly for winning the game itself? No one. The recognition came from the AP and Coaches the next day. The game was exactly as much of a national championship game as, say, the 1988 Orange Bowl where the program and broadcast were similarly branded as "The National Championship". PK-WIKI (talk) 08:31, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From what I understand after reading a bit of Bowl Coalition was that the 1993 Sugar Bowl, as the first Boal Coalition National Championship Game, marked the first year of "we are going to definitely have a national championship game with No. 1 playing No. 2" as opposed to "we just so happen to have No. 1 vs. No. 2 in this bowl game, so it's a de facto 'National Championship Game'". It seems to be the first year that the penultimate rankings are more important than the final rankings, since the national champion became dependent on the game (with the rankings merely a formality afterward) and its participants (who were, by definition, the top two teams in the penultimate rankings) rather than dependent on simply waiting on the rankings, especially in the majority of cases when the top two teams weren't paired together. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 08:39, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's incorrect. The Bowl Coalition didn't have the Big Ten or Pac-10 champions. The Bowl Coalition got lucky that they were able to schedule the top two teams in a single bowl. We very well could have had No. 1 Michigan playing No. 2 Washington in the 1993 Rose Bowl, which would then itself have been the "national championship game". They also got lucky that Miami was in the Big East, as hypothetical No. 1 Nebraska (Orange Bowl) would not have played No. 2 Alabama (Sugar Bowl) despite both bowls and conferences being in this "coalition". There was definitely no guarantee that the Bowl Coalition would be able to schedule a national championship game; the agreement simply made it a bit easier than before. If anything had messed up the No. 1 vs. No. 2 pairing there would not have been a national championship game, the exact same fragile situation as every season prior to 1992. PK-WIKI (talk) 08:59, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I appreciate the explanation. In that case I feel Bowl Coalition should be rewritten because an agreement among NCAA Division I-A college football bowl games and conferences for the purpose of forcing a national championship game between the top two teams was the quote that led me to believe that the system was designed for the sake of always having a No. 1 vs. No. 2. Now that I read BCS National Championship Game#History, I feel like the first labeled "National Championship Game" should be the 1999 Fiesta Bowl, since I guess that was the first year where, prior to the start of the season, you could guarantee that there would be a definitive national championship game taking place to conclude the year. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 17:10, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you that the advent of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998 was the first season where, prior to the season, the top(*) two teams were pre-confirmed to play in a national championship game. And, additionally, that it would specifically happen in the 1999 Fiesta Bowl. That was an important milestone but I don't believe it diminishes the prior national championship games that occurred by happenstance.

The 1993 Sugar Bowl was unquestionably that season's national championship game. That fact should be noted in the game's infobox.

Likewise, the 1988 Orange Bowl was also unquestionably that season's national championship game. That fact should be noted in the game's infobox.

PK-WIKI (talk) 20:06, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's a fair point. I don't have an issue with saying "national championship" in the infobox so long as it's covered in prose with appropriate sourcing, which I suppose goes without saying anyway. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 20:50, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would you agree that the 1978 Cotton Bowl Classic was a national championship game? Or not really? Alex9234 (talk) 21:11, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Potentially. I would want to see what the contemporary reliable third-party sources said about it. PK-WIKI (talk) 21:15, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Semantically, every Bowl Coalition National Championship Game was a Bowl Coalition National Championship Game, nothing more or less. The Bowl Coalition was a notable (as in, Bowl Coalition) postseason structure and its championship games (independent of their value) can be precisely enumerated, and their infoboxes should identify them as such. Deeming any games as being "national championship games" (used as a generic term) is subjective, as seen in the list at College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS#National championship games. They cannot be precisely enumerated ("This list is incomplete") and various entries are debatable (e.g. 1946 Army vs. Notre Dame football game, played when the two teams had 5 other total games left to play). I am advocating not tagging any games with generic "national championship games" labels. Dmoore5556 (talk) 08:41, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You are assigning too much value to this supposed "Bowl Coalition National Championship Game", which didn't really exist as a first-class enterprise. The phrase as a capitalized proper noun basically does not exist in a search on Newspapers.com. I question if we should even be using that phrase on Wikipedia due to its lack of usage in reliable third-party sources. Searching for "Bowl Coalition" does not turn up a single piece of vintage memorabilia on eBay.

I'm not assessing its "value"; it was a notable (Bowl Coalition) postseason entity. I am fully supportive of discontinuing the use of a capitalized proper noun if it was spuriously created; adjusting to "Bowl Coalition national championship game" or even perhaps "Bowl Coalition title game" ("title game" being the phrase that appears multiple times in the target article) seems appropriate. Dmoore5556 (talk) 00:41, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Orange Bowl (Orange Bowl) was also a notable postseason entity. As was the Fiesta Bowl (Fiesta Bowl). Both independently endeavored to schedule No. 1 vs. No. 2 "national championship games", which they successfully accomplished in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988. When those two bowls and a few others made a coalition to make the bowl selection process a bit easier, that new organization is no more or less notable than the previous independent bowls that did the same thing. While the Bowl Coalition was an important milestone in the march towards the BCS/playoff, it was certainly not "the first official national championship game". That is the "value" I'm talking about being overestimated.

I think it would be more accurate to describe the games as "the national championship game in the Sugar Bowl... which was scheduled last month by the Bowl Coalition agreement". There was no "Bowl Coalition title". There was no "Bowl Coalition national championship" to be won. The titles that these teams were winning were the AP and Coaches poll titles, and these national championship games in the 1980s and 1990s were all de facto. Even the ones set up by the Bowl Coalition.

PK-WIKI (talk) 02:02, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly all of the NY6 games are notable in general, and Wikipedia has articles about each individual contest, various of which are rightfully notable in their own right. I'm in agreement with your example wording (and variants thereof), which are appropriate for article prose. The question at hand is infobox labels (now "standardized", including wikilinks). We seem to have agreement that, for example, 1986 Orange Bowl shouldn't have proper noun "National Championship Game" in its infobox and 1993 Sugar Bowl shouldn't have proper noun "Bowl Coalition National Championship Game" in its infobox. What, if anything, goes in the infobox? Secondarily, at the bottom of said infoboxes is a set of prev/next links under the title of "College Football Championship Game" (another incorrect use of a proper noun). Those links seem to incorporate yet a different set of games, that are not enumerated anywhere, at least that I can find. For example 1956 Orange Bowl, which does not appear in College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS#National championship games. Having infobox labels and prev/next link trees, presented with seemingly well intended but made up proper nouns, is not encyclopedic. What do we do with those? Dmoore5556 (talk) 03:37, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My thought is to use the branded/official/common name if that exists: "College Football Playoff National Championship", "BCS National Championship Game"(?), "Bowl Alliance Championship Game"(???), etc. Use the generic "National championship game" if no such name exists, with proper citations of course. Add the selector or trophy to the text or infobox somehow if such award is explicitly tied to the game: "National championship game (MacArthur Bowl)" or "National championship game (Erskine Trophy)".

Remove the navigation links between years, unless navigating between an explicit set (CFP, BCS, BA...). Link between those 3 for convenience. I would argue against Bowl Coalition years, as that would open the whole above can of worms of also linking back to the 1980s Orange and Fiesta Bowl NCGs. PK-WIKI (talk) 18:37, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm supportive of those actions. Other editors are welcome to comment. With regards to the list at College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS#National championship games, would that work better as a stand-alone article (perhaps "List of college football national championship games" or similar)? A bit more visibility might help, especially with regards to sourcing. Dmoore5556 (talk) 19:52, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What the Bowl Coalition was was an internal conference/bowl agreement that attempted to schedule No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchups in one of the participating bowls. Nothing more, nothing less. They could have easily been unsuccessful, in which case no national championship game would have been played in their bowls. Their NCGs can only be "precisely enumerated" because they got lucky 3 years in a row.

This is history that, with appropriate sourcing, would enhance the Bowl Coalition article. Dmoore5556 (talk) 00:41, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Rose Bowl was similarly an organization and conference agreement that hoped to have the No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup in its annual bowl. If they had the No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup, they would have promoted it as a "national championship game" exactly as the Sugar Bowl did. The press would have treated this hypothetical 1993 Rose Bowl NCG identical to the Sugar Bowl NCG. In this case none of the other individual bowls (aka "the Bowl Coalition") would have had a national championship game.

As above. Dmoore5556 (talk) 00:41, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Orange Bowl, prior to joining the coalition, was also an organization and conference agreement that independently attempted to schedule a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup its annual bowl. For the 1987 season they succeeded, and the 1988 Orange Bowl was thus the national championship game, promoted as such, and widely proclaimed as such in the press.

This is history that, with appropriate sourcing, would enhance the Orange Bowl article. Dmoore5556 (talk) 00:41, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All these organizations and agreements are exactly the same: fragile attempts at matching the No. 1 vs. No. 2 team in a bowl. As the years went on, they brought in more conferences and loosened the tie-ins that made this difficult. But in the early years, especially the Bowl Coalition where there was no dedicated trophy, no rotating dedicated top bowl, no guarantee of the No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup, no guarantee of even the Bowl Coalition's top two teams meeting, no crystal football, the national championship game was essentially exactly the same as the NCGs in the 1980s. Treating the Bowl Coalition as a "notable postseason structure" separate from what came before it is ahistorical. PK-WIKI (talk) 09:47, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Bowl Coalition, warts and all, doesn't somehow grant notability to each entry in the open-ended list presented at College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS#National championship games. Nor should there be a capitalized proper noun ("National Championship Game") appearing in infoboxes. While 1988 Orange Bowl is a great example of a game that pitted No. 1 vs No. 2 in both team's final game of the season with the winner being named consensus national champion in the polls, other entries in the open-ended list were neither a 1 vs. 2 matchup and/or were not the teams' final games of the season and/or the winning team was not a consensus selection in the polls. We even have examples of seasons and teams with more than one ""National Championship Game". Hence my continued issue with the use of that term in infoboxes. Dmoore5556 (talk) 00:41, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree that list should be better sourced and edited, and welcome lower case capitalization etc. Note that due to the multiple selector reality of college football, a season very well might have multiple "national championship games" deciding multiple national championship awards, titles, and trophies. The easiest example being one played for the pre-bowl UPI Trophy while another is later played for the post-bowl AP Trophy. PK-WIKI (talk) 02:06, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Notify @Alex9234 of the above discussion per recent edits at 1933 Rose Bowl, 1963 Rose Bowl, 1969 Rose Bowl, 1973 Rose Bowl. PK-WIKI (talk) 20:47, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this. Alex9234 (talk) 21:07, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I agree with @PK-WIKI: Limiting NCGs to those within a "notable postseason structure" is WP:RECENTISM and WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH. The 1963 Rose Bowl, 1969 Rose Bowl, 1973 Rose Bowl, 1983 Sugar Bowl, 1987 Fiesta Bowl, 1988 Orange Bowl and 1994 Orange Bowlwere no different from the Bowl Coalition/Alliance, BCS and even 4-team CFP national championship games: informal matchups within the existing bowl invite system that, through luck and fortuitous scheduling, happened to produce a No. 1 vs. No. 2 or a No. 1 vs. No. 3 matchup - especially since the No. 3 teams usually automatically jump to No. 1 after winning over the top-ranked team.

Most of them should be noted as national championship games. As PK said: The powers that be have been scheduling those types of NCGs for as long as the sport has existed. The media has called the qualifying ones "national championship games", and some, or most of them I’ve cited have been referred to as NC games by the media. Trophies have been awarded on the field to the winner of the game. These games did not begin in 1992 or 1998. Alex9234 (talk) 21:06, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I was suggesting labeling the 1978 Cotton Bowl Classic as a national championship game as I feel it meets the criteria. But that’s just me. I wouldn’t mind hearing others opinions on this. Alex9234 (talk) 21:08, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with the assertion that the list of de facto national championship games you listed are no different from the Bowl Coalition/Alliance, BCS and even 4-team CFP national championship games. The CFP national championship seems like the opposite to me: unlike the de facto games, the CFPNCG is scheduled not only before the season, but years out, with the intention of serving as the national championship. While the de facto games are viewed as national championships because they just so happened to be No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchups, the CFPNCG is viewed as a national championship because it was created solely for that purpose, regardless of the rankings or seedings of the teams that participate - it's the national championship no matter what. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 21:16, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ha2772a, Dmoore5556, Jweiss11, PK-WIKI, and Alex9234: (hopefully I didn't leave anybody off the ping list) I created Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/National championship games as a place for us to determine which games were "national championship games" and compile sourcing used to make those determinations. I recognize that this table exists, but I feel like the WP-space page is more appropriate for this issue since it seems to be more internal. I have included some criteria for pre-BCS national championship games that make sense to me; comments and revisions are welcome at that page. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 21:42, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support proposal that such "national championship games" should not be noted in infoboxes. Cbl62 (talk) 05:41, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Linking @Jeff in CA to the above wikiproject list as well per recent edits in the mainspace article. PK-WIKI (talk) 23:03, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Nick Gates (American football)#Requested move 19 January 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Векочел (talk) 19:18, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See the linked discussion re proposed deletion of Template:2023 Harding Bisons football navbox. Cbl62 (talk) 15:01, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Also Template:2019 North Central Cardinals football navbox Cbl62 (talk) 16:46, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 17:25, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I recently created an article for Jalen Kitna; I'd like assistance expanding the article Joeykai (talk) 06:00, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Huntington Bank Stadium 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) 19:28, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1873 NYU Violets football team, the nomination of all NYU Violets, George Washington Colonials, Fordham Rams, Case Western Reserve Spartans and Cincinnati Bearcats season articles for deletion. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:33, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've a nominated two categories related to junior college sports for renaming. Please see the discussions below.

• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 February 11#Category:Two-year college sports in the United States
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 February 12#Category:NJCAA athletics

Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 01:37, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Both of these nominations have been relisted and could use more input:

• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 February 20#Category:Two-year college sports in the United States
• Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 February 20#Category:NJCAA athletics

Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 03:58, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These CfDs are still outstanding and could use some more input from subject experts here. Please weigh in. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 20:47, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See the edits of 115.147.34.99 this editor may be productive, but they are using edit summaries that are nonsensical and possibly promoting their own slogans.- UCO2009bluejay (talk) 20:37, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Cbl62:-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 01:44, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hard to find. Can you provide a couple diffs? Cbl62 (talk) 01:45, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think calling K-State anything with "pussy" in it is appropriate. [1] Here is a list of another IP as well.[[2]].-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 01:48, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Captain Munnerlyn 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) 03:18, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On Template:Infobox college sports team season, there are fields called mvp_year and captain_year for the year of the team's captain(s) and mvp(s). The template documentation indicates that these should be used for the ordinal year the given player held the title of team mvp or team captain. In practice, there's been some confusion about these fields, as sometimes they have been populated with the class (junior, senior, etc.) of the player. These fields are rarely used. Some of the more recent Michigan football seasons, like 2023 Michigan Wolverines football team, are a few instances where they are used. The data for these fields is pretty obscure and rather unnecessary, in my opinion. Any objections if we delete these fields from the template? Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 03:57, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Forget editor documention, a reader might assume it was the year that they were playing for the team, not years as captain or MVP. And probably rarely sourced what the first year was. —Bagumba (talk) 06:25, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's support for deletion? Jweiss11 (talk) 01:45, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Barring a compelling rationale, yes, delete. —Bagumba (talk) 02:20, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't thimf we're going to get one. If there are no objections in the next few days, I will move ahead with deleting these fields. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:42, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Keith "End Zone" Jones#Requested move 21 February 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. —Bagumba (talk) 18:53, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, as I saw some suggestions in the AfD discussion here, due to the scope of the request, and the fact some people seemingly are opposed to my proposal, here's the RfC.

What action, if any, should we do with the following class of articles that are about seasons of American football college teams? Szmenderowiecki (talk) 18:39, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While clicking random articles, I stumbled upon an article about one of the NYU Violets seasons that had a notability tag and was just one sentence long. So I started to investigate the seasons articles. A lot of them have this template:

The [year] [college_team_name] football team was an American football team that represented [college_name] as an independent during the [year] college football season. In their [cardinal_number] year under head coach [coach_name], the team compiled a [win-loss-tie] record. Optionally: a random and rather trivial fact about the team during that season For some articles: [college_team_name] was ranked at No. [cardinal_number_2] (out of [team_number] college football teams) in the final rankings under the Litkenhous Difference by Score system for [year].

Table of scores, which contains the only sources or almost all of the article sources; the vast majority, if not all, are news coverage immediately after the event and are thus primary.

I believe that the articles violate several policies and guidelines, including:

• WP:RSPRIMARY/WP:PSTS: Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources, i.e., a document or recording that relates to or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. For scores, only primary sources are used; in other parts of the article, the situation isn't much better.
• WP:N: The general notability guideline mandates that sources be secondary or tertiary to demonstrate notability (see also WP:PSTS). Because most articles contain no secondary or tertiary sources, nor do I think it is likely that they exist, there is no individual notability for each season per GNG. It is very unlikely that college football team seasons pass SNG (specifically WP:NSEASONS) because college football teams are not professional, and they definitely do not after 1920, because that's when a higher football league appeared. To illustrate the absurdity of the situation, I read seasons articles where at best 1,000 people attended to its games (1891 Dartmouth football team) or articles about Division III college teams that only get created because they get to playoffs within that division (1993 Frostburg State Bobcats football team), but even that appears not to be obligatory (2022 Tufts Jumbos football team). While we are at it, we could just as well create seasons articles about Gazmyas (you will see what I mean). Even being in Division I FBS - the highest league in American football - does not prevent many teams from getting bad seasons articles, which are basically just tables with scores (only primary sources) and an infobox. IMHO that's a disservice to the fans of these teams - who are, as I guess, the most likely readers of articles like these. No wonder that most of these articles don't even get an average of 2 (two) pageviews per day, and many don't even get 1.
• WP:NOTADATABASE: Essentially these articles would not have existed were it not for the scores table. While the meaning of the data in the table is fairly clear, so it's not really a case of WP:NOTSTATS, there doesn't appear to be any other purpose than just to have a score table, which is not good enough for an encyclopedia. Some people may say that there are sources out there and these articles are expandable and salvageable, but even then:
• WP:PAGEDECIDE: even if the topic appears to be notable, it doesn't always mean that the best way to cover this is in standalone articles. I don't see a realistic way for the articles to go beyond stub status, and even if there is, the articles are likely to be so short for a long time that it still makes little sense to create standalone articles.

During the AfD, I got pushback on the idea that nominating five sets of articles that were all of terrible quality was a good idea (basically for WP:TRAINWRECK reasons, which should not apply here because I am agnostic as to the resolution of the problem; deletion, consolidation, refactoring, draftification, whatever). One editor suggested that I nominate each of them separately, which would be feasible for 5 or 10 articles, but not with potentially thousands. Chances are that any random article you click in Category:College football seasons by team, after you navigate to your team of interest, is a stub. There are some exceptions; from what I saw there were OK articles about Pittsburg Steelers and good articles about five or so early seasons of Navy Midshipmen, but the vast majority of others was just stubs, or stubs with tables stacked one upon another, which isn't much better. Another editor said that we have a long-standing consensus that topics like 1926 NYU pass GNG (it was only improved after I started the AfD) I was presented with examples of good articles about football seasons - 1884 Navy or 2009 Michigan, for example, but they are few and far between.

For this argument, I'm being accused of obtuseness on my talk page. I asked the regulars to choose a couple of teams to say where the issues are. Apparently articles like these are said to be within the consensus of AMF for ~20 years as acceptable, but local consensus cannot override the core policy of having to primarily rely on secondary sources. I asked the AMF regulars themselves to evaluate any given region and tell me what they think about the seasons articles, and most of my concerns were dismissed because "they are an FBS team!" or "a perfect score in Division III is a-OK for establishing notability" - which IMHO sounds preposterous for me - at this rate we could just start writing about how seniors trash all other football players in Podunk High School, or "look, this article is 10KB and has 20 sources" - most of which are simply news reports just after the match to support adding the score in the table. Initially, my issue was indeed to delete them, but that's not my point anymore. Instead, I want editors to look into any way to improve the presentation of content.

Cbl62 has presented me two books about Rutgers to defend the assertion that we absolutely need seasons articles. These books are exactly what we need. Not that I saw them used much in the seasons articles. In fact, my argument is that assurances that "we'll eventually fix this issue, bear with us while we spend thousands of hours improving the content" ring hollow because we have tons of 5-, 7-, 10-year-old stubs that haven't been expanded yet, and new stubs are being created. The community is patently unable to maintain all of the articles at once without overstretching themselves; and because their consensus appears to be contrary to the policies and guidelines mentioned above, I ask others to weigh in. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 18:39, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Szmenderowiecki (talk) 18:39, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Notifying editors who participated on my talk or in the AfD. Cbl62, Jweiss11, Qwaiiplayer, Alvaldi, PCN02WPS, Ejgreen77 Szmenderowiecki (talk) 02:55, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• @Szmenderowiecki: I haven't read any of this yet, but I think you might want to move it to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football, which is more relevant and likely to be seen (WP:American football isn't very active). BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:58, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Sure, I can do that. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 19:12, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • @Szmenderowiecki: just a heads-up that none of the pings above worked - you need to include your "~~~~" signature in the same edit as the ping if you want the user to actually get the notification; if there's no signature, there's no notification. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 22:01, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • Do they work now? Szmenderowiecki (talk) 02:55, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

      @Szmenderowiecki no, I didn't get a notification. Again, you have to add the ping and the signature in the same edit; here, you just added the signature, not the ping. They both have to be added at the same time. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 04:01, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

      • • Cbl62, Jweiss11, Qwaiiplayer, Alvaldi, PCN02WPS, Ejgreen77 Szmenderowiecki (talk) 04:52, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Consider starting with one decade of one program. Do an individual nomination of a season. If merged or deleted, rinse and repeat on a few more. If results are continuously to not keep, consider a few multi-page noms. If a full decade ends up not being kept, reconvene on what conclusions can be drawn for efficient follow-up.—Bagumba (talk) 19:57, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't seem like those Rutgers books are actually independent? The first is by a former Rutgers football player, the second is by a Rutgers employee. They don't represent attention from "the world at large". JoelleJay (talk) 22:07, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If it wasnt self-published, it seems to be an indication that the publisher believed the topic was worthy of "attention". —Bagumba (talk) 15:31, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't change the lack of independence. Autobiographies don't become independent simply through being published reputably. JoelleJay (talk) 17:17, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. I was confusing with WP:SPS. —Bagumba (talk) 17:30, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment (Summoned by bot): This fails WP:RFCBRIEF by a long shot. TarnishedPath^talk 23:54, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. I have offered my thoughts on your talk page but I'll repeat a few key points here. Focusing on hundreds and thousands of articles at once does not advance the ball. I don't think a mass RfC is necessary or appropriate. There are, as in any area of Wikipedia, articles that fail notability standards or that need improvement. That said, I absolutely disagree that this is a "Lugnuts II" situation as you suggest.

• 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 National Football League (NFL), was founded. There was professional football prior to 1920, largely in the state of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the early years of the NFL didn't look much different from pro football prior to 1920. The top-end of college football remained better covered by the media, better attended, and essentially more prestigious probably until the 1950s. Second, none of the college football regulars like me or Cbl62 think that 2022 Tufts Jumbos football team should be a stand-alone article. That article was created by by a relatively new editor who hasn't participated in discussion here. You can read the comment I left on that editor's talk page here recommending that such articles not be created in that form. Third, with respect to the description of "obtuseness" above, that was specifically in response to Szmenderowiecki's failure to make a distinction in notability between 1) 1873 NYU Violets football team, a micro, proto-season that apparently and probably garnered little-to-no coverage in contemporary periodicals, and 2) 2021 Cincinnati Bearcats football team, a season for team that made the final four of the top tier of college football and has garnered extensive, national coverage. And there was also a failure by Szmenderowiecki to recognize that 1926 NYU Violets football team and 1927 NYU Violets football team should be assumed to have more or less the same level of notability, despite the fact that the 1927 article is just a short lead plus a well-sourced schedule table, while the 1926 article has substantive body development. The inherent notability of a subject is independent of the circumstantial level of work that's been done about that subject here on Wikipedia. Finally, as for the suggestions that "assurances...ring hollow because we have tons of 5-, 7-, 10-year-old stubs that haven't been expanded yet", well there's no time limit on Wikipedia; see 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 Ivy League and Patriot League teams. Today they are members of Division I FCS, what you might call the second tier of college football. Some of these teams are in big metro areas (Boston, New York, Philadelphia) and some are in relatively small towns (Ithaca, Hanover, Easton). Yet I didn't go far for my independent sources; I relied on the newspaper clippings readily available at Newspapers.com and in a couple public library databases to which I had access. In many cases this meant that I did not have access to the "local" newspaper covering the specific town where a given university was located. And yet I can tell you that for the time period, say, 1920 to 2000, I had no problem at all finding 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:RSPRIMARY, I disagree with the characterization of newspaper game reports as "primary sources." A sportwriter is independent of the participants in the event, and most definitely is contributing "analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas" observed at the event (as listed at 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:PAGEDECIDE, or 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:TNT of articles in this category and more for a long term incremental nomination of problematic articles at 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:Reliable third-party source. I would very much support a medium-term goal of deleting/replacing all references to it, along with other well-used 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:NSEASONS to minimize WP:INHERITED notability. That of course would need to be a separate discussion that takes place on the 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:MERGE/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 WP:SIGCOV presented on the season. @Paulmcdonald: Do you or others have any objection to my taking this to AfD? Or perhaps simply redirecting to Malone Pioneers? Or redirect to 2010 NAIA football season? Cbl62 (talk) 03:16, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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, Jonesboro A&M Aggies football, 1920–1929 purports to cover the entire decade from 1920 to 1929 but it has zero content on eight of the ten seasons.

Another example is Louisiana Normal football, 1907–1909 which has information limited to one game over the three-season span of the article. See also Haskell Indians football, 1963–1969 (zero content on five of the seven years); College of Emporia Fighting Presbies football, 1900–1909 (zero content on 1905-1909); Dakota State Trojans football, 2010–2019 (zero content on 2010-2014); and Northeast Center Indians football, 1931–1939 (zero content on 1935-1939).

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]