Talk:Southwest Athletic Conference

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Is "disbandment" a word? RickK 04:04 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yep. [1] Hephaestos 04:08 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Article title

When was the SWC ever referred to as the "Southwest Athletic Conference"? I've never heard of it being called anything but the "Southwest Conference". The article Southwest Conference should stand on its own, and discuss the conference including Texas and Texas A&M, among others, which disbanded in 1996. The article Southwest Athletic Conference should redirect to Southwestern Athletic Conference. Microtonal 1 July 2005 03:19 (UTC)

Also, the SWC has nothing whatsoever to do with the American Southwest Conference. I don't know why they point to each other with "see also" links. Microtonal 1 July 2005 03:22 (UTC)

Unless someone objects between now and then, I will be making my above proposed change tomorrow (Fri, 8 July). Microtonal 7 July 2005 21:41 (UTC)

Content moved. Microtonal 8 July 2005 22:04 (UTC)

Yes, content was moved; nice job. This is another reason I left; the content was moved; the page and its history was not. Not only that, the original title was the official name of the organization, which is what it should be listed under. That's what redirects are for. I wish there were more people on this thing who would bother to crack a book once in a great while. Hephaestos|[[User talk:Hephaestos|§]] 02:14, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I've never seen a source that calls the Southwest Conference anything other than the Southwest Conference. If you've come up with some other "official name of the organization", you should provide a source.

As for your other point, would you like me to do a proper page move? It's easy enough. By the way, does it not seem rather pointless for you to come back to Wikipedia just to complain about why you left Wikipedia in the first place? A bit curmudgeonly, even. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 04:41, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh by the way. "I've never seen a source." You admit you've never even <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22southwest+athletic+conference%22&btnG=Google+Search">Googled</a> the goddamned thing. And yet you have the gall to even edit this article? Your bio says you're at UT; why don't you try going to the goddamed library?

First of all, the Southwestern Athletic Conference (currently Alabama State, Alabama A&M, UAPB, Jackson State, Grambling State, etc.) has exactly nothing whatsoever to do with the Southwest Conference (defunct, was Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Rice, etc.) - they are, and always have been, completely independent entities. To my knowledge, there has never been any such athletic organization as the Southwest Athletic Conference, except in the world of pervasive typological mistakes.

Second of all, if you're just going to be an asshole about it, I see no reason to continue to interact with you, and you have no reason to extend your return to Wikipedia. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 02:14, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

So I see that you've decided to go back to your "official title", even though you can't/won't provide a source that supports your assertion that the conference was ever called anything other than the "Southwest Conference". I won't argue with you anymore, because you're clearly unwilling to be rational about it. I'm removing this article from my watchlist. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 17:07, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Good. Glad you took it off your watchlist. I see you still can't even be arsed to Google "southwest athletic conference" so why were you even "working" on this one? Try doing a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Southwest_Athletic_Conference&diff=29301901&oldid=28612976">diff every now and again. Your "contributions" to this article are pathetic. A wave of school spirit over our national football championship gave me the idea to come back to the article that I and a number of other UT alumni wrote the vast majority of, and as usual with Wikipedia, it was completely screwed up by people who don't know the first thing about the subject they're dicking around with. 65.23.171.130

Google isn't a source, it's a search engine. These are two completely different things with entirely unrelated purposes. Whether you're unaware of that distinction or simply don't care, I won't speculate. And yes, contrary to your entirely self-serving assumption to the contrary, I did do a search on "Southwest Athletic Conference". Interestingly enough, however, all I found was the archive at Texas Tech that can't even decide what it wants to call the conference, a bunch of pages that lift this inconsistent text directly from the Tech archive finding guide, and hundreds of mistaken truncations of Southwestern Athletic Conference, which as we have already established, is a completely different conference. I am at a loss to explain why you see fit to behave the way you are based on such scant, if not downright irrelevant, evidence. This article isn't yours and you have absolutely no rights over it, so for you to act as if I am somehow screwing up your allegedly brilliant and flawless contributions is not only monumentally arrogant, but entirely contrary to the purpose, spirit, and practicalities of Wikipedia.

My request for you to provide a source still stands. I have stacks of media guides, magazines and books that never refer to it as anything other than the Southwest Conference, which I will happily - dare I say, gleefully - cite upon request. What do you have, other than insults and pomposity? Put up or shut up. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 07:37, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Fine, don't darken the door of a library. You're free to move it back (if you know how). I've ceased to care about the title. Just leave the page history this time. Several people contributed substantially to this article, and sadly, you're not one of them. Hephaestos|[[User talk:Hephaestos|&#167;]]

That burden of proof is a little too heavy for you, isn't it? It'd probably be easier to lift if you'd bother exercising some intellectual honesty. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 20:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

The article's previous name should be used to remove confusion. I'm a Generation-Yer and grew up with the name "Southwest Conference." Notable publications are using the "Southwest Conference" name instead of "Southwest Athletic Conference." ESPN - "In 1996, the defection of four schools -- Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech -- essentially killed the Southwest Conference..." [2] Handbook of Texas uses the entry name "Southwest Conference" instead of anything with the "Athletic" name - "The Southwest Conference is an athletic conference made up of eight Texas universities." [3] --J. Nguyen 17:38, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind, I will be just neutral in this argument. NCAA.org says with its official name, "Southwest Athletic Conference." "Among Division I conferences, the Southwest Athletic Conference followed the Pac-10 with five total championships." [4]. --J. Nguyen 17:49, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

The proper name is Southwest Athletic Conference. While commonly referred to as the Southwest Conference, this was merely a common shortening. This can be shown from the Texas Almanac [5] (see the first line of the editors note), several sources in the Texas Tech library [6], including, most impressively in my opinion, The day-to-day business records of the Southwest Athletic Conference. However, in order to avoid confusion, I'm going to add a link to the top of the page that reads:

This page is about the now defunct Southwest Athletic Conference (SWC). For the unrelated and currently still active conference abbreviated as the SWAC, see Southwestern Athletic Conference.

Feel free to tweak this message, or let me know what you think. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 06:32, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

This is exactly what I'm talking about, though. The finding guide at UT lists the "Creator" of the documents as Southwest Conference and the "Title" of the archive as Southwest Athletic Conference Records. The first paragraph of the scope sketch uses Southwest Conference, while the third paragraph uses Southwest Athletic Conference. If the web page you're trying to use as proof of what the name is can't even decide what it thinks the name is, then it isn't proof that the name is what you say it is. Having had some experience working in research/archival libraries, I'm not at all confident that the average archivist would know enough about sports to understand that there's a difference between one name and the other, or that such a difference is important (because of potential confusion with other conferences). I would like to see a primary source, published by the conference itself, that refers to the conference as the Southwest Athletic Conference.

As for J. Nguyen's second comment, a search of NCAA.org reveals no hits for the string "Southwest Athletic Conference". Furthermore, the NCAA record books and all of the member schools' media gudes (that I've seen, at least) use Southwest Conference throughout, as do several old Street and Smith's preseason magazines that I have and every book I've seen published on the subject. I find it very odd that nobody whose word has even a whiff of officiality - not the NCAA, not ESPN, not Street and Smith's, not the member schools, not countless authors, journalists, commentors and broadcasters - has ever actually used this "official name", yet there are some here who have invested a great deal of emotion and ego into insisting that it is the only possible title for this page. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 20:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I personally don't care whether the official page name is Southwest Conference or Southwest Athletic Conference, as long as one redirects to the other. While we have shown that there is some confusion, or at least some over-use of the shortened version, it is at least SOMETIMES called the Southwest Athletic Conference. On the other hand, the only reason the SWAC would be called the Southwest Athletic Conference is due to being mistaken about the actual name. You will never find Southwest Athletic Conference on official SWAC documents except if there is a typo. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 00:47, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

My argument is that without bona fide evidence that the conference itself used Southwest Athletic Conference, there is just no reasonable basis whatsoever for associating the one with the other in any way, whatever Google or some research library says (because primary sources trump secondary/tertiary sources in every possible case). As I said in my original comment on this subject, Southwest Athletic Conference should redirect to Southwestern Athletic Conference, because that is at least a legitimate and well-attested typological mistake, but having Southwest Athletic Conference redirect to Southwest Conference, or vice versa, is simply wrong. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 16:12, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

How are the official records of an organization not a primary source? Granted they're not consistant, as you pointed out, but doesn't the fact that the day-to-day business records at least sometimes used Southwest Athletic Conference show that the conference itself sometimes used Southwest Athletic Conference? EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 16:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

You're mistaking a library catalogue listing of the official records with the official records themselves - i.e., you're confusing a tertiary source with a primary source. The descriptive texts and titles for both the UT and the TTU archives were written by librarians, not by anyone actually representing the conference, either officially or unofficially. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 16:41, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Google must be lying then. Results 1 - 10 of about 80 from ncaa.org for "Southwest Athletic Conference". (0.09 seconds) [7] --J. Nguyen 00:48, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I didn't use Google, I used the search window on NCAA.org. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 16:12, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Microtonal says: "I would like to see a primary source, published by the conference itself, that refers to the conference as the Southwest Athletic Conference." Well I would too. Or one that refers to it as "Southwest Conference." Preferably its founding charter. Thing is, you're at UT. You've got PCL. I'm in North Dakota. - Hephaestos|[[User talk:Hephaestos|&#167;]] 19:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

If I had the time to do that, I would have done it already. I intend to, and I might actually get a chance after I take my comprehensive exams at the end of March, but until then, I'm simply too busy. Given the evidence that I've seen up to this point (cited above), however, I have few doubts about what I'd find in the archives. Microtonal...(Put your head on my shoulder) 21:37, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

You all seem to be chasing red herrings anyway, since the Wikipedia:Naming conventions are to use the most common name. "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." Gene Nygaard 17:32, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, as I've said before, I really don't care which one is the actual title of the page. I think the basis of the debate is really whether Southwest Athletic Conference should redirect to Southwest Conference or Southwestern Athletic Conference. I guess the argument is that if the SWC used this as an official name, it should redirect to the SWC page; if not, it should redirect to the SWAC page as a common misspelling. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 18:45, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

P.S.- At the time of this writing, Southwestern Conference is a red-link and doesn't redirect to Southwestern Athletic Conference. Would anyone be opposed to adding this redirect? EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 18:47, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Update: I have created this redirect. Let me know if there's any problem with this. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 00:47, 11 February 2006 (UTC)