Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Naming Conventions

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[edit] Proposed new minimum guideline for individual team seasons

I'd like to propose that we don't create any individual team season articles that include only tables (such as team schedule) and infoboxes and the like. If the team is important enough to have an article just for that season, then someone should be willing to take the time to write some prose about the team. If an article does not contain that, then I think it should be tagged {{expand}} or {{cleanup}} for a period of no less than two weeks, and then sent to {{prod}} or AfD if the problem has not been corrected. Johntex\talk 16:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I suggested this and I support this 100%.--NMajdan•talk 17:09, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Nmajdan - I didn't mean to steal your suggestion, which you first made at the AfD, I think. I'm editting fast and furiously right now! Any other criteria we should set as a minimum? I don't want to see us get too rigid about this, but maybe require it to be in at least 2 categories and be at least minimally wikified (link to school, college football...)? Johntex\talk 17:16, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
No, I dont mind at all. I didn't mean to imply that you were "stealing" my suggestion, I'm glad it was brought over here where the rest of the WPCFB participants can see it. Its hard to set more requirements cause there are always special cases. Any article should contain some parenthetical description of the team whether it be a description of how they are expected to do in the pre-season or the past accomplishments (and expectations) of those on the roster. But basically, as you said, no article with just a schedule and infobox.--NMajdan•talk 17:23, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Idea: For any article that would only require results tables and rudimentary prose (like 1 sentence or 2) maybe a "decade" files, such as "Duke Football in the 1960's" or some such. Or would it just be worthwile to put the results tables into the main article, and just accept a longer main article? We could beef up the articles by decade with things like notable players, key rivalries, NFL draftees, etc. etc. Would that provide a managable number of articles, and help with notability problems? --Jayron32 19:02, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Colorado Buffaloes football has one alternative. However, if some prose is provided, I wouldn't be against a decade page.--NMajdan•talk 19:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea. I would suggest that merging into an article by time period of head coach may be better than decades. For example, Texas Longhorns football under John Mackovic. This would lend itself to the creation of some prose about the tenure of that coach if nothing else. Johntex\talk 19:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Agree; head coach is a much better grouping than decades which are a pretty arbitrary compared to the ebb and flow of college football fortunes. Particularly noteworthy seasons with their own articles are easily linked to from within that article and it parallels nicely with coaches' bio articles.
As to season criteria for notability; if I had reached the AFD discussion before it was withdrawn, I would have commented that I think the season articles will be pretty efficient at self-selection; it would take a pretty hardcore (and somewhat masochistic) fan to chronicle the mediocre or truly tragic seasons of their favorite team. But as for the suggested minimum criteria, I think number of article categories is pretty arbitrary and meaningless. As long as the article holds to normal wikistyle formating, has a consistent presentation to other season articles and is linked appropriately, I don't think it is a big deal to have the individual season article; after all, Wikipedia is not paper. AUTiger ʃ talk/work 20:21, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Hey, I take offense at that. Of course, I didn't know Colorado was going to go 0-6 (and still going down...) this season. But, the page should still exist since it ties the Colorado record for consecutive losses (and could break it this coming weekend). 2006 Colorado Buffaloes football team. Back on topic, I like the coach grouping as well. Then, the coach articles could link to that page which contains details on the seasons in their tenure. I'd also like to point out the Season format for suggestions on things to include and also on that page is an infobox that should be on all season pages, to help provide quick information and suggestions on minimum items to include. --MECU≈talk 12:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
My condolenses Mecu - I am guessing that Autiger is talking mainly about long-ago seasons. If so, I agree with what he is saying, it is unlikely I will go back and write individual season articles on years when Texas did not do well. I think that is what he is saying. However, you have an excellent point. A terrible season is notable for being terrible, especially if it was unexpected. If you already have the article started at the beginning of the season, you are more likely to finish it than if you have to go back and write about 19__ from scratch. As to the template you link to, I think it is awesome, but I don't think it can be a firm criteria at this point. I don't think any of our old season articles have that info yet. I do support it is a "suggested" inclusion for new articles. Johntex\talk 15:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Definitely not directed at you Mecu; as Johntex says, I meant the historic seasons. For my own part, an article on Auburn Tigers under Doug Barfield covering the (few) highlights of that relatively recent era is more than sufficient. Auburn Tigers under Shug Jordan is much happier, but still much easier to deal with than the 25 years or 3 decades he coached. And yes, certain bad seasons or strings (Columbia anyone?) are notable simply because they are so bad.
My condolences as well on the surprisingly disappointing season your Buffs are having. I was actually hoping they would hold on for the upset over UGA. AUTiger ʃ talk/work 20:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Oooh. I like that. The head coaches idea improves articles in a couple of ways. 1) Cross references between the coaches article and the teams articles improve both articles (we can have a "main" section in the coaches bio article, and another sort of "see also" in the teams/coaches tenure to cross reference to each other.) 2) It improves coverage of teams that would not otherwise receive as much coverage (I.E. "Duke Football" might get NO team history pages beyond the main one, but "Duke Football under Steve Spurrier" would be notable because a) It is perhaps the last time Duke had a winning season and b) Steve Spurrier makes it notable.) Just be certain to establish a consistent naming convention. Nothing makes a project look cruddy like having all of the similar articles named different (One named "Steve Spurrier's Tenure at Duke" and another named "Florida under Steve Spurrier" and a third named "Steve Spurrier as Head Coach of South Carolina" would be bad. Pick on convention and stick to it for ALL of these type of articles. --Jayron32 03:10, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you, Jayron32. The pages should definately have a common naming convention. Of the ones you presented, I like {{team}} under {{coach}} best. Just so that I'm certain I'm getting it, these coach/team articles are to replace separate season articles in most cases with only the really important seasons being broken out into a separate section? If possible, it would be nice to get some trivia and trends for each coach's tenure (consecutive sell-outs, win-loss records, away-home records, etc.). z4ns4tsu\talk 13:49, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I dont think its supposed to replace what we have now as far as 2006 teams etc, etc. But its solves the problem of, say, 1902 team. I don't think we should delete the 2005 & 2006 Longhorn pages and combine them under Texas Longhorns under Mack Brown, but instead of created a 1985 Oklahoma Sooners football team page, create a Oklahoma Sooners football under Barry Switzer page. I believe it should be more of a retroactive thing for those wanting to create articles on past teams. For instance, given the content of 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers football team, I think that should eventually be merged under Nebraska Cornhuskers football under Tom Osborne. Also, as you can tell, I believe the naming convention should be {{year}} {{school}} {{nickname}} football under {{coach}}.--NMajdan•talk 14:57, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok, building on your suggestion Nmajdan, how about {{school}} {{nickname}} football under {{coach}} ({{year range}})? So it would look like Oklahoma Sooners football under Bob Stoops (1999 - Present) or Nebraska Cornhuskers football under Tom Osborne (1973 - 1997). z4ns4tsu\talk 15:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I largely agree with NMajdan. For combined articles going by the period of the coach, I would go with {{school}} {{nickname}} football under {{coach}}. I don't see a need to have the years in the title for that kind of article. One distinction is that I don't want to bias us against an individual team season article if it makes sense. For example, if we ever get around to creating Texas Longhorns under Darrell K. Royal, it would be OK to still have 1970 Texas Longhorn football team, IF AND ONLY IF, there is enough information to justify a seperate article. If we think about our Featured Article criteria, "summary style" is recommended for long articles. Therefore, the article for each of his 3 championship seasons may be summarized very briefly in that article and then covered in their own article. The other seasons could just be covered in the main article for his whole tenure.
I think we have to accept that Wikipedia has a bias towards the recent. That is lamentable in some ways, but understandable at the same time. Whatever we think about individual Pokemon characters having articles, I doubt any of us would say that we need to go to the same length to document some similar craze that occurred in the 1800's or 1500's. Similarly, it is natural that we may have 20 or so team season articles for 2006 and only have 2 or 3 articles that talk about specific teams from 1970. (For 1970, there are competing claims for the championship, so I could see how a good article could be written for each of them if someone spends the time). As Nmajdan says, this technigue of combined years helps us cover the other teams retrospectively.
I do see some role for this going forward though. For example, Baylor University does not even have a page for the entire football program. Someone could decide that Baylor Bears football under Guy Morriss is an easier starting point than Baylor Bears football. I think that would be OK if they want to start with either one. Johntex\talk 15:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Re-set indents. I agree with you Johntex, and I think we'll find that next year, a lot of the 2006 season pages aren't needed any more and what information they have can be summarized on a coach/team page. I fully expect that the only information that will be notable about the 2006 season for the Sooners will be Peterson breaking the school rushing record, the Oregon game, and whatever bowl game we end up in. At the end of the year, it may make sense to condense it under the "Sooners under Stoops" umbrella page. As for the years, I was thinking that it would be easier to find info about a specific year's team if you were looking for history but didn't know who the coach was at the time. For instance, if I wanted to look up the 1980 Cornhuskers, I would not (before today) have known to look under a Tom Osborne coach/team page. z4ns4tsu\talk 16:18, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, finding the information is always tricky. I think we need to make liberal use of redirects. For example, we have one for for whether someone types "...Longhorn..." or "...Longhorns..." (with/witout the "s") for the 2005 and 2006 season pages. Linking from the main team page is also important, as are categories. Johntex\talk 16:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I have a small issue with this suggestion. I don't like deleting valid information from articles, but thats just me. I don't like the idea of deleting all the information from the 2006 pages just to get them on a broader article. It basically makes all the effort that goes into the page during the season worthless. I know that if I were to do a 2007 article knowing that most of it will be deleted in February and put on another article, I probably wouldn't put forth the effort to keep it updated through the season. If a 2007 article is started on, say, Middle Tennessee State, and then orphaned halfway through the season, then that would be a great candidate to merge with the broader article.--NMajdan•talk 21:02, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I hear you NMajdan. I don't advocate that articles should automatically be condensed down the road. I agree with you that it would be hard to put heart and soul into the 2006 page if we know that is likely to happen. However, I don't want to close it off and say we should never merge. I think it just depends on how good a job we do writing the article and so on. If the individual season articles are well written, then I would lean towards keeping them and then writing the "___ team under ___ coach" in summary style, referring back to the individual seasons pages. Johntex\talk 21:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Did we come to a consensus here? If I may summarize/propose; I believe the standard should be that the majority of college football seasons prior to 2000 should be addressed in summary in an article for tenure of the coach of that season (i.e. Auburn Tigers football under John Heisman). Any notable historic season that can support a sufficiently developed article may have an individual article linked from the coach's article (maintaining the short summary there). AUTiger ʃ talk/work 15:10, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I think that sounds good. The one thing I would like to see mentioned is that it is OK to create the year page first before the coach page, if circumstances warrant. For instance, I may someday want to write an article on UT's first season. It might make sense to do that before writing an article on the first coach. I think he only lasted one or two seasons, and I doubt I'll find much information on him other than what pertains to the first season. Similar circumstances may apply in other cases. Johntex\talk 15:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Certainly it would acceptable for a notable year page to come first. AUTiger ʃ talk/work 18:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Agree -- I like the guideline as proposed. z4ns4tsu\talk 17:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Agree -- It's good to see a set of guidelines. I've done work on Minnesota history pages, I'll work on injecting more information, as I have been lazy in doing so. But I will work on doing that on the pages I create, as well as any future ones.

What is the final consensus on historical pages. Should my history pages go by decade (like it looks like LSU started to do at one point) or should I link them by coach, and if so, what is the proper format (i.e. Minnesota Golden Gophers football under Glen Mason or Minnesota Golden Gophers football under Glen Mason (1997 - present). --Colslax 05:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe the consensus is to break them by coach and that the simpler title is to be preferred, therefore: Minnesota Golden Gophers football under Glen Mason. Johntex\talk 05:46, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Great, thanks. -Colslax 07:46, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I have a question along these lines. First, everyone look at the above discussion about people deleting a player article. But my question is, is it worth my time to make a 1997 Tennessee Volunteers football team article, similar to the 1998 Tennessee Volunteers football team that I started. The 1997 team was a conference champion that went to the main Bowl Alliance game that year. They featured the #1 draft pick (Peyton Manning) and many other first day picks. There was also the Manning-Woodson-ESPN-Heisman Controversy. I think it would be an interesting addition, but I'm not going to spend the time that I spent on the 1998 article, if it is going to be jumped on like the James Wilhoit article. CJC47 16:45, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I think there is a difference of notability between James Wilhoit and the 1997 Tennessee Volunteers. The Vols were, as you said, conference champions (notable in the SEC), had Peyton Manning as their quarterback (very notable person, so lends notability to the team especially since it was his last season), and were involved in a controversy of national scope (notable). On the other hand, Wilhoit is a four-year starter (neat, but not notable in and of itself) who has not won a national award, has not been involved in a major play on the caliber of "Wide Right" and has not yet been drafted. The main criterion for inclusion in WP is notability. IMHO, Wilhoit has not met it yet but the '97 Vols probably would (depending on the presentation of the subject in the article). z4ns4tsu\talk 17:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I may be a little late in discussing this issue but I feel its important so I'll make my voice heard. I am against the idea of creating articles like "SCLSU Mud Dogs under Coach Klein." I think that it should be organized by decade, except for the current decade and except for exceptional seasons (i.e. national championships). For example, I think its perfectly fine right now to have a season page for a team for each season in the 2000's, however, once 2010 rolls around, I think we should condense that into one main article, such as "SCLSU Football, 2000-2009". For teams that won a national championship in the 2000's, keep the single season page and link to it from the condensed "decade" page. I think it would be a travesty to lose all of the information in the 2005 Texas Longhorn football team for a condensed version either organized by decade or by coach. As for the early seasons (1900's) that have been called into question: Having them organized by coach would make a mess. I contribute mostly to LSU stuff and I know that in LSU's early history they rarely had a coach for more than 3 years, often having a coach for only one year. So instead of 1 article focusing on 10 years, we have 7 articles with different coach's to cover that schools 10 year stretch. I know that a UGA contributor had problems with that already. I know it was argued that organizing season by coach would help to document the coach, but shouldn't that be done on the coach's bio page? Thanks. Seancp 23:26, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Non-Compliance?

So what do we do about articles that do not comply with our decision? I am referring to the following templates and the articles it links: Template:GeorgiaFootballSeasons (talk, links, edit). All they have is the schedule, an infobox, and a brief 3-4 sentence summary. I posted a comment to the user's talk page and referred him here.--NMajdan•talk 22:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Hello all, I am the one that created Template:GeorgiaFootballSeasons (talk, links, edit) and the handful of related articles. I got the idea from Template:LSUFootballSeasons (talk, links, edit) and Template:AuburnFootballSeasons (talk, links, edit) and the articles that had been started relative to those two templates. Even though I had only completed 8 articles before being directed here, I was already feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of ceating articles for each year for the Bulldogs. Now that I have read the discussion and the consensus view, I have to say that I am a little relieved. As I understand it, the idea is to group seasons under the head coach, but I cannot tell if a naming format has been settled upon. Additionally, in some cases, single season articles may still be appropriate. With that in mind, would 1927 Georgia Bulldogs football team be an example of an appropriate single season article (assuming expansion). 1927 is the first season in which Georgia could stake a claim to the national title.--Tlmclain | Talk 23:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
You are correct. It would be <School><Nickname> football under <coach>, or Georgia Bulldogs football under Pop Warner. I believe the LSU template you are referring to may have been the one that sparked the discussion. As far as the 1927 article being appropriate, I leave that to your discretion. If you feel you have provide a detailed article pertaining to the 1927 team, complete with analysis of the season and possibly game summaries, then go for it. Take a look at some of the better articles that are for current seasons to get an idea what we're going for. 2005 Texas Longhorn football team is a good article candidate, for instance. Also, I took a look at your article in your sandbox and thats a start. I know its hard writing an article about a team from 80+ years ago but I think the more information you can include the better. One thing that would be easy to add would be information on players on those teams. Any All-Americans or national award winners? Any record breakers? Also, any significant matchups? But the format itself is a start.--NMajdan•talk 14:11, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your help and comments. At this point, I have corrected the articles for the 1892 - 1896 Georgia Bulldogs football teams by creating Georgia Bulldogs football under Charles Herty, Georgia Bulldogs football under Ernest Brown, Georgia Bulldogs football under Robert Winston and Georgia Bulldogs football under Pop Warner and making related edits to templates, etc. Although I haven't made a final decision, I will likely merge 1920 Georgia Bulldogs football team into a to-be-created Georgia Bulldogs football under Herman Stegeman and 1927 Georgia Bulldogs football team a to-be-created Georgia Bulldogs football under Kid Woodruff. --Tlmclain | Talk 15:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Starting with 1895 Auburn Tigers football team have begun marking other single season pages for merger into a page that follows our agreed-upon format of <School><Nickname> football under <coach>.--Tlmclain | Talk 15:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Compliance Question

What should we do about pages that do not conform to the various criteria that have been agreed upon? Take a look at LSU Tigers football, 1893-1899. This page is at odds with two "policies" that have been created to standardize pages. First, it does not follow the format for grouping seasons under a coach's name - i.e., <School><Nickname> football under <coach>. Second, it does not use {{CFB Schedule Start}}, {{CFB Schedule Entry}}, and {{CFB Schedule End}} to create the schedules. To me, there is nothing inherently wrong with grouping seasons by years instead of by coaches so long as we don't have bunches of single seasons. However, I don't know how much standardization others think is important in this area. As to the use of the schedule templates on season pages, uniformity seems to be a little more important with schedules. On the other hand, I don't want to be too bureaucratic. What do others think?--Tlmclain | Talk 17:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, if memory serves, it was this page (and the others) that sparked the conversation then ended with the decision to create the <School><Nickname> football under <coach> format. Unfortunately, as it is my understanding, we are just a community of like-minded contributors. We do not 'own' any of the actual articles. Feel free to be bold and make whatever changes you feel should be make. The original author should assume good faith in your edits. Or you can go to the article's talk page or the primary contributor's talk page and voice your opinions there. Regarding the schedule templates, those are still fairly new so the majority of articles are not using it. I do hope that during the offseason, we can go back and convert them but I definitely hope the template will become the standard as the next season's articles develop. We decided to group by coach since it was more logical, especially for coaches who coached a long time. If a school had a string of 1 or 2 year coaches, then I could see grouping those into one article. I'll use the Georgia articles since those are your primary focus. Basically until 1909, most coaches were only there one or two years. I would have no problem grouping those by coach or by decade; it would be author's preference. However, with W. A. Cunningham, who coached from 1910 to 1919, I believe that would be best under the decided format. Same for Harry Mehre, Wally Butts, and so forth.--NMajdan•talk 18:19, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with NMajdan, common sense should override our guideline, which we could probably put on it's own subpage, copy the discussion to the talk page of that and tag it as a guideline? As NMajdan said, having "LSU Tigers football under Albert P. Simmons" would likely be a very short article and never have much information. Combining it with surrounding years by decade or other short term coaches if perfectly okay. However, "Notre Dame football under Tyrone Willingham", although only 3 years, shouldn't included with the previous or following coach since there is likely enough information to make a featured article about that topic. I would think it's going to be fairly common that early on for schools we will group by several coaches by decade or other reasonable time groupings as most schools suffer the same problems (some didn't, so it can't be a blanket statement). Even still, some articles, like "Penn State Nittany Lions under Joe Paterno" could be split into several articles, as his 40 year career would be too long for one article, Splitting by time periods that make sense may be appropriate there. Does anyone object to my posting the results of the previous discussion into a page and tagging it as a guideline and moving the discussion to the talk page? --MECU≈talk 20:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
No objection here.--NMajdan•talk 20:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Fine by me, although you may want to shorten it some. Another idea would be to standardize a tag for the talk page of articles that need work. What I posted here may be a good start.--Tlmclain | Talk 20:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


I posted this about weeks ago and not received any comments. I'd like to hear your comments please.

I may be a little late in discussing this issue but I feel its important so I'll make my voice heard. I am against the idea of creating articles like "SCLSU Mud Dogs under Coach Klein." I think that it should be organized by decade, except for the current decade and except for exceptional seasons (i.e. national championships). For example, I think its perfectly fine right now to have a season page for a team for each season in the 2000's, however, once 2010 rolls around, I think we should condense that into one main article, such as "SCLSU Football, 2000-2009". For teams that won a national championship in the 2000's, keep the single season page and link to it from the condensed "decade" page. I think it would be a travesty to lose all of the information in the 2005 Texas Longhorn football team for a condensed version either organized by decade or by coach. As for the early seasons (1900's) that have been called into question: Having them organized by coach would make a mess. I contribute mostly to LSU stuff and I know that in LSU's early history they rarely had a coach for more than 3 years, often having a coach for only one year. So instead of 1 article focusing on 10 years, we have 7 articles with different coach's to cover that schools 10 year stretch. I know that a UGA contributor had problems with that already. I know it was argued that organizing season by coach would help to document the coach, but shouldn't that be done on the coach's bio page? Thanks. Seancp 23:26, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I would like to continue creating LSU pages organized by decade. I feel that coach summaries should be on the coaches bio page. I won't start doing this if the community is overwhelmingly against it, however. So I guess this is a request for comments as I try to get some dialog started back on this issue. Thanks. Seancp 20:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Sean, we'd always conceded that it's appopriate to have individual articles for recent (and historic) single seasons for full treatment of those subjects/events. Clearly the 2005 Texas article (being a BCS Championship team) would never need to be removed. Historically, any undefeated or champsionship team's season is a ready candidate for a dedicated article. One big benefit of history pages like UWiki Researchers under Jimmy Wales is that it prevents redundant information (similar to relational db theory in computer science) because the article is the intersection of two sets of information. Clearly both the coach and the football team articles want to cover this information - this allows a clean way to keep the full treatment of that period in one location (eliminating redundancy and easing maintenance) with short summaries in and links from the other two articles. It's harder to do that with decade structure that is arbitrary based on a time period that doesn't relate nearly as strongly to the ups and downs of a football team's fortunes as coaching changes. I sympathize with the short-term coach issues (Auburn's early history is just like LSU and UGA's) but we can treat that as an exception and handling it outside the guidelines. AUTiger ʃ talk/work 01:51, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
If you read the above, this should be treated as a guideline. If you think that having "XZYZ under Bob Jones" who was a coach for one year isn't appropriate then don't do it. Group it with another coach before or after it. The problem with grouping by years it's it's too arbitrary. Programs change drastically under a coach and many coaches start or end the year before or after, so it really doesn't solve the problem. As for condensing, I am, and I believe most others here are too, strongly against that. We had a little discussion about this before and it was decided that even (for example) the 2006 Colorado Buffaloes football team page should be kept because it has good information and if folks were worried about it getting deleted afterwards, they wouldn't start it to begin with and likely wouldn't have such as good page in the end. If the 2006 Colorado page got deleted now, why would I start the 2007 page? What happens if they win the Big 12 or a NC (crazier things have happened)? The resulting page wouldn't be as good as if we had started at the beginning and we may turn away editors. You can see the previous discussion at [1] which was overwhelmingly keep all. --MECU≈talk 05:34, 6 January 2007 (UTC)