Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Notability/Archive 1

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Too inclusive

In Division I-FBS (formerly I-A) only, the player has been selected first team all conference - I think this is too inclusive. How many players are selected first team all-conference each year? Probably over 200. A good portion of these players will go pro, so will be notable for that reason, but for players who don't go pro or at least earn All-American status I don't think we should have articles on. Do we really want articles that consist of "Bob played for the Sooners in 1926, earning all-south first team allocades. That was the only year he played, and became a farmer for the rest of his life". As worded, this article would be justified to create. Multiply this article a few thousand times and that is what we will be allowing if this became the standard of inclusion. There are plenty of all-first team members who don't get drafted and end up doing a completely different job. VegaDark 21:12, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines for individual game articles

OK, so it looks like we need to discuss some recommendations around "notability" for articles on individual games.

I personally think that we should allow an article on any individual game if and only if it is well-written and well referenced. Contrary to popular fears, this would not result in loads of "Rice vs. Harvard" articles anytime soon. People are by and large going to write about what they find interesting, and that is by and large going to be the more important games. If the odd one did appear and it was well-written and referenced, what would be the harm, anyway?

However, it looks like that may not currently be the majority viewpoint, so I would like to get us started thinking about some guidelines. I would like to propose a two part standard. I propose that an individual game article is to be kept if it meets either

A - it is being created because the individual season article exists, is getting too long, and is being split out in WP:SUMMARY style. To my mind, this is why WP:SUMMARY exists. There is an active proposal similar to this at Wikipedia:Television episodes. The basic idea is that they will usually try to build good articles on a season first, but then can create articles on individual episodes if length suggests they should. Good sourcing is stressed.

B - some games are notable by themselves. I propose that an individual game be considered notable for an article if it meets one or more of the following (several of these seemed to specifically get support at AfD):

  1. It was a bowl game
  2. It was a conference championship
  3. It was a meeting of a rivalry series which already has a Wikipedia article
  4. It set a major record for the game itself (most points scored, longest game, biggest-come from behind victory, ...)
  5. Something truly whacky happened (E.g. Fifth Down)
  6. At least 3 major national media declared it "The game of the century"
  7. It was the first meeting between 2 teams
  8. It was the first game in a brand new stadium
  9. A skill player had a stand-out game AND at least 3 major national media said that game was instrumental to propelling the player to win one of the top individual awards.
  10. The underdog won by 21 or more points.
  11. A team came from 21 or more points behind.
  12. It set a network broadcast record for viewership

Please remember that this proposal (or whatever we end up deciding upon) does not mean that anyone is under an obligation to go out and create all the possible articles. It only means we would support their existence IF they were well done. I look forward to feedback on this methodology. Is this basic format a good start? Johntex\talk 07:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Another thing we could consider adding is if the game had the national Pontiac game changing performance play of the week in it. Also I'm not so sure about the "first meeting between two teams" stipulation. That would imply that every team could have an article back in 1890 when they first played an otherwise non-notable team. Also, let's say Duke has never played Idaho. If say next season they had a regular season game, that would be deserving of an article? Not in my opinion. VegaDark 10:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Vega. The teams involved have a lot to do with the notability. Thus, items 7-12 could be a terrible article if they involve perennial losers. I especially don't like the "underdog" item. What's that mean? The bookies were wrong or a team got lucky? That's notable? Perhaps "National level game" would summarize it? If a game is so important that it's national-level, it's clearly notable. Division II championship, bowl games, USC vs. Notre Dame in 2005. Games whose story transcends the actual play. I also support WP:SUMMARY breakouts. MECU≈talk 12:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is getting a little out of control with the whole notability thing. I think it should just be common sense. How good are the teams? How are they ranked? What is their record? How much publicity did the game receive? etc. But, this isn't easy to put it words and set as a hard guideline so some editors would overlook common sense since there isn't a guideline. But as far as actually setting criteria, I definitely agree with 1-6, don't agree with 7 and 8 and I'm on the fence on the rest.↔NMajdan•talk 13:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I shortened the list to only the items that have consensus from this discussion, and I have marked the page a "guideline". Johntex\talk 19:24, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Is it too soon to be a guideline? There hasn't been much discussion. I think proposed guideline is more appropriate at this point.↔NMajdan•talk 19:40, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Good idea. I changed it to "proposed" for now. Also, I copied over some recent discussion here, but I know we have talked aobut ohter topics in the past. If anyone thinks some of the old discussion should come here then please copy it over or link to it. Thanks! Johntex\talk 21:01, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I have to say that even this is far too inclusive for games. Let's take a look at all the things we would be allowing:

  • 1. All bowl games - I guess I can live with this, although there are plenty of non-noteworthy bowl games. An individual article for every one seems overkill, we might want to simply make a "History of the x bowl" article to talk about each year, unless the bowl game was particularly notable enough to have its own page.
  • 2.It was a conference championship - I'm leaning no towards this. How many conferences hold a conference championship game, and how many years have they each been running? That's how many articles we would be allowing, and seems too many unless the championship game was particularly notable. Once again I'd say we should have a "History of the x conference championship" article to have a section on every year for this.
  • 3.It was a meeting of a rivalry series which already has a Wikipedia article - I'm not clear on this-The individual game has to already have a Wikipedia article, or the rivalry has to have an article? Either way, this is a bad idea. The former would allow for a double standard simply because an article was made before this came into effect, and the latter would allow an article for every meeting between rivals which would number well over 10,000.
  • 4.It set a major record for the game itself (most points scored, longest game, biggest-come from behind victory, ...) - Definitely agree here, unless the record is something trivial - I'd say yes for the most part, but treat on a case-by-case basis.
  • 5. Something truly whacky happened - Agree, but treat on case-by-case basis as "whacky" is subjective
  • 6. At least 3 major national media declared it "The game of the century" - Obviously yes, I would probably agree to drop this to 2 national media even.
  • 7. It was the first meeting between 2 teams - Disagree, nothing notable about this by itself.
  • 8. It was the first game in a brand new stadium - Disagree here, there is nothing notable about this by itself.
  • 9. A skill player had a stand-out game AND at least 3 major national media said that game was instrumental to propelling the player to win one of the top individual awards - Disagree, there are plenty of games where the media claims a player had a "breakout game" or some such, and this does not make the game notable enough for an article by itself.
  • 9. The underdog won by 21 or more points - Disagree, this isn't all that rare in the history of CFB, probably would allow for hundreds if not thousands of articles.
  • 10. A team came from 21 or more points behind - Disagree, not all that rare in history of CFB.
  • 12. It set a network broadcast record for viewership - Uh, I guess this works, but I'd say treat on a case-by-case basis.
One criteria I'd add is if a notable streak was broken in the game - For instance, there should be an article on the game when USC finally loses their next home game (I think they have been undefeated at home since 2001 or something crazy), or an article on some particularly notable upsets (like an unranked team beating a top 5 team). VegaDark 09:23, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I believe an inclusive standard is entirely appropriate. Interesting articles can be written on individual games. I revived this discussion because 2005 Texas vs. Ohio State football game was nominated for deletion. It is not a bowl game, and set no major records except for a stadium attendance record. It was the first meeting between two major teams, which is unusual these days. It did play a role in UT winning the national championship, but since champions tend to be zero or one-loss teams it is true that every game tends to be important.
The article was kept at AfD and just yesterday it was promoted to GA. I think that shows that individual games can be notable enough to be showcased, even if they are not about a bowl game or a wacky situation like "Fifth down".
Wikipedia is not paper. If someone cares enough to write a good article on an individual game, we should be promoting that, not discouraging it. Johntex\talk 18:28, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Rejected proposal tag

This proposal meets the criteria for rejection at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. This topic has been covered at WP:ORG, where previous attempts to rigidly define the notability of sports teams has failed to gain consensus. Please continue your discussion there. I'm sure that you are working in good faith with the best of intentions; however, ignoring the discussions and decisions at ORG and trying to develop this, is kind of an end-run around procedures. Most of these proposals fail in the end when opponents find their way here, and your hard efforts will be wasted. I've learned this the hard way. Cheers and good luck! --Kevin Murray 14:36, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

  • I see no reason that WP:ORG superceeds this in any way. Wikiprojects are free to establish guidelines, and that is exactly what is happenning here. Johntex\talk 17:44, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Please note also that this was discussed at [[1]]. There was no consensus that this proposal presents any problems. To the contrary, 2 out of 3 people who commented felt that there was no problem with this effort. Johntex\talk 17:48, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
      • Note that one person in addition to John and Kevin commmented, a discussion of three of us represents no consensus for or against this proposal.
  • This proposal contains no directly objectionable material, but I don't see where it adds real clarity justifying a whole new guideline. Teams are organizations and players are people. All of the players and teams which would qualify under these guidelines woule be eligible under BIO or ORG. Where is the value added to justify a new page of guidelines? --Kevin Murray 18:08, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Expansion

Why don't you guys make it to include all college sports? Kwsn(Ni!) 01:03, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

In college sports, there is football, basketball, and everything else. Whereas every D1A football team is inherently notable, I very much seriously doubt that anyone would care about the 2006 Virginia Tech women's lacrosse team. This page is a part of WikiProject College football and enumerating standards for other sports is outside this project's area. --B 02:14, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Issue

The main issue I have about this proposal is listing every college football team seasons out there. That's going to be in the thousands and wikipedia isn't a sports alamac. The best thing to do is to combine all the seasons into one page, like the history of UM football, or something like that. The only seasons worth keeping is National Championship seasons. Any thoughts? Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 23:52, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Uh, no. That's a good idea for two things. Have a history section, but also include parts in seasonal pages. What is your problem with seasonal pages, because your treating them like they're meaningless when their meaningful. Please stop this madness. Soxrock 00:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not doing any madness, you think wikipedia is a sports alamac which it's not Jaranda wat's sup 00:04, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, that doesn't mean it can't have seasonal pages. You just don't like the idea, I know of many people that do. Stop the madness Soxrock 00:06, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

English Teams

I'm English. A lot of you are probably American. I don't entirely understand how it works in America but I believe American Football is a much much more popular sport over there than it is here. In fact, a lot of school and colleges have proper sports stadia with tiered seats and cheerleaders and everything. And the impression I get from tv-shows and films (Yes, I know thats not a good place to get information from but it's a lot cheaper than going to America for a few years to investigate first hand) is that the sport is given a lot of respect in the culture, this is evidenced by the sheer number of films and episodes revolving around sports try-outs, becoming team captain to impress a girl, becoming a cheerleader to impress a boy, mascot kidnapping, teachers asked to pass a student who does no work because he's important for the team, players getting scholarships to big universities et cetera et cetera.

Now this is perfectly acceptable and I think it's great that your country has something it has so much faith in, however things are very different in England regarding American Football. Most universities and schools (In fact none as far as I know, although there may be some out there I do not know of) do not have a designated american football pitch with proper stands. Most just use the rugby pitch. Cheerleading is not a big deal here. Scholarships are virtually unheard of. 'Team spirit' is more about going on the pub-crawl with the team and getting drunk and having fun.

Basically, as much as I'm sure the players enjoy playing it, American Football (Or any other sport for that matter) isn't really a big deal in British universities. Joining the team is as a hobby, the matches are never televised and only a tiny tiny tiny fraction of players ever progress to playing professionally.

What I'm trying to say is since American Football really isn't as popular over here then maybe there should be different notability guidelines for British teams than American ones? At current there are hundreds (Literally) of stub articles on small American Football teams in universities that are not strictly notable enough to warrent a page. However, some teams are large enough to be notable and have quite well deserved pages, so there's too much information to lump all of them into one big article like List of American Football teams from British Univerisities. The problem is there isn't a guideline to say these ones are worthy of their own page and these ones aren't so should be gathered into a list.

Any ideas on the matter?193.128.87.36 16:30, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Perhaps stating though that we recently decided that WP:CFB only refers to NCAA college football in America as the general sport, and sub-projects can/should be formed for other possible areas of college football, such as British, or Canadian, or Europe, etc. In general, I think we formulated everything we've done with this un-written rule that we are referring to NCAA DI-A schools in America, except as noted (which is rare). Applying this will certainly clear up some things easily. In all though, the notability aspect should apply to general press coverage. If it's more of a club level sport, it isn't notable. In the USA, it's big business and careers for many people, both as coaches, administrators, officials, players (sans true compensation), reports, magazines, video games, etc, etc, etc. MECU≈talk 17:12, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Oops, sorry I didn't notice this project was America specific, my mistake. Thanks for your help.217.44.223.179 17:28, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.