Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Archive-Jan2007

message: I am proposing some changes to the coach templates that exist for every school. So, before I go off and do what may be unpopular, I thought I should ask first. You can see an example of the changes with Template:BuffaloesCoach and how it is different on pages like Willis Keinholz. First, the change would add the vde links to the template header and show/hide capability (don't ask me why there are 2 show/hides, I think it may be a bug). Also, reducing the width of the templates to 90% of the screen width to make it more inline with other templates that may be used on the page. 90% is a fairly standard sizing. Lastly, I propose putting the Category for each school "football coach" into this template. This means we could remove all the categories from the bottom of pages where this template is used. However, it would require the use of DEFAULTSORT: (See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-01-02/Technology report) on these pages, because it would be impossible to include the name in the category for which this defaultsort fixes. The changes to the templates are fairly minor and would take maybe a few minutes for each so they could all be changed in 1 day. However, adding the defaultsort to each coach page and removing the duplicated templates would be a lengthy process. There is no problem I know of from the duplicated category listing. It hasn't caused a problem with the Colorado category yet. If you do know that this causes a problem, please say so. Otherwise, does anyone have a problem with these changes? In whole or in part? --MECU≈talk 17:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  is updated and ready for use with the changes as above and I believe agreed upon solution (both technically and otherwise). Unless anyone objects, I'll apply all the changes across the board to all the coach templates over the next week -- Monday at the earliest. --MECU≈talk 20:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes to Coach templates 

message: I just noticed that at article was created for next year's BCS NC game. I believe it is too early, but that's not why I'm starting this discussion. The name of the new article is 2008 BCS National Championship Game but the name of this year's article is BCS National Championship Game 2007. One has the year before the game title and one, after. Naturally, these need to be uniform. Before I made any change, I was wondering what the thinking was in having the year after the title as this year's does.--NMajdan•talk 21:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I did a quick check and for all prior years that I saw, the style was <BCS National Championship Game 200X>.  So, for the sake of consistency, BCS National Championship Game 2008 would seem to be appropriate.  However, we seem to have been using a different format for other bowl games: 2006 Rose Bowl, 2007 Rose Bowl, 2007 Orange Bowl.  Perhaps we should use a standard form for all bowls.  If we do, putting the date first may be the better solution.--Tlmclain  | Talk 21:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The games are generally known as the 200X ???? Bowl game.  The article should list the year first. General125 22:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I actually prefer "<Year> BCS National Championship Game" because it agrees with the rest of the bowl games and it just seems more natural. But I think there was a discussion about this before and they decided to put it after, but I can't remember why. At the least, "<Year> BCS National Championship Game" should be created as a redirect to "BCS National Championship Game <Year>". --MECU≈talk 22:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to be bold and move this year's BCS article to the <Year> Bowl format.--NMajdan•talk 22:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As a side note, it is WAY too early to be making the 2008 page.  For all we know they will switch to playoffs this offseason.  VegaDark 00:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's pretty safe to assume the BCS will last as long as one cycle through the 4 BCS Bowls.  Next year, I believe the Sugar Bowl will host the game.  I do agree the first BCS National Champ game should be played first before a new article is made. General125 04:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  BCS National Championship Game article 

message: I have created a barnstar -  - to use for rewarding those who have done substantial work on improving college football articles.  The image doesn't look spectacular ... if you are more artistically gifted than I, please be bold and improve the image.  I have nominated this barnstar for official sanction at the award proposals page.  Please participate there if you would like to see the barnstar added to the "official" registry of barnstars. (Regardless of the outcome of that process, it can be used within our Wikiproject - it just can't be listed on the awards registry.) --BigDT 21:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What about this image? CJC47 15:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not bad.--Tlmclain  | Talk 15:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you do it without the background or antialiasing the barnstar? --BigDT 00:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Changed it... does that work?CJC47 02:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I like it ... I have added it for consideration at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals. --BigDT 05:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Barnstar 

message: Does anyone want to review Tennessee Volunteers football and change the quality ranking?  It has gone through a lot of changes, but most of it is my work, so its best that someone else do this. CJC47 16:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Assessment Department is setup to handle requests like this. --MECU≈talk 16:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Article Quality

message: I've created a subpage to be the location to go for all templates related to this project. See Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Templates. Please add to the lists as I know I've missed some that I can't remember currently.
Also, I was thinking that maybe a template system, similar to the new CFB Coaching Record system that would be used for stats. It would contain all the categories for each position, such as QB, Punter, Kicker, RB, Defense, etc, but only the appropriate ones would be used, thus keeping it down. But, by having all of them in a single template system, if a QB had a punting stat, or a RB got a QB stat, one could just "turn on" that part of the templates and then add the stats. I would like to keep it non CFB specific  so that when a player goes to the NFL it could still be used. Specifically, adding by year and team would be possible with sub-year and sub-team capability. For example, Tom Rouen played for 3 teams in 2002. So I'd like to design it with that in mind. Does anyone know of anything like this that exists? Even if it's just for the QB stats? Any thoughts or ideas before I get started would be appreciated. --MECU≈talk 16:38, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know of any, but I just did a bunch of stats on 2006 Georgia Bulldogs football team.  That may give you some ideas.--Tlmclain  | Talk 23:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template Section, new template system idea 

message: User:Jordanrschroeder posted the following to the Project page today as a new article:
2007 Florida vs. Ohio State BCS National Championship Game - This is similar to the other 2007 BCS article, but this one gives SPECIFICS about the two teams or will. The other one is a general one that WikiProject sets up every year. This one, as it gets larger, will have information about the coaches, team and what led up to the event. I don't think it should be deleted, it will just be a seperate (DIFFERENT) article. Anyone can help? That would be great.
I am very much opposed to a content fork on this topic at this time.  Especially since this is a game that has not even been played.  How can a content fork possibly be needed?  I am contacting the author of this article on thier talk page. Johntex\talk 18:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've gone on and made the redirect.  This is a brand new article that is largely a copy/paste.  Copy/paste moves cause GFDL problems because we can't reliably credit all of the authors. Unless I'm missing something, I don't see any reason not to just be WP:BOLD and do it. --BigDT 20:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Why should there be two versions of the same article, with on supposibly going to have "detailed" information and the other not. We're not talking about a Template:main usage. This is just ridiculous. --MECU≈talk 21:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not that worried about it ... it was created by an inexperienced user ... none of us knew exactly what we were doing when we were new.  --BigDT 21:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Premature content fork

message: Hi. I am starting up a new WikiProject, the Big Ten WikiProject, and was wondering if anyone in this one was interested. I figured I' ask here since College Football is one of the major things about the conference. Plus, the many college football articles that encompass the Big Ten could probably use some improvement, and we could always combine to try and improve them. If there's no interest my apologies, but hopefully there is. --Wizardman 17:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:BIGTEN|WikiProject Big Ten]] 

message: If anybody starts running into talk pages with too many templates and banners at the top, please add the following to the template code:
| small=yes 
So the code will now look like:

This replaces the large banners with smaller ones and places them on the right side of the screen. For me details on this, see this page. For an example of this parameter in action, see Talk:Jim Thorpe. I've made all the required code changes to our WikiProject banner. If for some reason you encounter a banner that doesn't have the small form capability, please feel free to make the change yourself (the instructions are in the link above) or you can put a request on my talk page and I'll take care of it.--NMajdan•talk 18:04, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure it worked properly.  Everything is small and on the right side, but all the comments are still pushed down and rhere is a big chunk of white space before the table of contents. VegaDark 21:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What page are you referring to?--NMajdan•talk 21:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Talk:Jim Thorpe. Is there a way to make all the boxes off to the right go alongside the text instead of pusing it down? VegaDark 21:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is. On my screen (Firefox 2.0), the templates are aligned on the right and the actual Talk text is directly left of it, much like our WPCFB template above.--NMajdan•talk 21:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm using Internet Explorer, and both on the Jim Thorpe talk page and this talk page there is a big, annoying white space before the TOC. VegaDark 21:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Easy fix: Use Firefox. --MECU≈talk 23:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Small form templates and banners on talk pages 

message: I came across this website at the NCAA  where you can search for the major infractions of a program. I searched for "COLORADO" and under sport selected "Football" and it gave me all 4 reports on major infractions Colorado has had. This could be very useful for articles going for FA like Oklahoma. Hope it helps. --MECU≈talk 22:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a good find. I'll try to incorporate some of those findings in the Oklahoma Sooners football article. There's nothing on the current OU investigation as of now.--NMajdan•talk 23:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  NCAA Resource on Infractions 

message: See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2010 BCS National Championship Game. --MECU≈talk 20:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I nominated the 2009 article as well for the same reasons as the 2010 article.--NMajdan•talk 16:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you both for pointing these out.  Consensus seemed clear. Therefore, I redirected both articles to BCS National Championship Game.  I put a note on their Talk pages saying they should be created after the previous year's game is played, or as substantial new material becomes available. Johntex\talk 18:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  AFD of [[2010 BCS National Championship Game]] 

message: I would like to see some discussion around whether bowl games should be named to include the sponsor name in the title of the bowl.  The discussion is at Talk:NCAA football bowl games, 2006-07#Sponsor_names. Johntex\talk 07:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Sponsor names on bowl games

message: Since the final rankings in the AP Poll and the Coaches Poll sometime differ, it would be nice to have the option to include both in records after 1949.  That way, the table could show split #1 votes; situations were the team was ranked in one poll, but not the other; and other discrepancies.  For full functionality through the years, each ranking column and associated footnote would have to be optional (you could list 0, 1 or 2 polls).  What do you think?--Tlmclain  | Talk 17:24, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that's doable. Presently the only changeable parameter is to display or not to display the ranking column, so it shouldn't be too difficult to change that to a parameter listing the number of ranking columns, as well as optional parameters for the two polls (which would default to AP and Coaches if left blank. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 17:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I think I've got this one figured out too. See here. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New coaching history suggestion

message: I've recreated the yearly record table templates under a more generic name - "Yearly Record" and added much of the functionality discussed above: the ability to display either a team's record under different coaches, a coach's record with different teams, and the series history of a rivalry game (still in progress). I'm working on adding more flexibility in displaying poll info as well as finishing up the rivalry features. The documentation on each template page needs revised, but I have examples of each of the three main uses on the examples page. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 21:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New templates - CFB Yearly Record

message: The University of Pittsburgh Panthers article is a mess - I'm rather unsure where exactly to start helping to clean it up. If there's anyone here more familiar with the university or even just Big East athletics in general, it would help a great deal, since I'm mainly going to be focusing on cleaning up formatting and fact checking. The athletics section of the UPitt article leaves a lot to be desired, as well, especially in terms of NPOV. I know that we're mainly focusing on CFB here (I'm going to mention this on WikiProject College Basketball as well, but since to my knowledge there's no overarching college athletics project or coordinated effort, I figured I'd toss this out here. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 03:38, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  University of Pittsburgh 

message: Template: has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. This template was listed along with  on the master team table as a duplicate - all relevant articles now link to  so this template can be safely deleted. --PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  TfD nomination of Template:{{ucfirst:UODucksCoach}} 

message: ;moved from main page
The first preseason top 25 ranking (that I've seen) is in and reported here.  Each of these teams should have a 2007 team page and, as of this post, 20 out of 25 still need pages.  I know that it is very early in the season, but why not get a jump on it?--Tlmclain  | Talk 13:06, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  2007 team pages 

message: Located at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1987 Fiesta Bowl Play-By-Play VegaDark 05:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: AfD of [[1987 Fiesta Bowl Play-By-Play]]

message: This template: Template:American football uniform may be useful if we could add text and numbers to the jersey. The helmet may not be needed as we can get a good image of the helmet logo/design from elsewhere and use it like the NFL pages do. If someone wants to work on this, it's been around for a month and not used at all. --MECU≈talk 16:28, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm....interesting. I knew they had something like this for Soccer. I may try this out.--NMajdan•talk 17:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I added images for a few different number/jersey color combinations here, using the same techniques used for Template:Football kit, such as transparency. Generally with the soccer uniforms, they ignore details (e.g., sponsors, badges, team names) in favor of colors. For a first cut, the helmet could just be the main color of the helmet. Again, for soccer clubs (which is a very successful project), the template is used to do a very simple rendering of the uniform, and then there are other elements to see details of the uniform, such as the club's badge. Rolando 01:15, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

text: That article specifically states "Commercial use of the images is NOT permitted, because the various colleges and professional teams own all such rights to their respective logos" so I would not use them.↔NMajdan•talk 17:12, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I saw a similar discusson on User talk:Football79 between Football79 and MECU where they seem to approve of their use. Just curious, but is the use of helmets w/ logos different than the use of school logos for illustrative purposes? Pepto gecko 20:37, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, their use would have to be under "Fair Use" and thus fair use rationale would need to be provided upon upload. Edit: Looking at the talk page above, it appears Mecu already stated the helmet images would have to be fair use, so he concluded the same as I.↔NMajdan•talk 21:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yup. See Denver Broncos for how the NFL Project does it. Not that the way they do it is the way we should, but just as an example. It's hard coded into their template even so someone even gave it some pre-thought as to the naming convention of the filenames. Football79 wanted to do this as a big project and I was letting him lead, but if others wanted to as well I'm fine with that. --MECU≈talk 22:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Useful template 

message: We are in the process of improving the Portal and would appreciate any help.--NMajdan•talk 15:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please nominate and/or support articles and pictures for the Portal. February is fast approaching. Portal:College football/Selected Content/Nominations.--NMajdan•talk 20:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Portal

message: Would anyone be opposed to a subpage off the main project page where AFDs could specifically be listed, then folks could watch that page and it would showup better in the watchlist? Only bad thing is if people don't watchlist it. --MECU≈talk 19:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure.  I would definitely watch list it if we had one, but my watch list is so long - I may be more prone to notice it here. Overall I'm neutral on the idea. Johntex\talk 20:39, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Are there that many CFB-related AFDs at any one time that would make having an entirely new page necessary? Otherwise I think using this talk page or having a section on the main project page is sufficient. PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 20:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  AFDs 

message: Template:Linescore Amfootball now calculates the total values for the home and road teams. This makes RT= and HT= values useless. You can remove these fields when you see them and are making another edit, don't bother just going around and removing them, as inclusion doesn't harm anything, it's just a waste of space. Also, for those that don't know, the template can handle up to three overtime periods automatically, just by adding R5/H5, R6/H6 and R7/H7 as appropriate. It can be expanded if needed too. I thought I'd mention this now while some folks are setting up the 2007 season pages. --MECU≈talk 20:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's great! Thanks for the work on this. Let me pose a question to everyone here: when setting up the 2007 season articles, is it appropriate to include the "Game recaps" section in a skeletal format, with subheadings for each games and empty line scores? On the 2007 Penn State Nittany Lions football team article, I've done that but also commented the entire section out so that we can "include" each game as it's played. Others have prepared articles with the same sort of format but with the empty game summaries/line scores uncommented. Any thoughts? PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 04:03, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template:Linescore Amfootball 

message: I just found this today:  Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Sports results.  The discussion is semi-recent and has mostly died down.  This is just an FYI. Johntex\talk 16:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Semi-recent discussion

message: Vince Young used to be a GA for this project but it (rightly) got demoted.  I was thinking about trying to finish up the work to bring the article back to GA status.  In re-reading the article, I realized that of 30 references in the article, 30 pertain either to his time at UT or to the draft.  There have been zero references added since he joined the Titans.  
So I figured, well, there will be some references I can borrow from Tennessee Titans.  Nope.  Completely unreferenced.  There is a page for 2006 Tennessee Titans season - completely unreferenced.  These are not exactly obscure topics where references are hard to come by.  Not only are these articles supposedly watched over by the NFL project, they are tagged by the Tennessee wikiproject also.  I tagged both articles as unreferenced and left notes for both WikiPorjects. 
I am now a bit discouraged about trying to fix the article.  I feel the article may just fall back out of GA status once a new season starts if the NFL editors don't do a better job.  I apologize if this ruffles any feathers as I know some editors here work on the NFL project as well.  This may be a completely untypical example.  Maybe the NFL pages are usually better than this with references.  I just checked Bret Farve and it has lots of references.  Michael Vick has a total of nine references covering both college and pro.  That is pretty poor for such a famous player, in my opinion.  Dusty Mangum, who never went pro, has 5 references.  Much to my shame, Chris Simms has zero references - none from college or pro.  Rest assured I will fix that porblem.
Anyway, I would like to use this to make two points: (1) College football players can have articles that are as well referenced as the pro players.  This might be an interesting point in future discussions about deletion.  (2) We all need to do a better job about citing our sources.  These are not exactly obscure topics where it is hard to find references.
This being the off-season, we have time to improve the quality of our work.  I'd like to challenge us all to adhere to a higher standard of referencing.  It will make our project look good and it will help to eliminate any "fan-boy" aura that may surround sports articles in the minds of some editors. Best, Johntex\talk 16:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Proper referencing style, not just the mere presence of references, is a bit of a pet Wiki-peeve of mine as well. For me, that means more than just inline external links like this  but using a consistent citation style. That becomes the biggest challenge: in our haste to make sure articles are well-referenced, we need to make sure that those references make sense and are usable both to future editors but also to casual browsers. I've been working on the Favre article and it's great to see the work we're doing there is being viewed as at least some sort of a model. PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 04:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Bit of a rant and a challenge

message: As we create 2007 team articles, I propose we list the championship game for all teams playing in a conference featuring a championship.  We would list this game until that team becomes mathmatically eliminated to play in the game.  Reasons:
#It is helpful to the reader because they will likely want to know when the game is if their team is still in the running.
#It gives one more opportunity to "build the web" by linking to a related article.
#It is what most teams do on their own web pages so we would be consistent with the outside world.
#It is what we did last year (for articles I worked on at least) so we would be consistent with our past actions.
Thoughts?  Johntex\talk 23:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Seancp 02:26, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I was criticized for having the CCG in the Oklahoma schedule at the beginning of last season. Nevertheless, I agree. The CCG is typically on the schedules for most schools. I'll add it to the OU schedule for 2007.↔NMajdan•talk 13:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that was our reasoning last year as well, but it didn't fly for some reason. Personally, I prefer always having the CCG on the schedule, even for teams that can't make it. z4ns4tsu\talk 14:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

text: This makes sense to me - still bitter about the fact my conference doesn't have a championship, but I digress. Just for clarity's sake, it might be helpful to indicate somehow that this game is listed on the condition that the team is eligible to attend. PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 03:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Conference championship in team season schedule

message: Greg Olsen (Football) has been proposed for deletion here.
Let me launch a trial balloon here ... does anyone think we should come up with our own notability guideline?  WP:FOOTBALL (the other kind of football) has a discussion page here.  We might want to come up with our own guideline ... regardless of how restrictive or lenient it is, at least we could have something to point to and try and get some consistency so we can try and curtail the random players being AFD'd or even speedied here and there.  Any thoughts? --BigDT 14:36, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This was tried before. See  and . I'd still support having something, even if we leave it under this WikiProject and tag it as a guideline, though see input from outside folks as well. --MECU≈talk 15:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Here ... check out Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Notability.  This is really what we need.  Feel free to edit/add/delete/whatever.  I'm not picky on what we decide - we just need something written down so that we can be consistent in our application of it. --BigDT 15:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Its a good idea in theory, but it has been tried before. What would you vote if there was an AFD for Paul Thompson (football)? By the criteria specified thus far, he would be deleted. But what criteria would need to be specified that wouldn't also include many players who probably do not need articles?↔NMajdan•talk 15:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe we could add, "well-known starting player for a BCS team" or some such thing.  Honestly, though, I think Paul Thompson is right on the edge of acceptable.  If he is going to be drafted, then ok, but otherwise, there isn't really any information in that article that couldn't be folded into a team year page for the one year that he played. --BigDT 16:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See, thats the point. I agree he is right on the edge of acceptability. But, I would argue he does deserve an article given the situation surrounding Rhett Bomar and Thompson's rise back to starting QB and leading his team to a CCG. But this is the type of sticky situations I can see getting into surrounding this issue.↔NMajdan•talk 16:41, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, that's true ... and that's why notability is a guideline more than a policy.  I just think that we ought to have something that we can point to and agree upon.  I think that if we should have an article on a person, we should be able to come up with a rule that includes them.  Maybe that's a little bit of the programmer in me - wanting an algorithm for everything. ;)  Maybe we could add, "starter for a division I-FBS team about whom there is substantial media coverage".  That would include Paul Thompson. --BigDT 19:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yet another player [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greg Olsen (Football)|AFD]] 

message: So I was working on adding the recruiting classes to the 2006 Oklahoma Sooners football team (and eventually to the 2007 article) when I realized that it might be a good idea for a template. Of course, it would only be applicable to college football recruits (actually it might work for college basketball recruits too if I drop the 40 column). I thought I'd bring it up here to get some feedback before going forward with my manual development of the table or beginning the actual template. To see the table I've started go here.↔NMajdan•talk 17:12, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks pretty good to me.  I'm not sure that I like the image for the star rating since it's really flat and I could have sworn I'd seen a more 3-D one on other pages. I'll look around and see if I can find it. Which page do you expect to put this on?  I would expect to see the 2006 class in the post-season section of the 2005 page. z4ns4tsu\talk 17:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, if you find a better one, let me know. I found this one here: commons:Category:Star_symbols.↔NMajdan•talk 17:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Really? I would put the 2006 recruiting class on the 2006 page. It has much more relevance there. What relevance do these players have to the football season in which they were high school seniors? I would put the 2006 recruiting class on the 2006 article.↔NMajdan•talk 18:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Take a look at :Image:Crystal Clear action bookmark.png and :Image:Five-pointed star.svg.  If you want me to, I'll try to put these together into a series of ratings star images when I get home this evening. z4ns4tsu\talk 18:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok. I tried just using the image for every star needed but for some reason, its causing the row to increase in size (see here). Anyway, I've got a pretty good working sample at the link previously in parentheses. Take a look and tell me what you think. I have the references from Scout and Rivals auto generated from information in the template. If this is too difficult, or we find instances where it doesn't work, it can be scrapped and replaced with a regular cite template.↔NMajdan•talk 18:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Awesome template. I actually prefer the simpler star style.  The 3D one with the white highlisht is pretty at large size, but at small size it looks to me like it is a half-filled star, which could be confusing. Johntex\talk 18:30, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Take a look at 2006 Colorado Buffaloes football team for what I did with the recruiting for another take on the table. I'm not sure I like the large, two row size because the table will likely get VERY long. I think 2007 recruiting (current) should go on the 2006 page (like I did for CU). This is still part of the season. No, they didn't play for them, but they were recruited during this season, they attended games this season. Putting the information on the 2007 year isn't really good, since recruiting information starts coming out during the season, so someone looking at the 2006 page would want to know about what recruits they have, and have to go to the 2007 page, they really shouldn't exist yet? --MECU≈talk 18:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm...dilemma. I like your table and I like my table. I do disagree whole heartedly about including 2007 recruits on the 2006 article for the reasons I stated. For many football fans, the season is over after the national championship game. Recruiting is the beginning of the next season. Start puling up great recruits that may be able to help your team next year.↔NMajdan•talk 19:09, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Where on the season page would this information go? Does it make sense to have it at the top? For importance and therefore chronological sense, it should go near the bottom. The first thing someone sees isn't recruiting info. I completely understand your point though. --MECU≈talk 21:51, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that information about recurits coming in between the 2006 and 2007 seasons belongs in the 2007 article.  Those recruits did not factor into the game play of the 2006 season.  The most logical place to put the table is at the start of the 2007 season. Alternatively, one could argue that they were being recruited during 2006 in parallel to the games being played.  By that logic, we could put the table at the bottom of 2006.  If we do that, though, the top of the 2007 article should link back to the recruiting informaiton found in the 2006 article. Either way, the first section of 2007 should be "Prior to the season" or "Leading intot he season".  That is the place to talk about who left the team and who joined the team.  That is the most logical place.  Johntex\talk 16:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If Mecu is worried about having such a dominant table at the top of the page, where it would go if the article is done chronologically, we could always have a parenthetical description of the recruiting class and a link to the actual table which could be placed at the bottom of the article or even on another article. The question is, which format should I pursue with this template? I've halted development for the moment. I like my format better, with the two rows, but it could get pretty long, as Mecu said, for a recruiting class of 20+ athletes.↔NMajdan•talk 20:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I was hoping for some more input. I'm fine with the summary at the top of the 2007 page and full table lower on the page format. Though I still think it should all be on the 2006 page. I'll go with the flow. --MECU≈talk 15:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Another possibility is using . I've added it to my userspace page as a demonstration.↔NMajdan•talk 20:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay. You win. (though shouldn't it start collapsed? it didn't for me) Also, since we're WP:NOT paper, let's go with the expanded format you have. It has more style than my boring chunky table. --MECU≈talk 20:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I know. The article I first saw this hidden template started out hidden but when I added it, it starts out shown.↔NMajdan•talk 20:37, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: One thing I just noticed, you don't have the ESPN ranking. It's not a star ranking so it's not as glamorous, but it still should be given, since rivals, scout and ESPN are the three main (only) sources for recruiting nationally. Also, maybe add the team overall rankings per rivals/scout/ESPN at the bottom? Looking good. Good work. --MECU≈talk 20:38, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've never used ESPN's recruiting system. But I don't see a reason not to add it. However, now that we have three sources, what are your feelings on determining height/weight/40? Its a little more difficult and time consuming getting an avg of three.↔NMajdan•talk 20:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Check that, I'm against using ESPN. If you look at a school's list of commits on ESPN.com (see http://insider.espn.go.com/ncf/recruiting/tracker/school?schoolId=201&season=2007 for OU's 2007 class), you'll notice it says Data provided by Scouts, Inc. So it looks like ESPN gets a lot of its information from Scout. So is it necessary to have ESPN as well? Yeah, the grade is different but how much research is ESPN doing beyond what it gets from Scout?↔NMajdan•talk 20:58, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd also noticed that ESPN used Scouts' information. While using their grade might be a good extra indicator, we definitely shouldn't use their ht/wt/40 info since it's most likely straight from Scouts. Over-all, I like the two-line format better. Have we decided whether we will be putting 2007 recruits on the 2007 or 2006 page yet?  I still think it makes the most sense on the 2006 page in a "post-season" section, but I can see how it could be more appropriate on the 2007 in a "pre-season" or "recruiting" section. z4ns4tsu\talk 21:13, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, guys. I just don't see at all how the 2006 recruits pertain to the 2005 season. Sure, they were recruited during that season and probably attended games of that season but they had no effect on that season at all. I mean, take a athlete I am familiar with, Adrian L. Peterson. He signed in 2004 and was recruited in 2003. What role did he play in 2003 that would warrant his mentioning in a 2003 Oklahoma Sooners article (if there was one)? Now, what role would his recruitment play in the 2004 season? He was signed that year, and he went on to become a star that year. Look at 2006 Chicago Bears season as an example. Even they have the 2006 NFL Drafts as preseason (offseason). Once the national championship game has been played (whether its the BCS NC game or Super Bowl) the season is over. Anything after that it a fresh start, a new season. I know I'm getting hung up on this so I apologize.↔NMajdan•talk 21:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I found a bug. If you look at 2006 Colorado Buffaloes football team#Recruits (I know it's supposed to be on the 2007 page, but I haven't created it yet so this will do for now), when a 40 time isn't listed, it moves the signed data into that field. You can really tell by looking at Nick Nelson. --MECU≈talk 14:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That is not a bug. Its in the design and in the documentation. If you include the 40 times in the Start template, then that field in the Entry template cannot be blank. Just put a hyphen in the 40 time if you don't have one. I thought it would be better to have the template default to no 40 time so you have to take extra steps to include a 40 time.↔NMajdan•talk 14:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Okay, maybe make a note of that in the documentation, that putting - or something for a 40 time that's not available? Also, can we increase the border between the rows of the whole player, after looking at the whole list it starts to get more difficult to determine the stars-ranking belongs to who. Making the border a few pixels thicker or a darker color or something may help. Otherwise, I am liking it overall, and the two-line format concern I had isn't really a problem. --MECU≈talk 14:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Its already in the documentation. I'll look into increasing the border size between players. Did you see the issue I'm having with the End template?↔NMajdan•talk 14:54, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I don't see any problems and don't really understand what you mean on the end talk page. I did notice that the Scout.com link doesn't link directly to the school. It seems to be missing a "&toinid=660" in the URL. At least, for Colorado. --MECU≈talk 14:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I fixed the issue with the Scout source. I guess I need to provide better documentation on how to get that number.↔NMajdan•talk 15:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Also, the scout team rankings link doesn't work. --MECU≈talk 15:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You see, thats the issue. If you look at the actual ref, you'll see both team rankings urls are missing the year. I don't know why its not working. And accessdate isn't working. The only reason Rivals works is because it defaults to this years team ranking.↔NMajdan•talk 15:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe it's because the URL's have = in them? It might be confusing the template. --MECU≈talk 15:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But the sources that are actually in the footer are fine. Its just the refs. As I mentioned on that talk page, I think it might have something to do with the whole ref tag being inside a {{#if: statement. I tried replacing all the pipes with  but that didn't work. May have to go to WP:VPT.↔NMajdan•talk 15:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I understand now. But I don't know how to solve it. You're using a varaible inside a template inside an #if. That's messy. Can you make the year and accessdate mandatory (ie, not make them  and make it )? --MECU≈talk 15:30, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

text: <ad>I'd like to take this important day where you're likely to get some source-able quotes to put in a plug for our ill-forgotten WikiQuotes q:College football. It'll be great in a few years to be able to source some of these comments made today. If you get a great quote (like I found: "In the next four years, I'll give you at least one national championship.") please add to the WikiQuote!</ad> --MECU≈talk 15:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I think listing them when they sign the LOI, so if they signed yesterday but are going to grayshirt, list them. One can always put a note in the next season saying "so and so signed last year but grayshirted". It'd be nice to have some kind of symbol for that in the table as well. Just take the redshirt image and make it gray. --MECU≈talk 14:08, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I added a grayshirt option to the entry template. Just add | grayshirt = yes to the tag and it will add :Image:Grayshirt.png to the Commitment Date cell.↔NMajdan•talk 14:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible new template