Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Archive-Sep2007

message: All right fellow loving disciples of college football, our religion begins another official season today.  Let us be the monks who ensure that articles are properly updated and revised as the season progresses. ...and take some damn pictures (if you can) :-)  --Bobak 16:00, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And watch my #2 LSU Tigers blow away Mississippi State tonight on ESPN.  Someone else will have to update the 2007 LSU Tigers football team page, because I'll be too busy celebrating the win! Seancp 16:04, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm in the same boat on certain games, but remember that most of the articles you can hang a reference off of usually come out the next day anyway.  --Bobak 17:49, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

text: From my limited picture taking experience, the "exposure time" is a more important factor for action shots.   Corpx 17:33, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And, quite possibly, the zoom (unless some of you are some major donors/members of the media).  But yes, B, as my earlier call to arms on photos --this is not only an opportunity for in-game shots (which are great for season pages) but also photos of schools, traditions, players and coaches. --Bobak 17:49, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Dont forget message boards either.   Most posters will be glad to license out their work(s) under cc2.5 Corpx 23:46, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Another good way to get closeup shots is to go to games early. You can usually get in a few hours before the game and get pictures of coaches and players as they come in the field and just tell the ushers you want to snap a few pictures and they might let you in the area, especially if you tell them you're working for Wikipedia. :) MECU≈talk 14:18, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Has that seriously worked for you?  :-p  Also, remember a lot of programs have pre-game events/traditions where players walk to the stadium through or very close to fans (even at away games, coming off the bus).  Those make great, though sometimes crowded, opportunities as well!  --Bobak 19:19, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

text: They did get upset, 34-32 (wow!). I'm not sure it's worthy of an article by itself either though. MECU≈talk 20:07, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

text: As an Appalachian State alumnus - please realize that the Mountaineers play at the FCS (I-AA) level. We are not a DII team. It's unfortunate that the BCS (I-A) folks are so clueless about the other divisions that play some GREAT football on Saturdays.Geologik 20:15, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Are you purposely being obtuse? Appalachian State is not a Division II team. The Mountaineers play in the same Division as Michigan. And based on everything I'm reading - it is quite possibly the biggest upset in college football. However, I agree it doesn't need it's own article. That's pushing it a little. ;) Geologik 20:50, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It was a huge upset, but not the biggest of all time.  The point spread was only set at -27.5 (usually a good indicator for how big of an upset something is).  The record for biggest overcome point spread is -38. VegaDark (talk) 00:22, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tis the season, beginning today! 

message: * 27 August Causeway Carriage (PROD by User:Jaranda; "...a Victorian era carriage awarded to each season's winner of Causeway Classic College football game....")
* 27 August Causeway Classic (PROD by User:Jaranda; "...the annual College football game between the UC Davis Aggies and the Sacramento State Hornets.")  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ceyockey (talk • contribs) 00:27, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed deletions ([[WP:PROD]]) 

message: I just created an article on the Appalachian State upset of Michigan. It's been nominated for deletion.  If anyone wants to comment on it, go here. — Dale Arnett 05:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I realize there are a lot of articles like this here, but can we make these type of articles on WikiNews from here on ?   What we're doing is covering an event that is also covered by lots of reliable sources.     This type of stuff is really meant to WikiNews Corpx 05:21, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently not since Wikinews uses the CC license which is not compatible with the GFDL. We would need every author to agree to the relicense. More hassle than it's worth it seems. MECU≈talk 15:24, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another proposed deletion 

message: Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006 Hawaii Bowl. Johntex\talk 03:34, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another proposed deletion 

message: Another notice for WPCFB members. We have eight images up for Selected Image for our Portal. I ask that everybody take a look at them and vote. Hopefully, we'll continue to have frequent nominations as the season progresses. Also, there is one old Selected Article nomination that needs more voters to determine a majority. Check out the nominations at Portal:College football/Selected Content/Nominations.↔NMajdan•talk 02:56, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Portal nominations 

message: I put together an infobox for trophy games, feel free to take a look at it and comment.  I took a look around at different articles and it seems there is a hodge podge out there.  One standard seems to to have a toc for who won which years, such as Paul Bunyan's Axe, but it seems kind of messy to me to have logo images scattered about.  It also seems a little redundant to have that toc listing the years each team won, followed by in many cases a complete list of scores, which gives you the same info.   My main hope with the infobox was to integrate the logos into a better layout and this is what I ended up with.  Here is the article: Floyd of Rosedale, and here is the template: User:Gopher backer/sandbox7.  Feel free to do whatever with it.  Gopher backer 06:35, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox for trophy games 

message: I don't have the time to add this until next week, but I had the idea to add contract information to the Coach infobox. Length, guaranteed money and buyout information. Something like "Contract: $45M through 2013, $1.5M buyout", would require a cite of course. So this article would be a good example of things to start including. I don't expect this to be controversial, but feel free to comment. MECU≈talk 12:24, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't be against that. I think the buyout is a little extraneous for the infobox, but the salary would be nice. You may also want to check out this website. I may add that field to the infobox today if I have time.↔NMajdan•talk 13:47, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

text: I added the field. The bonus structure for coaches is so complex that I think it should be left off the infobox. I mean, if somebody asked you how much you made, would you factor in your bonus? For the Bob Stoops and Mack Brown article, I just added their yearly salary. I am not sure about private schools, its a good question.↔NMajdan•talk 15:03, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Again, I think when you add in all bonuses, it gets too complex. Only the contractual yearly salary should be listed in the infobox, in my opinion. More details on bonuses could be in the actual article.↔NMajdan•talk 16:02, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Idea to add to Coach infobox 

message: I changed the format of the links to the previous and next seasons on the above template. It looks cleaner and is better centered, which was an issue we've had in the past with the template. Let me know what you think and definitely let me know if you find an article my change broke. I checked several football articles and a basketball and baseball article and they look fine.↔NMajdan•talk 17:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not know if this is what did it but after a check of a few CFB 2007 articles, none of the team images are showing up (and the image's name is still shown on the edit page). Just thought I would bring this up as I was doing a random check of all the articles that needed to be updated with today's early results. SolonHawk 20:51, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think so. I think it was User:Soxrock trying to employ some fair use requirement with an edit that wasn't appropriate (in my, and another user's, opinion). MECU≈talk 01:25, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slight fix of [[Template:NCAATeamSeason]] 

message: I am incredibly pleased to announce that 2005 Texas Longhorn football team has been recognized as a featured article.  I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this article through edits, suggestions, and peer review.
Now that we've gotten one through, hopefully we can start progressing others through the FA system.
It seems that every FA nomination is unique in terms of what gets scrutinized.  However, certain things took a lot of tedious time to fix and so I will list them out here in the hopes that other editors can avoid these problems while the are writing, instead of having to go back and fix them all:
#WP:HYPHEN problems - sports scores are supposed to be separated by an "–", not a "-".  So it should be "42–38", not "42-38".  That is a pain in the *ss.
#Likewise, WP:MOS specifies non-breaking spaces between numbers and the following word, like "220 yards rushing".
#Consistency and completeness in the reference citations, including the name of the publisher, page numbers for a non-web reference, etc.
You can check the nomination page for more detail.  The nomination even got restarted once because there were so many little things being flagged and fixed.
Thanks again for everyone's help.  We can all be proud of this milestone for the project. Johntex\talk 05:35, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Congratulations!  --Bobak 17:38, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  We have our first Featured Article 

message: Can anybody think of a way for us to combine all the coach templates that may be on a coach's article into one? Take a look at Howard Schnellenberger. He has five coaching templates. I would really like to have a way to keep the individual templates, but, to have another "container" template that combines them into one and hides them. Basically, kinda like  except for coaching templates. Of course, we want to keep the custom colors that exist for the individual school. Any ideas? Should we request assistance at WP:VPT or WP:WPT?↔NMajdan•talk 03:18, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Why can't we just create something like the BannerShell that encompasses all the coaching templates (there are worse examples, I can't remember who at the moment tho, but there are some stubs that have like 7 of those and that's it)? It would just collapse itself like "Coaching templates".. and we only use it when there are 3 or more? If anyone could figure out how to colorize the hide/show link so it's not the default blue we could just use that and have it collapse when there are 3 or more to also help keep it smaller... That's the only reason we didn't incorporate the hide/show in to the CFB nav template. That would be the first option to pursue I think. MECU≈talk 01:30, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Combine coaching templates 

message: Here are two more FAs that are related to college football:
*Aggie Bonfire
*Fightin' Texas Aggie Band
The Aggie Bonfire tradition was formed to help pump up Texas A&M prior to their rivalry game against Texas.  The tradition would not exist if not for college football.  The Aggie band is a marching band and those have a military tradition.  Therefore, one could argue that A&M would have a band even without college football, but I think it is safe to say that their half-time performances are what has made the band famous.
I think the pageantry of college football (traditions, mascots, rivalry trophies, etc) are a large part of what makes college football great.  I believe those two articles (and others like them) should be tagged as being a part of this project.  Thoughts? Johntex\talk 00:12, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the bonfire is okay, but the Band has their own project. We can co-sponsor it, but since they're both FAs, some people might get upset if we just stick our banner on it like we helped, but didn't since it's already an FA. Unless of course we improve it... MECU≈talk 01:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: (darned edit conflict...) I definitely think the bonfire is a part of this project, as the most famous (and awful) moment was when it collapsed before a game back in the day. I'd also like to think bands are a part of us, but I'd like to get more opinions. --Bobak 01:30, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Who hoo! I beat bobak! MECU≈talk 01:31, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Since there is a freely licensed photo of the fire being used in the article, why is there a non-free one in the lead? --B 01:51, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

text: *They are two different types of bonfires from different years.  The top on is an actual Aggie Bonfire from the days when the event was school-sponsored (before the tragedy).  The other one is one of the more recent, unofficial "student bonfires". Johntex\talk 01:58, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  2 FAs related to college football 

message: I've seen a lot of player "fan sites" lately. A lot of them are just link aggregators.  They usually have the athletes name as their domain name.  See  for an example.  Several times, I've seen ones like this where the person adds a link to the website and an interwiki link to a non-existent page.  (I'm not sure what that accomplishes.)  I imagine that a lot of these websites are owned by the same person or organization.  These aren't real fan sites where there is an actual community.  Has anyone else noticed links like this? --B 07:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I imagine the interwiki link is included to make it look more legitimate when editors glance at diffs on recent changes and watchlists. AUTiger » talk 13:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm ... take a look at this - .  Subsequent to me posting this, a Tagalong article for Darren McFadden was created.  There are several articles on athletes over there ... all started out as copy/pastes of the English and I would bet that they were translated using a Google translator.  All of them have "fan site" links.  Call me paranoid, but I bet that this is just an advertising campaign and that someone is using the Tagalog Wikipedia to promote their spam links.  With only 7000 total articles, somehow I doubt that American college athletes are high atop their priority list. --B 17:07, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Massive_spam_campaign_on_athlete_articles. --B 17:18, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spam to be on the lookout for 

message: Found a site that links to a lot of news articles about a given topic, whether that topic is a team or a player or a specific sports writer. SportsUltra.com. Definitely handy when writing game updates for the yearly articles. For instance check out the articles about Sam Bradford or Colt McCory or Western Michigan. If you login, you can select what teams and players you want displayed on your main page. And no, I'm not affiliated with this site at all, I just know it will help me write the game updates since I can simply go to this one website that links to many different articles.↔NMajdan•talk 04:31, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good news aggregator 

message: A new editor, User:Drw859001 has been editing this article with text that clearly violates WP:NPOV; I have tried to have this user discuss the changes on the talk page, but he refuses to listen. Additionally, I have already reverted him twice, so I cannot do so again without violating WP:3RR; any help would be appreciated. Dlong 23:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I left a message with him ... it's important that when interacting with a good-faith user, you leave a welcome message (like ) if they haven't already been given one in addition to whatever other messages you leave.  A new user doesn't necessarily know about our content policies so it's important to give them something to look at. --B 00:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Tennessee Volunteers football]] 

message: In the wake of Syracuse's upset over Louisville, I noticed that this  Sports Illustrated page claims that Syracuse's victory is the biggest upset ever in terms of points spread (at 36.5 points). However, there's currently an article called 1985 Oregon State vs. Washington football game that claims that title at 38 points against the spread.  Only one source claims that the spread was 38 points and two others say 37 points (and the SI article says it's at 36 points). Who's right here? Does the 1985 game even deserve an article?
Thanks in advance. CardinalHawk 21:28, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Covers.com says that the 1985 game was -33.5 .  It's distinctly possible that they are comparing apples to oranges.  38 could have been the line at kickoff vs 33.5 as the opening line or vice versa (that would be a huge move, but stranger things have happened.)  --B 21:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Or they could be comparing the line from different sources. Perhaps SI does a line on each game and uses their stats for that. It's like ESPN always uses the ESPN/Coaches Poll for the rankings of teams but other sources may use the AP. MECU≈talk 13:07, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help please 

message: Someone who knows the score ought to take a look at College rivalry and Talk:College rivalry. It appears that IP editors have been inventing rivalries. One editor who wanted to stop the vandalism seemed to write up a request for page protection but posted it in the College rivalry article instead of at WP:RFPP. I'm going to be bold and try to clean up the mess but I have very, very little knowledge in the subject area so someone else might want to look a bit more carefully. Sbowers3 23:47, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Take a look at [[College rivalry]]