Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Oklahoma Sooners football/archive1

Oklahoma Sooners football

This is a thorough, well cited, and hopefully well written article. It has been reviewed for NPOV by the College football WikiProject. I support this article as the nominator and primary editor.--NMajdan•talk 16:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I can't decipher a source for some of those tables - example, Coaching history. Make sure all data is sourced. Sandy (Talk) 16:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can do that. Also, I noticed you moved an image up. I know there is a lot of whitespace around the award winners but that image is of OU's first All-American and is lined up with the All-American table.--NMajdan•talk 17:00, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sources added. I tried to use the actual award website for my sources but there were two or three where I could not find a list of past winners on their website but I did find another source for those exceptions.--NMajdan•talk 17:36, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When I moved it, it was still aligned with the first All-American - it's long enough to cover both short sections. Big globs of white space are ugly - images don't have to be perfectly aligned with the text they correspond to :-) Sandy (Talk) 23:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Object. A lot of good material, but it's overall focus is very promotional. Half the table of contents is awards, with another main section being championships, making 2 out of 4 sections basically presenting a positive POV about the program. There is some information on scandals in the text, but it is relatively minimized compared to the rest. The text itself isn't all egregiously POV, but most sentences are structured to highlight the positives, making it read a bit too much like ad copy. I think there's good enough material that this could make it with some work. An example to see what I mean is the lead. All but three sentences are positive facts about the program selectively chosen to highlight the positives. Picking timeframes such as the modern era to mention it is the winningest program of the modern era, is an example of POV by selective presentation of facts. The same thing is done by focusing on winning seasons and coaches and won games. - Taxman ^Talk 18:59, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there is no precedent in FA for college athletic team articles so any advice is helpful. I've been looking at New England Patriots which is the closest thing I could compare to. You mention that too much of the TOC is awards. The Patriots article has a third or so dedicated to "Players of note", Hall of Famers, Retired numbers, and other notable alumni. I believe these are equal to the awards of college football. But, I can fix that by changing all those subheaders to just bolded titles which would shrink the TOC by half.--NMajdan•talk 19:09, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, there's no precedent so the job won't be easy. I didn't mean to be harsh it's just the state of the article. It looks like the Patriots article has the same problem, and it's the same problem that most university articles have. Most of what's written about sports franchises is promotional, and most people willing to write about a sports program are fans, so it's hard to be neutral. I don't see justification for any full sections covering awards, beyond noting as it does in the text already what awards were won. Perhaps instead of listing only positive things such as awards or facts that are better than other programs, consider on some objective criteria how the program compares to other perennially winning programs, Notre Dame, Penn State, Fla, etc. Simply list which criteria they are better at and which ones are worse than other programs. Another thing that could help is more simple description of the program, it's stadium, attendance, revenues. I don't have a lot of other ideas on how to reduce the POV, but changing the section headings to years, instead of eras of the best coaches should help some. What's hard is almost the whole focus of the article is positive facts instead of just description. - Taxman ^Talk 21:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - In relation to the selective presentation of facts, the generally accepted practice in college football (at least in the media and among the programs) is to ignore anything related to wins and losses before the advent of the AP poll when trying to determine program prestige. Mainly, this is because records for many programs are not complete before about 1930 and there was not a national focus on college football until around that time. One could consider the creation of a national poll like the AP as a response to the increasing demand for national information about local college teams. Additionally, the phrase "modern era" is easily misinterpreted to mean a relatively short time frame when it actually encompasses over 70 years of history. z4ns4tsu\^talk 17:09, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I will combine the awards into one section but I am very hesitant about removing them completely. I want this article to serve as a reference for somebody wanting information on OU football. Having a list of what Sooners have won the most prestigious awards in college football is something I can see somebody easily coming to this article to find. Right now, this information is only available by visiting multiple sites but now, on Wikipedia, its available all in one place. I will definitely work on adding a couple paragraphs for the stadium which can encompass attendance and I will work at finding information on revenues. I read recently the budget for OU football was $60+ million but I'll see if I can find other information as well. But thank you for your detailed response on how to improve the article. As you can see, this is my first FA and I knew how critical everybody was. This article has been stable for months but I was hesitant to nominate. I just decided to go ahead a few days ago.--NMajdan•talk 17:24, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Object. The article reads a bit too much like Oklahoma Sooners football history - the article is essentially a history section followed by a series of lists.. For example, Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium is mentioned in the lead but nowhere else. The infobox has a pageantry section which contains several items notable enough to have their own article; these deserve to be mentioned in the text, under Pageantry or another suitable title. The seemingly endless lists of awards would be better converted to prose, in a manner similar to Arsenal F.C.#Statistics and records. One more minor point: it might just be because I use British English rather than American English, but to me "winningest" seems too informal for encyclopedic use. Oldelpaso 21:03, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Perhaps you could convert the awards section to look something like the All-Americans box so it would take up less space and only be one item on the table of contents. Also, am I right in that Image:OU-Logo.PNG needs a fair use rationale? VegaDark 21:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I can work on both those. I didn't know if the fair use rationale was needed since I didn't see it on a few other images on other FAs.--NMajdan•talk 22:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I left the Heisman and All-American sections alone, but combined the rest into one.--NMajdan•talk 19:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Object It's kinda like a boosters brochure or fund-raising pamphlet more than an article, this is along-standing football team that has had more than its share of fame and glory, also the prose is marginal in a lot of areas

"That first "season" saw the team go 0-1, being blanked 0-34 by a more experienced Oklahoma City Town Team (they could not even muster a first down." Who could not even muster a first down? "That first "season" saw the Sooners go 0-1, without even a first down in their only game against the more experienced Oklahoma City Town Team." And Harts isn't important enough to the history of the team to get a closing sentence, that the Sooners didn't get their first real coach until a few years later takes care of Hart. This patchy list of incosequential early coaches without any reason or season for their mention clutters the article. "Bedlam Series" should be used instead of "bedlam football." You need more references for this section, also, as it seems rather POV without the references. No one who is not an Okie or college football fan will know what your first few sentences of the Switzer era section is about. You're writing for people who don't know, not for the fans who want all the points mentioned. There's really too much work that needs done on this article for it to be considered at this point for FA. However, I'd like to see it get up to snuff and be featured. KP Botany 23:59, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Object, too much POV, advertisement here. Article is too long and needs more summarisation. Its not up to FA standards in general. Ter e nc e Ong 08:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I had a great time reading this panphlet trying to convince me to play football at Oklahoma. Oh, wait, this is an encyclopedia article? There is a lot of shoddy writing in this article, with sentences such as "This flurry of early season wins propelled them to a number two national ranking and setting the stage for one of the great college football games of the century against top-ranked Nebraska." and "The next couple coaches that came after Owen, Adrian Lindsey and Lewie Hardage, amounted to little going a combined 30-31-10 over those eight seasons." Object. -- Kicking222 15:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's no need to be insulting. I think the point has been made and it can be made politely too. - Taxman ^Talk 01:46, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a pretty good article, some of the comments above seem slightly inconsiderate and generally not used to sports articles on Wikipedia. But some other comments do seem helpful. At any rate, this article is well-referenced and has the makings of a great summary of the team's history. Tone issues are still there, it's a bit too informal in places, heavilly referring to the team as "OU" for example. I fixed a variety of problems in several sections. This FAC seems doomed but I give a weak support and encourage people interested in OU football to keep at it and try again. Writing the first FA of a given type of topic can be a beast I'm sure, but it would be useful to have a precedent set for college sports articles. To go beyond history & awards fare, perhaps fan culture at OU should be covered, are there interesting fan traditions, what is the fan base like, how is the team percieved by other Big 12 fans and by college FB fans in general? --W.marsh 04:05, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]