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Major college football conferences and teams in pre-divisional era

In recent months, Ben76266 made a series of edits to national college football season articles (e.g. 1955 college football season) reorganizing the conference standings templates and adding a designation reading "For this article, major conferences defined as those including at least one state flagship public university and the Ivy League." This has had the effect of demoting the Missouri Valley Conference to minor status and promoting the North Central Conference and Yankee Conference to major status. I believe this contravenes how the teams in these conferences were actually designated. I recall seeing an NCAA document a while back that lists which teams had "major" status from the 1930s until the beginning of NCAA divisions in the late 1950s. Does anyone know where I can find that document?

On a related note, I've been reorganizing 1949 college football season as I've been creating a number of 1949 team season articles to combat the Template:Cfb link call crisis there. In particular, see the "Minor conference summaries" section, which I've cleaned up and expanded from the long-standing version of the table. I plan to create a similar table for the major conferences. Let me know if you have any thoughts. Jweiss11 (talk) Jweiss11 (talk) 18:09, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I have made the edits mentioned. The status of "major" and "minor" conferences in these pre-divisional annual articles seemed very arbitrary, and so I was trying to come up with a metric that could be used to define the conferences. I welcome any and all conversation on this topic, even if it leads to my changes being reversed or altered. I would also like to see the NCAA document mentioned if it exists. Ben76266 (talk) 21:13, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
Even in the years before the NCAA College Division was formed for football c. 1959, the NCAA statitistics bureau (?) drew a distinction for statistical purposes between "major" or "minor" programs. That division has some level of official sanction to it. Cbl62 (talk) 21:32, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Anyone in a article-creating mood?

Hi, for anyone who is feeling an urge to create new articles for this project and for NFL football, there are a ton of requested articles at Wikipedia:Requested articles/Sports/American football for a variety of subjects, from players and coaches to rivalries and terminology. Some of these have been lingering around for awhile with no action. Feel free to be bold, help create some new articles and expand Wikipedia's coverage of American football! Fretyr (talk) 16:44, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Junior college national champions

Junior college (Juco) football teams almost never receive the SIGCOV needed to pass muster under WP:GNG. Juco national champions appear to be an exception where sufficient SIGCOV can sometimes be found. We now have a template of Juco national champions in case anyone is interested in doing work in this area:

Cbl62 (talk) 03:54, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Kadyn Proctor (and future players doing the same shit)

Hi everyone. As perhaps you know, the MF Kadyn Proctor just re-entered to the transfer portal and returned to Alabama. He was officially enrolled with the Hawkeyes, but... should we add Iowa to his Infobox? I mean, this isn't like the NFL, where players can be members of teams only in the preseason, in CFB there's no preseason.

I think is better not show it in the Infobox, it'd be weird if it is displayed:

  • Alabama (2023, 2024–present)
  • Iowa (2024)

Or

  • Alabama (2023)
  • Iowa (2024)
  • Alabama (2024–present)

Perhaps it's only me, but I prefer just show:

  • Alabama (2023–present)

It is more clear, specially because he does not even play a snap with Iowa (just went to make more money, but that ain't the matter).

Additionally, the transfer portal is out of control, too many players are transferring multiple times in the same offseason. What's the next? (e.g.)

  • Ohio State (2024)
  • Texas (2024)
  • USC (2024)
  • LSU (2024)

IMO, if they don't play a game with any team, it shouldn't be displayed in the Infobox. Sergio Skol (talk) 18:16, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I'd say if they aren't on the team for any games/any part of a season, it shouldn't be listed in the infobox. glman (talk) 18:24, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
Marcus Dupree is listed as going to Oklahoma and not his later transfered school (USM).-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 23:04, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

All-Americans: missing articles

As part of my series on developing redlink lists for likely notable football players (see 1 2 3 4 5 6), I wondered how many selections to the College Football All-America Team are missing articles. It seems only 1889-1895, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020 are complete. In case anyone wants to work on any, here's what I've got, based on each All-America article (will periodically update over the next few days). Note that I'm only including first-team selections as those are most likely to be notable; I'm also bolding any who were mutltiple-year first-team choices, and italicizing those who were first-team choices by multiple selectors:

Pre-1900
1900s
1910s

BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:27, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

  • Many of those listed are persons named to Outing magazine's annual "Roll of Honor". That's not the same as being a first-team All-American. Indeed, Outing selected multiple players at each position without any first-, second-, third-, or fourth-team etc. designations. Cbl62 (talk) 22:20, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

1956 NCAA College Division football season

This article starts with the statement: "The 1956 NCAA College Division football season saw the NCAA split member schools into two divisions" (a reference to NCAA University Division and NCAA College Division). Is that really true? While the University vs. College split clearly existed in basketball, yielding two tournaments in the spring of 1957, I'm not seeing anything in contemporary newspaper articles that indicates the NCAA "split member schools" in football for the 1956 fall season. NCAA football records (here) make only passing references to College Division, such as "For what was then known as College Division teams" in speaking of the pre-Division II era (here, page 63). Clearly, there was a distinction between major-college and small-college programs, but I'm not seeing sourcing that indicates an "NCAA College Division" (especially as a proper name) existed for the 1956 college football season. Input welcome, especially from editors who may be familiar with this era. Thanks. Dmoore5556 (talk) 21:57, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

  • I've raised this before. There was no football "College Division" in 1956 or, if I recall correctly, 1957 either. These articles really should be deleted. Cbl62 (talk) 21:59, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
The "College Division" concept was originally created, as I recall, as a mechanism to divide the NCAA basketball tournament between higher and lower level programs. The concept did not expand to football until at least a couple years later. Cbl62 (talk) 22:03, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
Prior discussion at User talk:Jweiss11/Archives/2020#University/College Division season articles. We dropped the ball in fixing the error back then, but we should do so now. I continue to believe that the 1956 and 1957 "College Division" articles should be merged back into the general 1956 and 1957 general college football season articles. Cbl62 (talk) 22:10, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
Starting with UPI for the 1958 season, and joined by AP beginning with the 1960 season, there were "small college" polls (as documented in 1958 small college football rankings, and later). But I do not see that the NCAA recognized "Small College" as an official designation or that it existed as a proper name (in a football context), in the way that Division II and Division III did from 1973 onward. I'd be happy to help with any cleanup efforts; guidance / direction welcome. Dmoore5556 (talk) 22:16, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
It's been about four years since the prior discussion, but I thought it was arguable starting at some point that there was an NCAA "College Division" through the 1960s. But what I recall being very clear is that there was no such thing as 1956 NCAA College Division football season or 1957 NCAA College Division football season. At a minimum, those two should be deleted and/or redirected. Cbl62 (talk) 22:26, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
An even earlier discussion on the matter in 2009 found sourcing (e.g., this, this, this, this) for separate "University" and "College Divisions" from 1962 forward. See early discussion here: User talk:Jweiss11/Archives/2019#College Division. Thus, it is pre-1962 "College Division" articles that are most problematic and appear to be consist of WP:OR. Cbl62 (talk) 22:46, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
Thanks—these are helpful, but do not indicate if or when a College Division in football was formally created by the NCAA, leaving us with the distinct possibility it was a term of convenience for media and statistics. Within those cited sources: this source from 1963 uses "college division" in the lower case and speaks of the "so-called university division" (if it formally existed, it wouldn't be "so-called"); this source from 1966 speaks only of a university division in basketball and states that "major" football programs are designated by the Football Writers Association of America; and this source from 1969 makes an extremely dubious statement that college and university divisions were created "33 years ago", which would be 1936. More review is needed, which I'll try to do over the next few days.... Dmoore5556 (talk) 04:29, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
The reference to "33 years ago" is to the time period in the 1930s when the NCAA Service Bureau began issuing separate statistics for "major college" and "small college" programs. This small/major distinction had the official imprimatur of the NCAA. The Service Bureau continued to publish these separate "major" and "small" college stats for decades. Cbl62 (talk) 06:07, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, that helps. It seems the writer of the 1969 article (this one) confused the longer-standing statistical differentiation with the more-recent divisions. Dmoore5556 (talk) 00:43, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
  • The 1960 NCAA records book contains separate sections for "Major-College Statistics" (page 63) and "Small-College Statistics" (page 71). The Small-College review of the 1959 season by Danny Hill of the National Collegiate Athletic Bureau opens with the explainer:
Approximately 110 college football teams, which play most of their games against each other, are classified as "major-college" teams. They represent the field of so-called "big time" college football as judged by class of competition rather than seasonal strength. The football teams of all other four-year colleges and universities compromise the "small-college" field. An official list is issued annually by the Football Writers' Association of America, the official classifying authority.
I unfortunately don't have any of the records books from the 1950s to check, maybe another editor here does.
PK-WIKI (talk) 23:39, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
The "small college" vs "major college" distinction is something different from the "University Division" and "College Division". The major/small college distinction dates back to, I think, the late 1930s with the NCAA keeping separate statistics for small college and major college players. Cbl62 (talk) 23:46, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
Ok, in that case the 1961 NCAA book continues the "Major & Small" statistics sections, and has a single "1961 NCAA-Member Schedules" section. I don't have a copy of the 1962 book. The 1963 book still has Major & Small statistics, but then "1963 University Division Schedules and Records" and "1963 College Division Schedules and Records". The next book I have is 1966, which now has "Major College Statistics" and "College Division Statistics", then separate University & College Schedules and Records sections. PK-WIKI (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Neutral question — were those books published by the NCAA, or by another entity about NCAA football? Dmoore5556 (talk) 00:13, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Published by the NCAA; the "Official Collegiate Football Record Book". Here is the 1963 guide cover and publisher page but without all of the content. I uploaded the covers and national championship pages from many of these books to the table at College football national championships. PK-WIKI (talk) 00:36, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Dmoore5556 and Cbl62, thanks for bringing this up. This has been in the back of my mind to return to for a while. I think what you are proposing is that we merge 1956 NCAA College Division football season and 1956 NCAA University Division football season into one article and the like for 1957, at least. What do we do with 1956 NAIA football season? Leave it alone? If so, is the target of the merge 1956 NCAA football season? Or do we merge all three articles into 1956 college football season? The latter merge of all three articles into one will induce a cfb link call crisis. We still have such crises on many season articles from late 1920s thru 1955. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:05, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Actually, I am more comfortable with renaming 1956 NCAA College Division football season as 1956 small college football season, and continuing such naming through whatever seasons are not well-sourced as having been conducted under College Division naming. (I prefer how Template:NCAA football rankings navbox names seasons.) I have more digging to do, but it unclear that College Division was ever formally defined by the NCAA, other than basketball. If may be justified via WP:COMMONNAME, but certainly not for the 1956 and 1957 seasons. Dmoore5556 (talk) 00:22, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Dmoore5556, note that articles like 1958 small college football rankings reflect the most common naming of these rankings, and that these rankings included both NCAA (College Division) and NAIA teams. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:12, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. When instituted in 1958 (source), the small-college rankings covered the 519 institutions not designated as "major" by the Football Writers Association of America (there were 109 such "major" programs). If we were creating 1958 college football articles from scratch, 1958 major college football season and 1958 small college football season would seem to be appropriate (the source notes that with regards to NCAA and NAIA membership, some teams belonged to just one, some teams belonged to both, and some teams belonged to neither). Dmoore5556 (talk) 04:27, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
  • By 1962, it appears that the "University Division"/"College Division" was a real thing recognized as such by the NCAA. In this 1962 piece, no less an authority than NCAA executive director Walter Byers refers to "our University and College divisions" and notes that there are 140 schools playing football in the University Division and 370 programs competing in the college division. Cbl62 (talk) 06:22, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
Thanks; I've seen that quote, but corroboration is lacking. That is the only newspaper article containing such a statement by Byers—searching newspapers.com for 1962 articles containing "university division" "college division" and "Walter Byers" yields only six hits, and none of the other five corroborate what Tommy Devine of the Miami News wrote. It is implausible that such a structure existed for NCAA football in 1962, yet only one columnist from one newspaper wrote about it. Perhaps there are other articles, using different wording, but I've not been able to find them, at least so far.
The most authoritative sourcing I've been able to find, so far, is this document from the NCAA, a 2012 summary of Division II. On page 3, there are the "Regional Championship Results", with a section lead stating "Before 1973, there was no Division II Football Championship. Instead, four regional bowl games were played in order to provide postseason action for what then were called NCAA College Division member institutions. Following are the results of those bowl games:" This document and contemporary accounts of the noted bowl games—of which there are various newspaper articles referring to, for example, the Tangerine Bowl as the "NCAA College Division Atlantic Coast playoff game" (source)—give us solid ground for the 1964 season through the creation of Division II / Division III. Dmoore5556 (talk) 00:08, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
That strikes me as further corroborating that the "College Division" was a real thing, at least in the 1960s. No? Cbl62 (talk) 00:31, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
1964 and later, yes. Before 1964 remains murky. Dmoore5556 (talk) 00:46, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
After a bunch of additions review, I've found there was an NCAA College Division Football Committee; it first shows up in January 1964 (example) and mentions of it can be found in newspapers into 1973 (example) with only a few stray mentions later. This article in August 1963 stated "The college division football program, still subject to ratification at the January 1964 NCAA convention, provides for regional championship games beginning 1964." I will start a new topic with a suggestion, as this discussion is now several layers deep. Dmoore5556 (talk) 05:10, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
It would be nice to see some sort of official NCAA documentation and/or definitive encyclopedic work from the era. I've been building a list of archived official college football guides here: Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Archived yearbooks. The 1971 issue explicitly refers to College and University Divisions. I haven't found any such guides from the sensitive time period (1956–1964-ish). The NCAA website also has a lot of team summary reports from the years in question, e.g. https://stats.ncaa.org/team/108/stats/13015 (1963 UC Davis Aggies football team). While that archived report has a file name that refers the "College Division", the 1963 document itself does not make such a reference. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:42, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
I think it's worth considering: what makes a "season", to that point that independent articles are warranted? Clearly today there are, for example, independent rankings, playoffs, and even administrative rules (e.g. number of athletic scholarships) that are specific to the various NCAA football levels from Division III through Division I FBS. Something akin to that existed from 1964 onward, with the start of the College Division regional finals and a governing entity (NCAA College Division Football Committee). Prior to 1964, there's a general entity known as "college football", which did not conduct or administer "seasons" at different levels—who was considered "major" seems to have been based on the opinion of the FWAA, there were conferences with a mix of major and non-major teams, and the various teams that competed belonged the NCAA and/or NAIA (sometimes one, sometimes both, sometimes neither). The closest thing to delineate different levels are the "small college" polls of UPI (starting in 1958) and the AP (starting in 1960) and the statistical delineation of major and small-college by the NCAA Service Bureau dating back to, apparently, the late 1930s. But I question whether that's an indication that different "seasons" of competition were taking place, vs. wire services and the NCAA statisicians felt it made sense to look at Notre Dame, Michigan, and Oklahoma differently than Small State College as a matter of convenience or other factors. Dmoore5556 (talk) 17:18, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
You make some good points, adding to my second thoughts about trying to create separate articles pre-1964 (or, per my preference, pre-1962) for "major college" and "small college" football seasons. If you conclude that the best outcome is to simply revert to "19xx college football season", I'd support that. Cbl62 (talk) 21:25, 9 May 2024 (UTC) Cbl62 (talk) 21:25, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
Given the uncertainty about major/small split by season, at least based on what we know currently, I feel that "19xx college football season" articles are the safest (as in, they can be well-sourced and avoid straying into original research). The relevant question being, what's the transition point from unified "football season" articles to having different University and College season articles? The Byers quote (here, December 1962) looks to be less of an outlier in consideration of the November 1961 quote noted below (here) although it is still worth considering if there were really different "seasons" of football happening amongst NCAA schools prior to the 1964 onset of College Division-specific postseason games. Dmoore5556 (talk) 23:37, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Oregon Webfoots vs. Oregon Ducks

Team articles from 1940 Oregon Ducks football team to 1977 Oregon Ducks football team have just been changed from "Webfoots" to "Ducks" by @User:Carrite.

I'm not sure what the correct team name is for each year, but would like to see some discussion and sources on the move.

PK-WIKI (talk) 17:53, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Neutrally as a point of reference; the program's media guide from 1976 uses only "Ducks" when referring to the team (here, see for example the Outlook article on page 3). Dmoore5556 (talk) 22:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
The 1963 NCAA records book lists them as the Ducks. PK-WIKI (talk) 01:36, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is now available digitally on Newspapers.com. Woohoo! Cbl62 (talk) 16:27, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Most excellent! When my local Dayton papers were added to Newspapers.com, it was honestly one of the happiest days of my life! Jb45424 (talk) 16:35, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

CfD: Category:1941 junior college football season

Category:1941 junior college football season has been nominated for merging. Please the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 May 23#Category:1941 junior college football season. Jweiss11 (talk) 14:25, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

College Division / University Division

From the above discussion... a suggestion:

  • Retain existing "19xx NCAA College Division football season" articles for 1964 through 1972, as the College Division regional finals and the NCAA College Division Football Committee demonstrably existed during those seasons, AND
  • For the 1956 to 1963 articles structured as College/University/NAIA, either:

Dmoore5556 (talk) 05:27, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

  • My thoughts are still forming as we dig into the issue, but here are my takes so far:
1) Agree that the "19xx College Division football season" articles from 1956 to at least 1961 are based on original and/or flawed research and need to be changed.
2) Agree that the "19xx College Division football season" articles from 1964 forward be left as is. I would go further and extend this back to 1962 when we have this quote from NCAA executive director Walter Byers referring to "our University and College divisions" and giving a specific breakdown that there were at that time 140 schools playing football in the University Division and 370 programs competing in the college division. To my mind, this is clear evidence that the "University/College Division" split had occurred by 1962.
3) For the earlier years, I was initially inclined to split them (and probably support the split) into separate "major" and "small" college articles. However, as we've begun to dig in, second thoughts have developed due to
(a) ambiguity and uncertainty as to which programs were considered "major" vs "small" (there were inconsistencies in how some teams were classified),
(b) uncertainty as to which designators of "major" status we should report. So far, we have multiple and sometimes inconsitent designations by (i) FWAA (unfortunately, we don't yet have its annual lists of the schools it designated as "major"), (ii) the NCAA Service Bureau which divided its annual statistical reports between schools designated as "major" and "small", (iii) AP Newsfeatures' pre-season publication of "major college" football schedules,
(c) the split creates an issue as to how we should treat certain conferences. For example, in 1948, only two of five MVC schools (3/9 Border, 4/6 Skyline, 12/16 SoCon) were considered "major". Cbl62 (talk) 09:22, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Cbl62 good insight, thanks. The 1962 Byers quote is still problematic, as a) the Miami News column in question is the only known instance where a writer attributed such a statement to Byers, and b) 140 is an overly high number of programs to consider "major", as other sources (such as the published schedules, example) put the number in the 120s. I would like to see some corroborating source(s), lest this simply be a case of one columnist's notes being off. I will dig some more, as time permits. Dmoore5556 (talk) 14:43, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

The 1962 record is not as clear as we'd like, but I see the Byers quote as pretty decent evidence. It's conceivable that the reporter may have gotten the precise counts for either division off by a bit, but it seems unlikely that the reporter (a 30-year veteran reporter and sports editor of a major newspaper) just made up the whole sequence of quotes from Byers about the two divisions. Cbl62 (talk) 23:19, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
Here are the relevant pages from the 1963 NCAA records book. PK-WIKI (talk) 22:31, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
PK-WIKI, the 1963 NCAA records book content is helpful, thank you. I've done some additional digging, and found a relevant article from 1961, as below. Newspaper mentions of "college division" before 1961 that I've looked through are not specific to football; most are about basketball, with some cross-country mentions. Standard disclaimer that there could be other content, which I've not found.
    • November 1961 article here discussing how the NCAA is "anxious" for postseason football games in the college division.
    • January 1960 article here which starts off discussing football substitution rules, and later makes a mention of college division in the general sense (not specific to football), which I highlight here because it gives a very specific figure for the size of a school then considered "NCAA (small) college division"—less than 705 students. This is curiously inconsistent with other content we see where the major/small categorization in football was decided by the FWAA. Dmoore5556 (talk) 23:17, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
The pages referenced by PK-WIKI from the 1963 NCAA annual are pretty definitive: the split between the College and University Divisions were a real and official thing in 1963. It would be interesting to see how the 1962 NCAA annual dealt with the matter. Cbl62 (talk) 00:22, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
@PK-WIKI: Would you be willing either (a) to share the full range of pages from the 1963 NCAA annual that identify the University Division Schools, or (b) transcribe the list of University Division schools at Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Major vs small college compendium#1963. Thanks for finding this! Cbl62 (talk) 00:34, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
No problem, here are the 1963 University Division schedules. PK-WIKI (talk) 01:34, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
Cbl62, I agree, it would be insightful to see how things were presented in the 1962 NCAA book. Since PK-WIKI noted above that he doesn't have a copy of the 1962 edition, I just purchased one via eBay, and I'll provide an update here as soon as I get it (hopefully early next week). PK-WIKI, if you later want the 1962 edition to add to your collection, I'd be happy to send it to you. Dmoore5556 (talk) 06:22, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
I should receive the 1962 NCAA book tomorrow (Wednesday) and will provide an update as soon as possible. Dmoore5556 (talk) 03:17, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
The 1962 NCAA book (with Sonny Gibbs on the cover) did arrive—I've looked through it, and it does not make any mention of the NCAA having College and University Divisions. What I see is:
  • A section on "Major-College Statistics" and a section on "Small-College Statistics". The Small-College section starts with an explanatory paragraph: "Approximately 110 college football teams, which play most of their games against each other, are classified as 'major-college' teams. ... The football teams of all other colleges and universities comprise the 'small-college' field. An official list is issued annually by the Football Writers' Association of America, the official classifying authority."
  • A single section with "1962 NCAA-Member Schedules". This is presented alphabetically (e.g. Alabama is followed by Albion College), and without designation of whether a team is 'major' or not.
  • As a bit of an aside: final standings for the 1961 season in the Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC, but not today's Mid-American Conference) show that it was divided into three divisions—University, College North, and College South. But these were not new, as the MAC organized itself that way from the late 1950s (source) through the 1969 season. These divisions are visible in Template:1958 Middle Atlantic Conference football standings through Template:1969 Middle Atlantic Conference football standings. Such a structure was (from what I can tell) unique to the MAC and done by the conference itself, independent of the NCAA.

If anyone wants other info from this record book, let me know.

Considering the clear contrast between the 1962 record book and 1963 record book... that looks to be the transition point from no organizational split, to having University and College divisions. Having different record keeping for teams deemed major-college and small-college dates to earlier (apparently, the 1930s) but does not reflect an organizational split. Dmoore5556 (talk) 23:08, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I should also add... we are left with an inconsistency for 1962, where the Record Book doesn't show University/College but there's a statement (here) about University/College by Walter Byers. There was certainly a time gap between the issuing of the Record Book (it doesn't say what month it was published, but it's certainly no later than September 1962, and likely a few months earlier) and Byers' statement, which was published on December 12, 1962. It would seem either the NCAA decided late in the 1962 pre-season to implement University/College (that is, it happened after the Record Book was finalized) or perhaps Byers was looking ahead to the 1963 season (he was speaking about a "comprehensive survey" that had not yet happened). I'd be curious as to if anything the 1963 Record Book makes mention of University/College existing during the prior (1962) season, or just in the 1963 schedules. Dmoore5556 (talk) 23:27, 15 May 2024 (UTC)


For completeness, there is a source cited in 1956 NCAA University Division football season which states:

Before we list those players, we must first note how the NCAA divisions used to be organized. Prior to 1956, there were no Divisions in college football. Between 1956 and 1972, schools were categorized in either the “University Division” or the “College Division”. In 1973, the University Division became Division I while the College Division becamse Divisions II and III. There was another split in 1978, with Division I breaking up into Division I and Division I-AA. In 2006, we saw the new classification of the FBS and FCS arise. That is our current structure.

The source is this page on the heisman.com site, published in July 2016 and authored by one Chris Hudson. I view the "Between 1956 and 1972" statement as a well-intended attempt to clarify history, but it ultimately lacks sourcing and does not hold up to scrutiny. His statement would be accurate in a basketball context, but not in a football context, even though it "sounds good".

Next steps

I believe we are at a point where the unified content found at 1955 college football season should be extended through at least 1961 college football season, and the first season to have separate University Division and College Division articles should be either 1962 or 1963. Comments?

Note that NAIA season articles begin with 1956 NAIA football season, so whether that content should be included in the above, or left to stand on their own, also merits some consideration. I have not looked into NAIA football history, so I don't know to what degree the unsourced statement "The 1956 NAIA football season was the first season of college football sponsored by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics." is factually accurate.

Lastly, we should also consider whether to make changes directly (WP:BOLD), or via WP:MERGE, or ?

Thank you to all who have participated in this (now quite lengthy) discussion. Dmoore5556 (talk) 20:58, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Upper Midwest Athletic Conference: NAIA or NCAA D3?

I came across a slew of conference standings templates for Upper Midwest Athletic Conference (and began a TfD for a majority of them here for anyone interested in participating). However, I noticed that for the 2002 and 2003 templates, they are included in both 2002 NCAA Division III football season and 2002 NAIA football season, and both 2003 NCAA Division III football season and 2003 NAIA football season. I don't think programs can be part of the NCAA and NAIA in the same season, so could anyone help out and figure out which league these conferences belong to? Eagles 24/7 (C) 19:02, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

It was certainly the case at one time that a single conference could include both NAIA and NCAA teams, c.f. Template:1981 Lone Star Conference football standings. That's also a very silly set of TfDs. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:24, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: The article Upper Midwest Athletic Conference says it joined the NCAA in 2008 from the NAIA. It looks like you added these templates to each of the NCAA and NAIA season articles, could you clarify or source in the article what happened with their league affiliations? And I agree it is very silly that there are so many of these standings templates that are only used in one article, since it defeats the purpose of a template. Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:05, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
It's not silly at all if you consider the principles of consistency and parallelism and think about how articles related to these templates are almost surely going to evolve. The UMAC's website says the conference joined the NCAA in 2008 here: https://umacathletics.com/sports/2008/2/28/History.aspx. The NCAA website indicates that Northwestern (MN) joined the NCAA in 2008 (https://stats.ncaa.org/teams/history?utf8=%E2%9C%93&org_id=30031&sport_code=MFB&commit=Searchthat) but that Martin Luther has been an NCAA member since 1991 (https://stats.ncaa.org/teams/history?utf8=%E2%9C%93&org_id=8597&sport_code=MFB&commit=Search). So in 2002, and a few other years, the UMAC apparently included both NAIA and NCAA teams. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:18, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: Do you think a note should be added to some of these standings templates to indicate which league the team was a member of? I find these mixed-league conferences are confusing to readers (and me). And since these standings templates are being created before team articles, season articles, and other list articles for the programs, context may be needed to understand them. Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:55, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
Note of clarification that, at one time, it was not uncommon for schools to belong to both the NCAA and NAIA. I don't know to what degree that was the case "only" ~20 years ago, but this article from July 1958 notes around 120 small colleges were, at that time, members of both organizations. Dmoore5556 (talk) 02:54, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
Oklahoma Panhandle State was a NCAA Division II independent and a member of the NAIA Central States Football League well into the 2010s. They joined the Lone Star Conference before dropping down to NAIA and re-join the SAC.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 21:27, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Short names for junior college programs

In recent weeks, Cbl62, Thetreesarespeakingtome, and I have done a bunch work to expand our coverage of junior college football, e.g. 1941 Los Angeles City Cubs football team, 1967 junior college football season, and 2023 junior college football season. An issue that needs some discussion and resolution is the naming scheme for a few junior college athletics programs. I'll kick things off with a couple examples.

Thoughts on these two to start? Cbl62 may have more examples worthy of discussion. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:00, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

CFB HOF

I just went through and reconciled the CFB HOF inductee lists with Category:College Football Hall of Fame inductees, and came up with 129 names that need to be added to the category. I don't have time to work on them now, but I figured if someone is looking for a project I can provide the list. LMK. Jb45424 (talk) 00:56, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Is what needs to be done, simply adding Category:College Football Hall of Fame inductees to 129 different articles? Dmoore5556 (talk) 01:32, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
Yes. Jb45424 (talk) 03:20, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
OK—perhaps create a list, similar to (and simpler than) Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/CFHOF article improvement campaign, so volunteers can edit as time allows and mark as completed. Dmoore5556 (talk) 04:01, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
Follow up: WikiOriginal-9 updated 96 of these articles on 17 May, and I updated the remaining 33 today. So the work is done. checkY Jb45424 (talk) 11:47, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Conference awards in infoboxes

There is a proposal at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League#Proposal: Remove (some) conference awards from infoboxes that editors may be interested in.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 14:00, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Current starting QB navbox

Template:Southeastern Conference starting quarterbacks navbox, what are the thoughts about this?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 03:01, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Burn it with fire. Changes too often to provide any lasting value. Case in point, 6 of the 14 entries are currently incorrect, as those six players are currently either in NFL camps, or have transferred to other colleges. Ejgreen77 (talk) 03:44, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, delete this per Ejgreen77's reasoning. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:09, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

J. J. McCarthy

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League#J. J. McCarthy’s lead (again). Cbl62 (talk) 21:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Service academy football

An A&E biography on Admiral William Halsey Jr. is on and it mentioned how he "played football on one of the worst team's in [Naval A]cademy history." All editorialism aside, I checked his page and it didn't have the Navy Midshipmen category and the WP:CFB tag on the talk page despite having information about his playing days in prose. It makes me wonder how many pages might also have these oversights?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 01:12, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Probably not that surprising for someone who played pre-Wikipedia and is not primarily known as a football player to be overlooked. —Bagumba (talk) 01:49, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
The service academy football teams have included many important military figures. For example, the 1912 Army Cadets football team included Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Vernon Prichard, Louis A. Merrilat, Geoffrey Keyes, William M. Hoge, and Leland Devore -- not to mention Tennessee coaching legend Robert Neyland. For anyone looking for a worthwhile project, improving the service academy season articles (as well as adding CFB tags to player bios) is worth considering. Cbl62 (talk) 01:58, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm not going to lie, I am not very strong at article improvement when it comes to promoting articles to GA, let alone FA. I can write well off Wikipedia, but I am completely unsure what really makes the threshold (and yes I've read the pages about that). But, I admire how the NFL project is working on making lists FLs. I wonder if a good start would be to raise Army, Navy, Air Force, and even the D-III Coast Guard program articles, head coaches, seasons, and bowl lists, to that standard?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 02:14, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

2020-21 seasons

Moving this here.

Was there a discussion on what to do for the COVID-19 season in terms of coaching record tables? There about a million and a half different ways it has been expressed and I am unsure as to which should be done. I feel as though there are multiple feasible ways but I am unsure of a consensus which will tie into another point.

Option A, just stating no team
Year Team Overall Conference Standing Bowl/playoffs
Framingham State Rams (Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference) (2020)
2020–21 Framingham State No team
Framingham State: 0–0 0–0
Total: 0–0
Option B, no team + —COVID-19 like what was done with World War II teams that did not play
Year Team Overall Conference Standing Bowl/playoffs
Framingham State Rams (Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference) (2020)
2020–21 Framingham State No team—COVID-19
Framingham State: 0–0 0–0
Total: 0–0
Option C, no team + note
Year Team Overall Conference Standing Bowl/playoffs
Framingham State Rams (Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference) (2020)
2020–21 Framingham State No team[a]
Framingham State: 0–0 0–0
Total: 0–0
  1. ^ Team did not play due to COVID-19.

This goes along with the next point on if a season was played, should there be a note in the record table explaining that the games were played in the spring or just leave it without.

Third point, should 2020 be grayed out on the coaches navboxes like I did for:

{{Albany State Golden Rams football coach navbox}} {{Adams State Grizzlies football coach navbox}}

If we do that, that would also go in hand with what was done for World War II, but again, just a few questions for you/seeing if there was a consensus already. Thanks! Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 00:25, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

I, personally, believe option B is the best along with greying out the year in the navbox, although that will cause a small issue with {{Framingham State Rams football coach navbox}}'s Aynsley Rosenbaum and {{Azusa Pacific Cougars football coach navbox}}'s Rudy Carlton. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 00:27, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
Thetreesarespeakingtome, thanks for bringing this up. I don't believe there ever was a discussion about this. It's probably worth transferring this discussion to WT:CFB to get more input. Option B seems best to me as well for consistency with how we've treated the World Wars. As for Rosenbaum and Carlton, since they never logged a single decision as head coach on their ledger, I think they fall into the category of a Bo Rein at LSU. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:49, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 02:31, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

@Thetreesarespeakingtome: Instead of linking to COVID-19, which is the article about the virus, linking to COVID-19 pandemic or COVID-19 pandemic in the United States or Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sports seems more appropriate. Or maybe there should be a new article for Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sports in the United States? Jweiss11 (talk) 01:38, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on gridiron football, perhaps? Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 01:41, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, that one looks like the best option. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:45, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

July 1 realignment moves

I have noticed that some editors have started to move certain pages to their new conference affiliation ex, UCLA Bruins football, DeShaun Foster. When should these pages actually be updated? If it is in-fact on July 1, when should it be 12:00 am EDT, 6/30 11 CDT, 6/30 9 PDT, or 12 EDT, 12 CDT etc? (Eastern-time or institution time specific)-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:03, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

More examples Template:Southeastern Conference football navbox updated for 2024, Template:Southeastern Conference football rivalry navbox not fully updated for 2024.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
I think it's probably okay to start making the changes now for the realignments that will occur on July 1. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:45, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
I concur. glman (talk) 14:11, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
@Bagumba: what do you think?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 12:49, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
No opinion, but Foster's ibx has had Big Ten since Feb. —Bagumba (talk) 14:31, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

1956 college football season

Cbl62, I see you moved 1956 NCAA University Division football season to 1956 college football season per the above discussion. I have no object with eliminating College and University Divisions for this season, but 1956 NCAA College Division football season need to be merged in there. And what do we do with 1956 NAIA football season? Also, Template:NCAA football season navbox need to be updated accordingly. 02:44, 7 June 2024 (UTC) Jweiss11 (talk) 02:44, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Per the discussion, I think both should be merged. Do you disagree? Cbl62 (talk) 02:58, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
No, I'm not against merging the NAIA article. But when do we start the stand-alone NAIA season articles? Whenever the University/College Division split in the NCAA happened? Also, merging the 1956 NAIA article with the 1956 NCAA College Division article will induce a CFB link call crisis. We need to create more 1956 team articles to avert this. Same for 1957, etc. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:57, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
Per the discussion I merged all three (University Division, College Division, and NAIA) into 1956 college football season.Cbl62 (talk) 04:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Team categories holding only 1 article on a season

I am closing Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 May 13#Category:Pocatello Army Air Base Bombardiers football seasons with consensus to merge a single-season category.

Looking around the hierarchy, I see that e.g. Category:Air Transport Command Rockets football holds only one article 1945 Air Transport Command Rockets football team via a "seasons" sub-cat. The team category is also parented by Category:United States Army Air Forces sports teams, Category:College football teams in Tennessee and Category:Defunct American football teams in Tennessee.

There are similar category pairs within Category:Defunct college football teams each holding a single season article. Do these really have navigational value?

Note that each article will always remain within the college football category hierarchy via the season e.g. Category:1945 college football season. – Fayenatic London 08:44, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I would say, yes, there is navigational value to have Category:Air Transport Command Rockets football seasons listed under Category:College football seasons by team. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:09, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fairmont State Fighting Falcons

There's a deletion discussion on the Fairmont State Fighting Falcons (an NCAA Division II program) that may be of interest. BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:36, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

CfD: Category:Northwest Community College Conference football standings templates

I have nominated Category:Northwest Community College Conference football standings templates for renaming. Please see the discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 05:52, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

CfD: Category:Kenyon Lords and Ladies

I have nominated Category:Kenyon Lords and Ladies and its subcats for renaming. Please see the discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 17:17, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Southeastern Conference starting quarterbacks navbox

Template:Southeastern Conference starting quarterbacks navbox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. UCO2009bluejay (talk) 23:06, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

2024–25 bowl schedule released

FYI at https://bowlseason.com/sports/bowl/schedule/

Of note:

  • Compared to recent playings, a couple games have been moved from January to December (Reliaquest Bowl, Citrus Bowl) while other games have been moved from December to January (First Responder Bowl, Duke's Mayo Bowl, Bahamas Bowl)
  • Quick Lane Bowl lost Ford as its sponsor and is listed as "Detroit Bowl" while they seek a new title sponsor.

Feels WP:TOOSOON to create the season's bowl games article; passing along for reference. Dmoore5556 (talk) 01:24, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I went ahead and created {{2024 bowl game navbox}} just to be ready; if there are any "(January)" or "(December)" instances missing that anyone finds please go ahead and add them. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 15:53, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I'll take a look, thanks. I added disambiguation to a couple articles yesterday: 2024 Citrus Bowl (January) and 2024 ReliaQuest Bowl (January), as we will later have (December) variants. Dmoore5556 (talk) 19:12, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
On another note, how do we want to handle the first-round CFP games? I assume they won't each get their own article but should we have a summary article just for them (i.e. 2024–25 College Football Playoff first round, or something like that), or just let the overall 2024–25 College Football Playoff article summarize them? PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 15:58, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
2024–25 College Football Playoff only, please. Dmoore5556 (talk) 19:12, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, I think we should probably limit the first-round games to detail at 2024–25 College Football Playoff and the respective team season articles. Stand-alone articles should probably only be created if a particular game rises to high, lasting notability like the rare cases of such regular season games found at Template:Historic college football games. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:23, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

"19xx college football season" articles

Regarding the above series of articles, I've started adding a section for annual statistical leaders. E.g., 1950 leaders, 1951 leaders, 1952 leaders, 1953 leaders, 1954 leaders, 1955 leaders, 1956 leaders.

Any suggestions on formatting? Is the top 10 a reasonable cutoff? Should we include other categories such as punting? Team passing offense? Team passing defense? Team rushing offense? Team rushing defense? I also welcome help building this out for other seasons (the data can be found in both annual NCAA guides and in post-season newspaper reports). Cbl62 (talk) 21:46, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Someone should make an article for the 1950 receiving leader (Gordon Cooper (American football)) ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 01:18, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
I'll look into it :) BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:10, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
@WikiOriginal-9: Done: Gordon Cooper (American football). BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
  • There was some disagreement as to the exact year, but it's somewhere between 1962 and 1964. I won't modify those years until there's consensus. Cbl62 (talk) 03:00, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I believe we should have unified (merged) articles up to and including 1961, and independent articles for 1963 and later. 1962 is less clear (lots of discussion elsewhere on this page) but at this point I'd say leave 1962 as-is (un-merged), primarily due to the Walter Byers quote, subject to a later change should something else come to light. Dmoore5556 (talk) 01:13, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I'm open to suggestions on whether we should have a separate section for NAIA standings. The problem is that a substantial number (maybe a majority?) were members of both NAIA and NCAA during some of these years. Cbl62 (talk) 21:30, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2024 June 26#Template:CBB yearly record subhead

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2024 June 26#Template:CBB yearly record subhead editors may be interested in participating in. It has the same functions of Template:CFB Yearly Record Subhead. -UCO2009bluejay (talk) 18:57, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

AfD: late 1800s team season articles

We have three AfDs open for late 1800s team season articles:

Jweiss11 (talk) 16:56, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Draft:2001 Northwestern Eagles football team

I created this draft some time ago but couldn't find the needed SIGCOV to move it to main space. Surprising for a team with a perfect season. It is now set to be deleted. If anyone wants to adopt and work on the article, feel free to do so. Cbl62 (talk) 17:10, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

AfD: Boston College–Syracuse football rivalry

Boston College–Syracuse football rivalry has been nominated for deletion. Please see the discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 21:02, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Bud Wilkinson question

I read a couple of articles that said that Bud Wilkinson was a golf coach and the hockey coach at Syracuse? I couldn't find anything that had any statistics or years. If anybody has access to any resources, can they see if he was a head coach of either of these teams? Shouldn't this information be in the infobox as well?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 04:29, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

There's no varsity golf or men's ice hockey team at Syracuse anymore, so I'm not surprised that info is hard to come by. Which articles indicated that coached golf and hockey at Syracuse? Jweiss11 (talk) 05:36, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
Oklahoma HOF, [1] (an Oklahoman newspaper article after his death), another Oklahoman, article Nixon Library, John P. Ward biography from Syracuse, that says Bud Wilkinson's gold (sic) teams from 1939-42.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 07:20, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

AfD: List of NCAA Division III independents football records

List of NCAA Division III independents football records has been nominated for deletion. Please see the discussion here. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:04, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

TfD: Template:1966 Central Conference football standings

Template:1966 Central Conference football standings and two similar junior college standings templates have been nominated for deletion. Please see the discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 18:57, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Preseason info in 2024 articles

I am looking at a few 2024 articles, and see a ton of information in the preason regarding watch lists and preseason polls. Do we really need the entire SEC preseason poll in a team article wouldn't it be better as prose?-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 19:43, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

The entire preseason poll is be suited to appear only on the conference season article, 2024 Southeastern Conference football season. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:17, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
I agree but I wonder who keeps adding this stuff? It is only a matter of time before I will post here about the Nebraska article having external links in the schedule table take that to the bank.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 21:28, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
There are a lot of fly-by and IP editors that tend do a lot of work on current season articles and often just do a copy-paste of whatever is there (including any bad habits) from the season before. That's why it's important that when we reach an editorial decision here about season articles, we apply it comprehensively to all the relevant articles. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:32, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

1961 college football season

Trying to help with the parserfunction (is that the right term, User:Jweiss11?) problem at 1961 college football season, I've recently started conference season articles as follows: (1) 1961 Central Intercollegiate Conference football season, (2) 1961 Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association football season, (3) 1961 Mid-Ohio League football season, (4) 1961 Northwest Conference football season, (5) 1961 Ohio Athletic Conference football team, (6) 1961 Pennsylvania State College Conference football season, (7) 1961 Presidents' Athletic Conference football season, (8) 1961 Rocky Mountain Conference football season, (9) 1961 Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference football season, and (10) 1961 Wisconsin State College Conference football season. Anyone want to help with sourcing, etc., on these articles? Or with creating additional conference season articles such as 1961 Carolinas Conference football season, 1961 College Conference of Illinois football season, 1961 Indiana Collegiate Conference football season, 1961 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference football season? Cbl62 (talk) 23:30, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I call it the "cfb link call crisis". I would love to help with sourcing here, but Wikipedia Library access to Newspapers.com has been down for a couple days. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:21, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
"The parsefuction" isn't bad. Amos Alonzo Stagg died for our sins? :) Jweiss11 (talk) 02:22, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Archive plan for Pac-12 conference pages and navboxes

I noticed @KingSkyLord today made a number of edits adding/removing navboxes from the departing Pac-12 members' sports articles.

Templates such as Template:Pac-12_Conference_football_rivalry_navbox have also been edited to remove the departing members.

First, I think these changes are premature. The Huskies, at least, don't join the Big Ten until August 2nd.

Second, I would perhaps like to see some kind of "Historic" information about the Pac-12 preserved in these articles and navboxes. Does this kind of information exist for any of the other disbanded conferences? What should be kept as-is for the Pac-12 and archived or marked as "historic"? What should be updated, in the short term, to only include WSU and OSU?

Some reference points:

Seeking opinions on what should be done for the article on the historic Pac-12 Conference, the upcoming "Pac-2 Conference", their nav boxes, the team pages, etc.

PK-WIKI (talk) 16:51, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

We typically haven't kept former team information in navboxes, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Archive 17#Defunct conferences as precedent. And per my question above, some editors have contended that it isn't too early to move to new conferences.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:00, 25 June 2024 (UTC)
UCO2009bluejay, thanks for finding that relevant discussion from 2015. Template:Pac-12 Conference football navbox is still listing all 12 teams from its 2023 configuration, but the template is no longer transcluded on the articles for 10 members that left, e.g. Arizona Wildcats football. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:59, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Colors on Little All-America team articles

User:Sergio Skol has recently added coloring to our series of articles on the Little All-America teams. E.g., 1971 Little All-America college football team. As in the above discussion, I find the addition of coloring to be distracting and more difficult to read. What do others think? Any objections to de-colorizing? Cbl62 (talk) 04:43, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

No, I support the removal of the rainbows from the tables! Jweiss11 (talk) 04:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
You mean this isn't the best thing you have ever seen? Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 05:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
Distracting, much like conference season pages that have too many colors. —Bagumba (talk) 05:20, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Conference season articles

Per the section above, we have an issue with these conference season articles that I've brought up before. We have a style fork. There are two types of conferences season articles. Type I is an older menform that is largely used for NCAA Division I conferences for which individual articles for each team season also exist, e.g. 2023 Big Ten Conference football season. But there are also some instances of this form in use for lower division conferences, e.g. 2012 Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference football season, 2012 Heart of America Athletic Conference football season. In the Type I form, the season is tackled week by week. In Type II, a form initiated by Cbl62, the season is tackled team by team, e.g. 1946 Southern California Conference football season. This form is largely used in cases where the individual team seasons likely do not warrant a stand-alone article. However, we have another solution for those sort of seasons: articles that cover many seasons for a single program, bounded by a decade or some other sensible time period, e.g. Southern Oregon Normal football, 1927–1938, Maine Black Bears football, 1892–1899, Henry Kendall Orange and Black football, 1895–1899, etc. We need to resolve this style fork. Thoughts? Jweiss11 (talk) 02:10, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

What are you proposing? Also, can you link to the prior discussion? Cbl62 (talk) 02:20, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
Well, I think I better way to present most of the content at 1955 Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association football season, especially the schedule tables, (and address the cfb link call crisis for c. 1930 to 1961, would be to create articles like Kalamazoo Hornets football, 1950–1959, and have 1955 Kalamazoo Hornets football team redirect to that article. 1955 Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association football season could be reworked to take on the Type I form explained above. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:22, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
As for the prior discussion, I'm not sure where it occurred. Could be in the archives here or on one of our talk pages. I'll look. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:23, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
I mentioned this issue last year here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Archive 26#Once again, seasons over the limit for expensive parser function calls. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:29, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
  • There's no need for the proposed homogeneity. Decade articles (or in some cases longer durations) have worked well for 19th century and very early 20th century small-school independents. E.g., the examples you gave above. The conference season articles work great for more modern teams that lack the coverage for individual team seasons. Conference season articles provide multiple benefits, including (i) allowing us to detail the history of smaller programs by collecting sufficient WP:SIGCOV to satisfy the WP:GNG requirement, (ii) telling the coherent story of a full conference in one centralized location, (iii) following the contemporaneous sources which often provide coverage to lower level programs on a conference-wide basis, and (iv) helping with the cfb link crisis. Conclusion: These articles are a win-win-win, let's make more of them. Cbl62 (talk) 17:44, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
    I would think there's more reader interest in a team than a conference season, so composite pages like Kalamazoo Hornets football, 1950–1959 would make reading easier than having to hop from one conference season pages to another. However, if content is sparse and being developed, I agree we should just be happy that content is being created. If a volunteer feels like wiping out a particular conference season randomly here and there, that's fine. Once a decade is completed, content can then possibly be moved to a specific team decade page, if that makes sense. —Bagumba (talk) 18:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
    Cbl, much of the coverage for these smaller programs is made on a conference-wide basis, but much of it focuses only a particular game or team. Some of it will focus on a particular program from year to year. The team decade articles plus the Type I conference articles will give us all the benefits you enumerate above, while also resolving the style fork. That's the real win-win. You claim there is "no need for the proposed homogeneity", but you don't explain why. Why do we have consistent style and homogeneity between analogous articles at all? Well, because consistency between analogs helps the reader understand the subject and navigate through the scope of its coverage. Would love to get some input from other editors who have been involved with these sorts of season articles. Patriarca12, Thetreesarespeakingtome, BeanieFan11, WikiOriginal-9, Dogloverr16, Butters.From.SouthPark, TheCatalyst31, PCN02WPS, Pvmoutside, Patriotsontop, any thoughts here? Jweiss11 (talk) 18:39, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
    I, personally, think that the conference pages are the best option. BUT with that being said I do think the season groupings for individual teams are also adequate especially for a team that is/was an independent an extended number of time. I also believe that season groupings under a head coaching tenure could work too (ie Stony Brook Seawolves football under Sam Kornhauser/Chuck Priore and UMass Dartmouth Corsairs football under Mark Robichaud,) but it would get replaced once the season's conference page gets created. When you get into the very early seasons (before 1940) there were many independents and THEN it would be better for a year-by-year page grouping the decade together into one page. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 20:05, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
    Jweiss and I disagree and that should be ok. Unless you are advocating that I be prohibited from creating conference season articles. Is that your proposal?
Over the last few years, I have spent many days of labor building out roughly 150 conference season articles. See User:Cbl62/Conference season articles. They are set up to easily navigate from year to year for each team so that team navigability is facilitated. I believe these articles are among my best contributions to Wikipedia.
I am not aware of anyone creating team decade articles for the post-World War II era. (By my count, there are zero such articles.)
A major benefit to the conference approach is that we don't leave the weaker schools behind. You might find someone interested in creating decade articles on or two schools from the Ohio Athletic Conference, but the odds of someone creating decade article for all 15 such team strikes me as quite low. The conference approach doesn't leave the weak teams behind.
If at a later date, we see momentum toward someone creating team decade articles, we can figure out how to integrate. Cbl62 (talk) 20:31, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
I agree with this explanation more than I agree with my own. I think conference articles are the best way to go forward especially to the point of not leaving behind lesser teams. Alongside each team eventually getting their own page (which I had done a while back) to navigate between seasons and general information would greatly improve this underdeveloped set of pages. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 20:52, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
My hope here is that we can reach a consensus about the form of conference season articles and one that resolves the style fork. It's pretty much the same amount of work to create 1960s decade articles for each of the six MIAA members during the period as it is to create 10 MIAA Type II conference season articles for the decade. In both cases, it's 60 team seasons. The long-term vision is to have 10 MIAA Type I conference season articles for the 1960s, where things like full all-conference teams would reside. My aim is to figure this out now, so we reduce the amount of effort reworking articles in years to come. Your many days of labor building out those 150 conference season articles, particularly all the sourcing from Newspapers.com are much appreciated. Right now we may have 150 articles that have to be reworked. What I want to avoid is finding ourselves three years from now with 1,000 articles that need to be reworked. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:53, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
The odds of someone creating any given article are entirely dependent on what we as editors decide to do. If we want to create decades articles for each OAC (and every other sub-DI team), we'll do that. We also have programs like Washington University Bears football, Washington & Jefferson Presidents football, Chicago Maroons football who were effectively major programs in their early days, but are now NCAA Division III. We already have a long array of stand-alone articles for each of these programs covering their years of major competition. But most if not all of their post-WW2 history would probably be better served with articles bundled by decade, which would mesh nicely with the existing stand-alone articles. And again, we need to address the style fork. It's confusing to have two different types of the same thing (conference season articles) out there. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:04, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
I created both branches of what you refer to as a "style fork." It's really not a "fork" at all; it's two different formats for two very different purposes.
So there it is. Not a "fork" at all -- more lack a fork and a spoon (different utensils to fulfill different needs). Cbl62 (talk) 22:02, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
Of course it's a fork, and Type II of the fork is indeed your creation, as you initiated it decade after Type I was established. We already have a stable form with dedicated templates like Template:CFB Conference Schedule Start, created in 2010. You came up with a local solution that has global problems, now you are denying that such global problem even exist. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:19, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
You call it a "fork". I call it a "fork" and a "spoon". Different tools for different functions, as described above. And by the way, I was the one who created what you call "Type 1" as well (back in 2016 (here)) -- just modifying the tools a bit to achieve best functionality. Cbl62 (talk) 22:46, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
You didn't create Type I. 2009 Big Ten Conference football season was created in 2009. There may be older examples. You didn't create Template:CFB Conference Schedule Start, Template:CFB Conference Schedule Entry, and Template:CFB Conference Schedule End, which were created in 2010 to standardize the tables for Type I--well the only type at the time, because you hadn't yet invented the Type II fork. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:56, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
I may have mis-remembered, but that's beside the point. The key is that the "spoon" (Type 1) and the "fork" (Type 2) are both valid utensils that serve different purposes. Innovation is permitted (and should be encouraged). Cbl62 (talk) 00:06, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
You didn't just misremember. You're not in touch with the reality of this situation. Breaking standard forms is not innovation, and this is not the first time you've done that. You're still denying the forking you initiated here, and instead of examining that, you've gone ahead hastily to create two more Type II forks since this discussion started, increasing the work load will have to done in future years to resolve it. And even within the Type II fork itself, you make the same mistakes over and over again, like mis-titling the title field of the infobox, omitting proper category sort keys, omitting needed categories on the associated categories that you create, and leaving rafts of table entries un wiki-linked. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:21, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
You didn't just misremember. You're not in touch with reality Jw -- You are acting like an ****** (unpleasant fellow), and I respectfully ask that you adjust attitude . Cbl62 (talk)
Cbl, when it comes to broad project management, competence is required. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:39, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Jeesh. So much for adusting the attitude. 00:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: If you seriously want to discuss the need for competence, don't forget that the reason I've had to spend hours creating all of these 1961 articles is because of your incompetence in creating true content "forks" for "NCAA College Division" football seasons for each year from 1956 1957 to 1961, when even a modicum of due diligence would have shown you that the "College Division" didn't even exist during those years. When we fixed your mistake and recombined the articles, it created tons of work in trying to resolve the cfb link crisis. It would be nice if you tried to help fixing the problem instead of making wacky charges of incompetence at others. Cbl62 (talk) 03:03, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Cbl62, those articles were created (not all by me) when there a wide consensus belief that the NCAA College Division went back that far. In fact, the College Football Data Warehouse, which you still hail as a reliable source, suggests that University and College Divisions go back to 1937; see [2] and [3]. I never made any any such mistakes that created a cfb link crisis. The cfb link crisis arose largely because I created tons of well-sourced standings templates like Template:1950 Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference football standings to make our coverage of minor conferences more complete. I've made repeated calls here for help regarding the link crisis, which also affects seasons prior to 1956 that were never split by division. I've created many season articles myself, particular for 1949, to help ameliorate the crisis. If 1961 college football season had never been split by division, we'd still in the same exact place with respect to the cfb link crisis. Once again, you're completely out touch with reality about the dynamics here, and defensively contorting history rather than examining your own shortcomings. You're out of your depth. Let someone who else who is competent enough to understand what's going on here take the lead. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:26, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Oh my goodness, your capacity for rewriting history is startling. You created the 1957-1961 "College Division" articles unilaterally and without any "wide consensus". See diffs: [4], [5] [6], [7] [8]. After you unilaterally created them, I objected, noting there was zero evidence that the College Division existed in these years. As is your tendency, you resisted any challenge to your imagined authority. Now you attack the person cleaning up your mess. Come on, dude! You should be thanking me for cleaning up your mess. Cbl62 (talk) 04:17, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Okay, here's the real version of what happened. 1956 NCAA College Division football season was created on April 28, 2017 by Ben76266, not me. Here's a discussion from September 2018 in which I imply that NCAA divisions began in 1956 and no one objects. You participated in that conversation. Here's another discussion from February 2019, involving you and me and others, in which UW Dawgs offers 1956 as the year when NCAA divisions were introduced. I repeat this. No one objects. Later in February 2019, in this discussion, I note that We already have an article for 1956 NCAA College Division football season, but we need to create ones for 1957 though 1972. to which you respond Nice work. Several days later, after I created 1957 NCAA College Division football season, and the same for 1958 thru 1972, you first raised the possibility on my talk page that "College Division" may not have been applied to football until sometime after 1956; see: User talk:Jweiss11/Archives/2019#College Division. This remained an unresolved issue until this year when User:Dmoore5556 opened a discussion, and you, he, and others ultimately came to the conclusion that NCAA divisions for football started in 1962; see: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Archive 27#1956 NCAA College Division football season. Are you ready to admit you're FOS, or did you just "misremember" what happened? Jweiss11 (talk) 04:28, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Further reflection reveals that 1956 college football season and 1957 college football season opened with explicit subject statements in the lead that read "1956 NCAA University Division football season" and "1957 NCAA University Division football season" respectively, going back to 2013 edits made by Krhazymonkey83. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:47, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the link to your talk page discussion. It confirms that, indeed, I told you several years ago that the College Division didn't exist until 1962. I am pretty sure we had another discussion back then as well, but you ignored my warnings and left your mess intact. I chose not to challenge you more aggressively on the issue back then, because I know how unpleasant you can get when your authority is challenged. Cbl62 (talk) 06:07, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
In February 2019, did you didn't tell me College Division didn't exist until 1962. We, as a project, didn't arrive at 1962 as the cutoff until this year, 2024. In 2019, you told me you suspected it didn't exist in 1956 and 1957. I never said you were wrong. And this wasn't my mess. For six years prior to 2019, 1956 college football season carried a lead that read "The 1956 NCAA University Division football season...". And the same for 1957, etc. As I explained above, this reflected a project-wide consensus belief that College and University Divisions were introduced in 1956. And when, in 2019, I suggested we break out College Division articles from the University Division for 1957 to 1972, you endorsed that move, prior to raising your doubts about 1956 and 1957. I never stopped you from re-combining 1956 or any other year. It's incredibly pathetic what you're still carrying on with this confabulatory charade, even when I've plainly laid out the evidence for you. You are either lying or you're not competent enough to assess the reality of the sequence of events here. Which one is it? Jweiss11 (talk) 06:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
  • My goodness, your effort to rewrite history is impressive. Here's the actual sequence of my efforts to advise you about your error in creating the separate University/College Division articles.
  • First warning. In February 2019 (diff here), I raised my concern about your creation of separate University Division/College Division articles. In particular, I informed you that I had done research into the matter and that 1962 was "the earliest item I have found so far showing that there was a formal division of football teams with 140 teams in the University Division and 370 in the College Division." You did not respond to my note about my research findings.
  • Second warning. Because you had not responded, I followed up with you on June 5, 2020 (here) advising you as follows: "We still need to resolve the WP:V and WP:OR concerns in connection with our University Division and College Division football season articles ... It is pretty clear from my research that there was no such thing as a 1956 NCAA University Division football season or a 1957 NCAA University Division football season. The extension of the concept to football came later. The 1956 and 1957 seasons should IMO be reverted to 1956 college football season and 1957 college football season. If you have sources to show that I am wrong, let me know. ... Given these uncertainties, our current University Division articles and templates raise 'red alert' level concerns with core Wikipedia policies, including WP:V and WP:OR." For the second time, you ignored my warnings and did not respond.
  • Third warning. Having no response to my June 5 note, I followed up for a third time on June 11 (diff here), pointing out: "[T]he issue remains with respect to my conclusion that there was no 1956 NCAA University Division football season or a 1957 NCAA University Division football season. Do you have any sources showing that the 'University Division' concept was recognized for purposes of football in those years? Do you have an objection on my proposal to revert these to '1956 college football season' and '1957 college football season'?" For the third time, you ignored my warnings and did not respond. Given your tendency to overreact (including personal attacks and name calling) when critized, I decided not to poke the bear further and left the issue alone.
  • Fourth warning. On May 5 of this year, Dmoore noted he could find no sources to support existence of a separate College Divison in the 1950s. I was pleased that someone else had revived the issue. I immediately jumped in, noting that there was no "College Division" in the early years and that these articles should be deleted or merged. There was lengthy discussion with Dmoore, PK-WIKI and me all concluding there was no "College Division" in the 1950s. It was only after this fourth discussion had pretty conclusively established the error (and five years after my first warning to you), that you finally responded and conceded the error.
So, yes, you created the mess. You looked the other way for five years, despite repeated warning. Ultimately, I fixed the mess by merging the applicable articles (1956-1961) with considerable effort. This then triggered a "cfb link crisis" which I have been trying to remedy by creating valid conference season articles. And your response is to question my competence, assert that I am out of touch with reality, accuse me of lying, and call me "pathetic". Seriously? Have you heard of projection? Cbl62 (talk) 07:10, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Yes, you mentioned your suspicions about 1956 and 1957 to me multiple times. I never told you were wrong. I wasn't sure about the extent of the issue and I was busy with other things. I'm not required to respond to and act upon everything on my talk page. I never stopped you from recombining those articles. If it was such a big deal to you, why didn't you something, like boldly edit or open a discussion here? No clear view of 1958 to 1961 was ever made until this year, and I supported those conclusions when they were made. Back in 2019, I took the initiative, with the project's endorsement including yours specifically, to clean up 1957 to 1972 based on what was then consensus belief, including yours. What will it take for you to cease with these lies and distortions? Jweiss11 (talk) 07:26, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
And the other thing that you can't seem to understand is that the need to create 1961 West Penn Conference football season, etc to combat the link crisis at 1961 college football season, didn't arise because we erroneously divided up 1961 into NCAA divisions. That crisis would have arisen anyway, just like it did for many years between 1928 and 1955. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:33, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
My very first comment on the matter, back in 2019, noted that that 1962 was the first year when evidence existed for separate divisions. When you ignored and diden't respond to my politely worded warnings in 2019 and again in 2020, I didn't open a discussion here, because I don't enjoy conflict, and when I had criticized or challenged you in the past, it had blown up into ugly incidents of personal attacks and name-calling. I assure you that I will not be deterred in the future by your bullying and name-calling -- which in this round has included saying I am "FOS" ("full of shit" I infer) and "out of your depth" and calling me "pathetic", incompetent, and out of touch with reality. Cbl62 (talk) 07:43, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
More to my point, Category:1956 NCAA University Division football season was created in 2008 and Category:1956 NCAA College Division football season was created in 2014. I created neither category. Two other editors did, which reflected consensus belief at the time. You need to stop with the repeated lies and alternate histories. It's almost Trump-like. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:49, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
That's funny, I was going to use a "Trumpian" reference (more accurately, "Trump-via-Roy Cohn") in describing your approach to conflict: Never admit a mistake. Just attack, bully, and call names. Cbl62 (talk) 07:53, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
The name-calling this round started with calling me an "asshole" with asterisks. Remember? Never admit a mistake? We all, yes, that includes me, made a minor understandable mistake about an abstruse and poorly covered subtlety regarding NCAA organization. This error had abounded here for over a decade and has been repeated elsewhere by many reliable sources. But because I criticized your approach on another issue, you've concocted an absurd confabulation about how this mistake was all my fault and imputed extra fake costs onto the mistake. You behavior here is menacing. Jweiss11 (talk) 08:01, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
menacing ("threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments") -- I have to assume you used that word in jest. But at last, you've admitted a mistake in creating the 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, and 1961 College Division season articles. Thank you for your honesty in that regard. I have no problem with admitting mistakes when I make them, and I do see that you did not create the 1956 College Division article -- so I was wrong on that one. As for name calling, I didn't call you an "asshole" -- that word has seven letters -- my six asterisks were meant to self-censor a six-letter word that I chose not to use, even after being accused of being out of touch with reality. We've both admitted some fallibility, and hopefully we can now put this to rest. Cbl62 (talk) 08:17, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Forgive me for miscounting the asterisks. But you last comment contains yet another distortion, or an inability to follow what's going on. But at last, you've admitted a mistake in creating the 1957, 1958..." I never denied this. I clearly stated this several hours ago toward the outset of this branch of the discussion. What you still haven't acknowledged is that NCAA divisional verbiage and organization for all of the sensitive years (1956 to 1961), was introduced onto Wikipedia years ago, as far back as 2008, by several editors not named Jweiss11. And you still haven't acknowledged that these mistaken article splits were not my "unilateral" decision. If fact, you were one of the other editors that greenlit them. And you haven't acknowledged there was indeed some evidence to suggest that NCAA divisions existed in the sensitive time period because trusted sources like the College Football Data Warehouse said they existed. Back in 2019 and until the last couple years, the prime version of NCAA's own website even implied the existence of College and University Divisions for years prior to 1962. You can still view much of that now latent version of their database. Go to https://web1.ncaa.org/stats/StatsSrv/careersearch and search for Will Lotter as a coach. Then click on his football records. You will get a report that in turn links to individual season reports with URLs like https://web1.ncaa.org/app_data/statsPDFArchive/MFB2/A/Football_Men's_College%20Division_1954_108_California%20Aggies.pdf. This file now resides at https://stats.ncaa.org/team/108/stats/13796 in a newer scheme. But "College Division" for 1954? That's weird, isn't it? And you still haven't made it clear that you understand that these article splits did not create the link crisis, bur rather that the link crisis would have been the same had they never been split in the first place. The link crisis is the product of minor conference standings template creation, largely done by me. Perhaps it is our personal rivalry that has rendered you unable to make sound and sensible moral judgements. But whatever the ultimate cause, your distorted and confabulatory tales of fake culpability ensue. Jweiss11 (talk) 09:44, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
unable to make sound and sensible moral jugments That one is so over the top it actually made me laugh. Cbl62 (talk) 10:12, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Input from Thetreesarespeakingtome

Anyway, my two cents are that for Division I (FBS and FCS) should have Fork I formatting due to each team mostly already having their own singular articles while Division II and lower (including NAIA perchance) should have Fork II that Cbl62 (and I) have been working on. I think that grouping seasons by decade works best in the early (1880s to 1940s). Although, a hybrid could be done as well by combining both for lower division seasons. From my understanding the big discussion is whether they should be grouped by conference or by team by decade and I have to favor by conference. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 00:54, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Thetreesarespeakingtome, consider the experience of navigating the seasons for Washington University Bears football. The reader gets stand-alone articles from the 1800s until maybe 1961 and then 1962 redirects to 1962 College Athletic Conference football season. That holds though 1971, which redirects to 1971 College Athletic Conference football season. In 1972, Wash U went independent, so 1972 Washington University Bears football redirects to maybe Washington University Bears football, 1972–1979. Then you get Washington University Bears football, 1980–1987. And 1988 redirects to 1988 University Athletic Association football season. Do you think that's optimal? I'm not saying 1988 University Athletic Association football season shouldn't exist, but if it does exist, it should be formed like 2023 Big Ten Conference football season (Type I). And 1988 Washington University Bears football team should redirect to Washington University Bears football, 1980–1989. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:26, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
I guess by my own explanation then every single season from 1898 to 1955 would have to be stripped away then redirected which is complete and utter caca. In my experience I have made all three different types for one singular program (2022 UMass Dartmouth Corsairs football team, 2022 Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference football season, 2021 Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference football season, and UMass Dartmouth Corsairs football under Mark Robichaud which are examples if a singular team, Type I, Type II, and a version of the decade-by-decade) and they all co-exist. I just don't think you could pick one over the other.
A follow-up question could they exist in the same page? Format one page with the elements of both? The biggest difference between Type I and Type II is just the week-by-week schedule as a whole compared to each team having it's whole season at once. Could, in theory, they be combined and have both? But even if they are the issue with the decade-by-decade page still doesn't fit into play but it most definitely makes sense as to why it should.
(Excuse me as I think as I typed this) Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 01:54, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
So do I change my opinion once again. They should definitely be formatted like Type I. The format and information provided is most definitely best suited for a conference page instead of what Type II is.
A decade page which is the target of the redirects with the standings template heading and categories guiding readers to the separate, but dually important, conference page makes the most sense. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 01:57, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
Then the other thing is how do you format independent seasons or would they not get a 1978 NCAA Division III football independents season which would encompass every independent grouped together like they are in a conference? Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 01:58, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
I think it's unnecessary to create something like 1978 NCAA Division III football independents season. We don't have anything like that for FBS independents, and there's not the same sort of coverage of independents as a group as there is for a given conference in a given season that binds it together into a coherent topic worthy of its own article. The various seasons listed at Template:1978 NCAA Division III independents football records should be covered by program-specific articles with anything very prominent rising to mention on 1978 NCAA Division III football season. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:34, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
I would have to agree. Division I FBS should set the standard for what the lesser (for lack of a better word) divisions coverage and substance should strive to be like. That is at least my ideology at least. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 03:10, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

1933 Southeastern Conference football season

Patriarca12, thanks for creating 1933 Southeastern Conference football season. I have a few thoughts. First, we should be using the {{CFB Conference Schedule Entry}} and its siblings for the schedule charts, as in 2023 Southeastern Conference football season. Second, I don't think "Week Zero", "Week One", etc are proper nouns, so "Zero" and "One" should not be capitalized. In the head coach section, the use over 13 different schools colors in one table, looks pretty gaudy. This is president problem with conference season article for the most recent decade of seasons or so. I think we've be better off with no color there. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:22, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

BuT cOlOrS aRe PrEtTy.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 00:00, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
I find the colors to be a net negative, making it a bit harder to read. Cbl62 (talk) 00:06, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
{{CFB Conference Schedule Entry}}, needs to be updated to include a "source" field by someone who is much better than me at making this type of edit to a template, as sourcing is critical for all seasons, but especially these earlier ones. Some season articles like 2017 Big Ten Conference football season hyperlink to a box score instead of citing a formal source, which a source field would also be appropriate. For the other two comments, I am indifferent and frankly do not care either way. Patriarca12 (talk) 00:23, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
I created a bunch of these a few years ago for the Big Ten and built in some enhancements, including team statistics and individual statistical leaders. Such stats may not be readily available for 1933 but are helpful for seasons where they are available. Cbl62 (talk) 00:48, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
Frietjes, can you help us add a source column to {{CFB Conference Schedule Entry}}? Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 00:50, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
Jweiss11, is this column always appearing in the header, or only when someone says |source=y or something like that? if it is just taking a <ref>...</ref>, it could append that to the result, without creating a new column. Frietjes (talk) 14:00, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Frietjes, I think the easiest thing to do is have the source column always appear. The dedicated source column makes things look cleaner. A reference number next to a numerical score isn't ideal. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:32, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Jweiss11, okay, this works now, see here for example, but not sure what to do about 2009 Big Ten Conference football season. Frietjes (talk) 22:49, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Frietjes, thank you! As the 2009 Big Ten Conference article, all those external links embedded in the game scores need to be converted to in-line references. Perhaps, we can get a bot to do that? Jweiss11 (talk) 23:16, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Jweiss11, I added |source= to all the transclusions and moved refs from |attendance= to |source=. I have created tracking for urls in the score parameter. I can fix them once I see which articles to change. Frietjes (talk) 00:32, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

More multi-color removal

Can we get a consensus to also remove colors from pages such as the Big 12 Championship Game, List of Southeastern Conference champions, NCAA Division II football championship etc.? Full disclosure I have added them in the past.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 22:53, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I support removing colors from all those as well. More than two team colors, as in the rivalry articles, is excessive. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:13, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
Since one of you decided to give it a heading. Since this is a more broad proposal, I went ahead and made it, its own section, and moved it down to fit chronologically. Hope y'all don't mind.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 05:08, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
  • [9] Is a link to what the Big 12 Championship page looks like without colors.

Would You all prefer it to look like: A)

Year North Division South Division Site Attendance MVP
2000 No. 8 Kansas State 24 No. 1 Oklahoma 27 Arrowhead Stadium • Kansas City, MO 79,655 QB Josh Heupel, Oklahoma

or B)

Year North Division South Division Site Attendance MVP
2000 No. 8 Kansas State 24 No. 1 Oklahoma 27 Arrowhead Stadium • Kansas City, MO 79,655 QB Josh Heupel, Oklahoma

So the winners might be more identifiable. or C) Maybe these need to be completely overhauled so the winners are on the left, the runner-up on the right and a {{Small|Division/Seed}} identifier to differentiate the two. Then again the Rose Bowl Game doesn't have this issue... yet.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 05:18, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I have noticed column headings on a few of the NY6 bowls have had some color issues. I have fixed a few if anybody would like to help out, that would be helpful. I noticed a few more college color boxes on the College Football Playoff page. I think it might be a good idea to take inventory on all of the pages that seem to have this issue. Then we can systematically eradicate the issue.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 05:41, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

AfD: Nick Floyd

Not directly related to this project, per se, but of tangential interest to some members here as a former NCAA Division I athletic director. Please see: here. Thanks, Ejgreen77 (talk) 00:09, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Group CfD: NCAA University and College Divisions, 1956 to 1961

Per the recent new consensus about NCAA University and College Divisions being first applied to football in 1962, not 1956, and the associated pages move, I've nominated a whole bunch of related categories for merging. Please see the discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 01:14, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

This CfD could still use some more input. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:10, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

NCAA team codes

Jweiss11 has been adding citations to the NCAA's annual team-by-team statistical reports. E.g., here. The reports include a wealth of useful statistical information that can be used in improving/sourcing our team season articles. A challenge in using the database is that the NCAA uses team codes instead of school names. We should build a directory showing the applicable code for each team. Examples: 50 (Bates), 100 (Cal State Los Angeles), 155 (Colorado Mines), 197 (East Stroudsburg), 224 (Ferris State), 251 (Georgetown), 300 (Illinois Wesleyan), 400 (UMass), 447 (Morningside), 499 (NE Missouri), 500 (Northeastern), 501 (Northern Arizona), 503 (Northern Illinois), 508 (Nortwestern Louisiana State), 511 (Norwich), 550 (Portland State), 602 (Saint John's (MN) 650 (South Dakota), 696 (Texas A&M-Kingsville), 750 (Wartburg), 774 (Western Michigan), 800 (Wisconsin-Platteville), 808 (WPI), etc.

If someone has the time and desire to create a complete list of these codes, it would be a very helpful resource. Cbl62 (talk) 04:25, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

@Cbl62, something like this, perchance? Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 02:30, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, exactly. Thank you trees. I encourage anyone working on season articles to check this database and incorporate the useful information, which includes team stats (offense and defense), individual leaders, and schedules with attendance. Cbl62 (talk) 03:22, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Template:College Football National Champion pre-AP Poll navbox

I happened to notice that 1875 Columbia football team contains {{College Football National Champion pre-AP Poll navbox}}, but the article isn't even listed on it. Per the navbox's talk page, there was discussion of trimming down the inclusion criteria, but it doesn't seem finalized per strong consensus. On January 16, 2022, User: Son of Kenway removed a ton of championship season articles without an edit summary. Like most fly-by editors, it was a half-assed edit and he never removed the navbox from all of those article he took off from it. I'm bringing this up to WP:CFB to see what you'd like to do: [1] revert his edit, or [2] keep his edit but manually go through all those season articles to remove the navbox? I'm not partaking any further than this post, but it's something you ought to be made aware of. SportsGuy789 (talk) 23:17, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I reverted the Son of Kenway edit. He appears to have removed teams without any explanation or consistent reasoning. For example, he removed (i) 1934 Alabama (10–0) despite selection as NC by five "major" selectors, (ii) 1932 Michigan (8–0) despite selection by three "major" selectors, (iii) 1921 Iowa Hawkeyes football team (7–0) despite selection by Billingsley and Davis, (iv) 1906 Yale despite selection by Whitney, Davis and Billingsley), and (vi) 1905 Yale despite selection by both Davis and Whitney. I'm not saying discussion/refinement aren't worthwhile, but the wholesale removal of dozens of NCs without discussion or explanation is not the way to go. Cbl62 (talk) 10:01, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Category:College football multi-season team articles

I created Category:College football multi-season team articles, a hidden administrative category to keep track of all the multi-season team articles and help maintain them. Please add this category to any such article I may have missed. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 15:48, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

  • Thanks for creating the category. Years ago, we had many such articles. Over the last decade, we have systematically split most of them into individual team-season articles. Additional multi-season articles should IMO be created only as a last resort. If sufficient coverage exists, individual season articles provide space for full expansion and development and should remain our preferred layout. Cbl62 (talk) 17:27, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
    I would agree except generally Division II, Division III, NAIA, and potentially junior college individual seasons will never last as they'll ultimately be systematically deleted since they can't all be conference championship, playoff, or national championship seasons. A decade-by-decade format makes an entire decade of football noteworthy with non-noteworthy seasons combining to make one noteworthy page (which even then may not even last, but I won't further elaborate on that).
    I would like to assume that like what I have done with Buena Vista (Draft:Buena Vista Beavers football, 1960–1969 and others) would show as a blueprint of what can be done. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 19:40, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
    I am not familiar with the level of coverage that the Buena Vista football program receives. In general, I would offer the following: if the program's seasons receive WP:SIGCOV in multiple, reliable, independent sources, then season articles are valid and preferable. The virtue of a season article in the wiki model is that it allows for incremental improvement by multiple users, adding such information as roster, game summaries, statistical leaders, etc. Cbl62 (talk) 22:50, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
    At least some Buena Vista seasons do pass WP:GNG. E.g., 1973 Buena Vista Beavers football team. Cbl62 (talk) 01:02, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
    One more point: Decade articles are not exempt from WP:GNG. Accordingly, before moving to main space, decade articles should have sourcing to WP:SIGCOV in reliable, independent sources. (Sources such as Buena Vista school yearbooks or school websites are not independent.) Sorry if my comments seem to be laying out a bit of a Goldilocks paradox (decade articles unwarranted where coverage it "too cold" and where there is "too hot"), but they really should be IMO a last resort. Cbl62 (talk) 03:23, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
    The way they currently are definitely isn't going to pass any sort of deletion protocol, but I also have no way of sourcing them outside of non-newspapers.com since it hasn't been working for those going through Wikipedia. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 10:30, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia Newspapers.com outage

For all of those affected by the Wikipedia Newspapers.com outage, just a heads up that a work-around has been found. It requires the use of the Firefox browser, as well as some rather hackey-type stuff (basically, tricking the computer to think that you're already logged in on the proxy site), but I can verify that it does indeed work. See here at the bottom for a blow-by-blow description of what needs to be done to restore a user's access. Ejgreen77 (talk) 06:06, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Cleaning up NCAA University and College Divisions

I've removed and cleaned up most of the remaining references to the NCAA's University and College Divisions for years prior to 1962. Template:Infobox college football season and Template:Infobox NCAA football rankings need some work to clean up the season navigation links. Frietjes, when you have a chance, can you help there? NCAA University and College Divisions should start in 1962, not 1956. Also, we need to clean up the naming scheme for the yearly rankings articles; see Category:College football rankings. The small college rankings began in 1958. Should we call everything prior to 1958 simply "YYYY college football rankings"? Jweiss11 (talk) 23:09, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Jweiss11, I changed the cut-off dates in Template:Cfb division and Template:Infobox college football season/type but there is probably more to change. Frietjes (talk) 14:06, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Frietjes, thanks for your help. Template:Infobox college football season looks good now. Template:Cfb division is supporting Template:Infobox NCAA football rankings. We need to clean up the naming scheme for the rankings articles that use that infobox, and then we may need some help with that template again. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:45, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
  • Or we could have separate lists for "YYYY small college football rankings" and "YYYY major college football rankings" for those years. We just need to eliminate the anachronistic "University/College Division" nomenclature. Cbl62 (talk) 16:07, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
  • Two points in response:
  • Back in June 2023, you moved "1958/1959/1960/1961 NCAA College Division football rankings" to "1958/1959/1960/1961 small college football rankings". I support what you did.
  • The change I made for 1956 was from "1956 NCAA University Division football rankings" to "1956 college football rankings. The rationale for that was twofold: (i) we've established there was no "University Division" in 1956, and (ii) the NCAA did not issue the rankings. I have now made the same change for 1957. You are correct that the second rationale also warrants renaming the earlier rankings articles to eliminate "NCAA" from the title. I would support such a change. Cbl62 (talk) 00:44, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I went ahead and made all the page moves for the rankings articles. Frietjes, we need to update the logic at Template:Cfb division and for Module:CFB schedule for "getdivision" at line 35 to reflect the following naming scheme:

  • before 1958: "college"
  • 1958–1961: "major college"
  • 1962–1972: "NCAA University Division"
  • no changes for 1973 onward

Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 03:55, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Jweiss11, okay, I changed that template and that module. Frietjes (talk) 17:16, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Working on the above NAIA national championship season. I have my doubts about the efficacy of the team portraits that we usually use in team articles -- you can't see any faces and one team photo looks about the same as every other team photo. So, in this case, I decided to create a gallery of public domain photos of each notable player taken from the school yearbook. This layout allows us to at least distinguish the faces of the key players. Something to consider for other team articles where public domain yearbook photos are available. Cbl62 (talk) 20:36, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Nice work. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 21:47, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for 1899 Sewanee Tigers football team

1899 Sewanee Tigers football team has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 23:59, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Empty game summaries added by IP

Would someone please check the edits by 2603:6080:4F00:4700:89A5:B98D:5950:9C6F which were made on 26 August 2024. For example, see 2024 Howard Bison football team#Game summaries which was added by the IP. Are these empty game summaries likely to be expanded? Or should they be bulk reverted? Johnuniq (talk) 07:00, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

If we wanted commercial-like quality, the future games would be commented out until they actually had content. —Bagumba (talk) 03:44, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Lists nominated for deletion

Several college football coaching records list have been nominated for deletion:

Jweiss11 (talk) 23:41, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Draft:1941 Panzer football team

I created the above draft several months ago on a team that was ranked no. 88 by Litkenhous out of more than 650 college football teams. See 1941 college football rankings#Litkenhouse Ratings. The school later changed its name to Montclair State University -- presumably the former name found disfavor after Hitler's Panzer units began rolling across Europe and North Africa. I didn't find sufficient sourcing to move the article to main space. If anyone wants to dig further, feel free to take it over and develop the topic. Cbl62 (talk) 15:17, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

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