Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Grand Canyon Rivalry

Grand Canyon Rivalry

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This doesn't appear to meet the WP:NRIVALRY due to a lack of in depth, secondary coverage with which to meet the WP:GNG. The article was deleted under a different name in 2014 and recreated [[1]], but as it stands the current article seemingly fails in the same areas the previous one did. Let'srun (talk) 17:30, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Sports, American football, Arizona, and Utah. Let'srun (talk) 17:30, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, the game has a trophy and the article has good sourcing. A notable rivalry is a notable rivalry, as Wikipedia articles on the subject of rivalries don't have to only focus on major college games (Ohio-Michigan, etc.). Randy Kryn (talk) 00:14, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I haven't done any digging yet, but none of the sources currently in the article represent WP:SIGCOV (i.e, in-depth coverage of a rivalry). Three of the five sources are clearly non-independent (published by the universities or the conference), and I don't believe FBSchedules.com has ever been recognized as a reliable, GNG-bestowing source. (The first two sources are reliable and independent but don't have real depth of coverage about the rivalry.) Cbl62 (talk) 01:54, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment this article was previously deleted in 2014. Joeykai (talk) 18:17, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Daniel (talk) 22:56, 10 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. My source analysis is set forth in my earlier comment, and noothing else has been presented. I voted "Delete" at the 2014 AfD on this trophy, and nothing has changed materially. There is still a lack of SIGCOV wih in-depth coverage about the trophy or rivalry -- just some passing references in game coverage to the fact that the winner gets the trophy. Cbl62 (talk) 03:45, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, if this were a close case where there was some SIGCOV, other factors such as geographic proximity, the trophy, and competitiveness would weigh in favor of keeping, but I haven't seen anything that could be called SIGCOV here. Cbl62 (talk) 12:45, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, but we have categorization and framing problems across a lot of articles like this. As a series of annual games with a name (whether it has a trophy is irrelevant), this appears to pass GNG, and would probably be better as Grand Canyon Trophy Game and rewritten to make it clear it is an annual series of games, instead of us claiming it is actually a sports rivalry. What's happened here is that this and several other things have "rivalry" in their names and are a class of things that are sometimes called "rivalry games", but they are not sports rivalries as WP and most sources are using that term. That is, "rivalry" is ambiguous, and writers of this article have confused one meaning with the other just because of the term being used in the name or being used in vague, amgiguous ways by some source material. A "rivaly game" is simply a periodic game (usually a form of exhibition game) between two teams for the entertainment of themselves and their fans, or occasionally as part of some league system but given a name and sometimes a trophy as a promotional mechanism.
The entire Category:Big Sky Conference rivalries and probably several others like it has completely confused the idea of such a game series with the idea of an actual sports rivalry: a subculture of animosity or faux-animosity between two teams/institutions and especially the fandoms thereof, a rivalry that has a life of its own and garners source coverage unto itself as a social phenomenon, not as promotional lingo used by coaches or athletic department administrators, not just passing use of "rivalry" as a word in routine game coverage, and not simply a game or game series name that happens to have "Rivalry" in it. This article sipmly has not been properly framed as an article on a series of games (which is what the subject is) instead of a sports rivalry (which it is not in any sense that is notable or what Wikipedia should care about).
The whole category structure relating to this stuff needs to be cleaned up so that exhibition games are classified as such and no longer classified as "rivalries". And lots of these articles need to be rewritten. E.g., to pick one at random, Beehive Bowl (which was quite properly moved away from Southern Utah–Weber State football rivalry in 2016, but was never rewritten) misleadingly opens with "The Southern Utah–Weber State football rivalry, known as the Beehive Bowl, is the annual football game between Southern Utah University and Weber State University"; clearly this is about an annual game series, not about a sports fan subculture of rivalry. The article has ridiculous WP:OR in it, like "In 2011, Southern Utah joined the Big Sky Conference, making it a yearly rivalry." Two teams coming into competition with each other by being in the same conference or other league system does not make them "rivals" (any more than any other two competitors in any sport are "rivals").
While AfD can make a few dents in the problem by picking off articles that claim to be about rivalries that don't have sufficient sourcing to exist as articles no matter how the content is reframed and renamed and recategorized, a more systematic approach is needed for dealing with the mess that has been created, because a lot of these articles on named series of games have been mis-written as rivaly articles, as if they are something like Liverpool F.C.–Manchester United F.C. rivalry, which they demonstrably are not. I'm not even sure where best to address this. The issue seems most common in American college football, but actually crosses sport and national lines. Maybe WT:SPORT is the place? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:15, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
College football rivalry games are not exhibition games. They are usually regular season games. On rare occasions, rivals may also play in post-season bowl or playoff games. Cbl62 (talk) 14:04, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@SMcCandlish: Even if one views the article as being about the trophy, I am not seeing SIGCOV about the tropy. Did you see sourcing that rises to the level of in-depth coverage about the trophy? Cbl62 (talk) 14:08, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, not about the trophy per se, but yes about the game series (which involves a trophy), which is why I didn't go with delete. I think the "nexus" of all of this, now that I've dug a little deeper, is List of NCAA college football rivalry games. There really does seem to be a term rivalry game but this is not the same thing as a rivalry in the sense WP means in its category system and as the term is used in more clearly written journalism than some of the sources at these articles. What's happened is that rivaly game sometimes get shortened in sports writing to rivalry (and in a few cases even in the name of such an event), but this is a different meaning, along the lines of 'organized series of periodic match-ups between a pair of teams in geographical proximity to each other'. It's an ambiguity we are not accounting for. We need to have a category on rivalry games (a series of such matches between two such nearby teams, often but not always with a trophy, and often but not always with a distinct name for the game series), and move the keepable articles to titles that make it clear they are about an event series not about an alleged rivalry in the other sense, of 'a subculture of sports-related antagonism between two teams' fandoms'. E.g. Central Michigan–Eastern Michigan football rivalry and pretty much every other article misnamed and miscategorized like it, are not about "rivalries" but about an organized series of "rivalry game" matches.