Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football

Season pages containing excessive information

I'm not very active on this project page, this is maybe the 2nd time I've ever posted here, but this is an important issue. I've noticed a major trend of season team pages containing absolutely ridiculous and excessive amounts of information, most of which is irrelevant or WP:FANCRUFT. Some examples of this information include spring game box scores, TV ratings, jersey color combinations for each game, inclusions of support staff, and as mentioned in a discussion above, sometimes an excessively long previous season section (which I honestly completely object to on football and basketball pages). An example of this, is Arizona's 2023 page before I cleaned it up: here. Another inclusion that seems common that doesn't make sense to me is recruiting class for the following season. I don't understand the purpose of inclusion as none of those players will play during that season. I've also noticed series history boxes attempting to make a comeback thanks to some IPs and inexperienced editors. All of this is making season pages excessively and unnecessarily long.--Rockchalk717 23:50, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I think a lot of that is also just copy catting from NFL articles which have included those for a few years now (jersey combos). I agree with all of this, except maybe box scores for the spring game. The rest of this I could not agree with more. I think some of this is by drive-by editors that WP:AGF want to think they are helping. This is what happens when we allow some differentiation in formatting from one season to the next.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 04:08, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I get people trying to make them better but when it gets to the point of where the season articles are overloaded with information, that's a little excessive. I just cleaned up articles for Big 12 teams. I hope others follow suit.--Rockchalk717 05:49, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I should have put "helping" in quotes. I think it is to satisfy their recruiting/preseason hype fetish. They honestly think it is an improvement. I don't think it is vandalism, but it isn't helpful.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 03:06, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

• I agree with everything Rockchalk said. There is no way a 2024 recruiting class box belongs in an article on a 2023 team. Nor does a directory of the programs's support staff. Cbl62 (talk) 09:26, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Can we switch all the in-season boxes all to primarystyle. Many of these have to violate WP:COLOR with contrasting issues. I am not even colorblind and some of these are difficult to read.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 18:13, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

UCO2009bluejay, I'm not sure we should be using team colors for all these boxes in the body of the article anyway. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:37, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jweiss11: I am not sure all of these couldn't be consolidated into the game boxes anyway. Or eliminated. Even the NFL articles don't contain game stats category leaders.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 22:03, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

@UCO2009bluejay: The one for my Jayhawks definitely is an issue with it being red letters on a blue background. I used to use a similar color scheme in my signature but eliminated it after others mentioned the contrast policies.--Rockchalk717 06:09, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

To be honest I kinda don't really mind the uniform combos, makes it a little more fun for me to log on with Vanderbilt, considering that we're mixing things up now color-wise.

You do make great points though. I'll probably try to remove the VU uniform combos when I'm done logging in all the necessary information needed. Amanuit (talk) 02:42, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Template:Infobox college sports team season: stadium capacity, field surface, multiple home stadiums

The infoboxes (Template:Infobox college sports team season) of many team season articles contain stadium capacity figures for the team's home stadium; see "(capacity: 106,572)" at 2023 Penn State Nittany Lions football team. A small number of articles also contain info in that field about the stadium playing surface material, e.g. grass, FieldTurf, etc; see 1950 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team. Should we include this information in these infoboxes? If so, this info should be given its own dedicated fields. How about teams that had more than one home stadium, e.g. 1950 Alabama Crimson Tide football team? In addition to the stadium field, should we have stadium2 and stadium3, etc to be service this? Jweiss11 (talk) 19:16, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Would be good to get some feedback here from other editors. Pinging some of the regular who often work on team season article: Cbl62, Patriarca12, TheCatalyst31, UCO2009bluejay. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 18:21, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I think we are entering WP:CRUFT territory. Yes the stadium should be listed, that is unequivical. I have added capacity to team seasons in the past. However, after working on many different professional articles, they do not include this information. If a reader is so inclined they should follow the link to the actual stadium. So No to turf/grass, and capacity. In regards to multiple home stadiums, I support inclusion for multiple home fields, provided we need a hard and fast rule about what counts as a "home stadium" Tulane in 2021 playing a game in Norman, should not count, OU/Texas in the Cotton Bowl should not count. Legion Field for historical Bama, War Memorial in Little Rock should count for Arkansas because they regularly hosted games for those programs. We need to find where that boundary is located.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 01:08, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Does anyone object to nuking all listings of stadium capacity and field surface in these infoboxes? Jweiss11 (talk) 20:37, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

No objection by me. Cbl62 (talk) 04:43, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Bot sweep?

@Primefac:: seems that we have a consensus to remove capacity and surface listings from the stadium field of Template:Infobox college sports team season. Do you think we could run a bot to sweep through all the instances of this infobox and make those removals? Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 04:15, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Sure, I'll set up some tracking categories to see about the size/scope of the changes. Primefac (talk) 12:55, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

AfD: List of American collegiate athletic stadiums and arenas

I have nomianted List of American collegiate athletic stadiums and arenas for deletion. Please see the discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 19:15, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

University of Michigan football sign-stealing scandal

To no surprise, a new article was just created for University of Michigan football sign-stealing scandal. We should keep some veteran eyes on this article and all of the related Michigan football articles, as this subject area had already been and will continue to be a major magnet for vandalism and shoddy editing. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:36, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Help

I've started expanding 2004 Michigan Wolverines football team and have run into a technical/coding glitch in creating the 2004 Michigan Wolverines football team#Roster. If someone can figure out what went wrong, I'd appreciate it! Cbl62 (talk) 23:57, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

• @Cbl62: I added two brackets in this edit - is it working like it should now? BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes. Thank you! Cbl62 (talk) 00:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

But now the coaching positions have disappeared. I'm too old for these sorts of charts. Cbl62 (talk) 00:03, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Rivalry mess

I am relatively new to college football coverage here on Wikipedia, but I do think that the proliferation of articles on rivalries needs to be addressed. The problem is that few college football rivalries (such as Michigan vs Ohio State or Texas vs Oklahoma) garner much national media interest, and most are of only of local importance. An example would be Cincinnati-Pittsburgh, which according to the AfD, is sourced almost entirely to local newspapers and school press releases. Also look at Nebraska Cornhuskers football's infobox, which has 10 rivalries listed, most I would argue fail to meet WP:GNG.

My suggestions would be to:

• 1: remove the rivalry subfield from the infobox, as I do believe it exacerbates the problem by giving undue weight to insignificant rivalries.
• 2: If a rivalry is only of significance to the school itself or the community, the article on the rivalry should have its contents merged into that of the football teams or deleted entirely.

In the end, it is not Wikipedia's purpose to bring attention to schools' big games, which is essentially what these articles do. funplussmart (talk) 19:50, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

funplussmart, if a stand-alone rivalry article exists, it should be included in the relevant infoboxes and navboxes of the participating teams. The solution here is to AfD the rivalry articles that do not past muster to warrant stand-alone articles. We've done some culling in the past, several years back. May be time for another round. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:23, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Rankings after Nov. 1st are only College Football Playoff rankings?

I tried finding a consensus discussion in this project's talk page histories but couldn't. I'm referring to this edit reversal with the description "rankings after november 1 on the schedule section are from the CFP rankings"

The college basketball project is where I spend most of my energy, but I do enough overlap with WP:CFB where I thought I'd be aware of this listed rankings consensus. Can someone please link me to that discussion? Thank you. SportsGuy789 (talk) 21:59, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

AFD: Georgia–Kentucky football rivalry

I have nominated Georgia–Kentucky football rivalry for deletion. Please see the discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 16:44, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

• There are six other pending rivalry discussions here:

(1) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brain Bowl (MIT–WPI) (closed as "delete")

(2) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Holy War (Merrimack–Holy Cross) (closed as "delete")

(3) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/River City Rivalry. (closed as "delete")

(4) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Charlotte–East Carolina rivalry (closed as "delete")

(5) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arkansas–Arkansas State rivalry (closed as "delete")

(6) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of the Border (Lamar–McNeese)

Cbl62 (talk) 18:16, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Just a comment @Jweiss11, I'd suggest review of South Carolina–Tennessee football rivalry. It was deleted in 2015, and I nominated it earlier this year due to a lack of sources. It closed as no consensus, but I strongly feel there is not notable coverage. It was loaded with references by the creator that do not support the notability, but I think someone else should review and nom. glman (talk) 19:18, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

@Glman: The SC-Tenn rivalry was pretty thoroughly discussed. You can, of course, re-litigate that one (for what would be a third time), but there's a lot of lower-hanging fruit. Consider reviewing Category:College football rivalries in the United States and looking for rivalries that don't warrant stand-alone articles. There are some 350 other college football rivalries that should be evaluated. E.g., Holy War (Merrimack–Holy Cross) (two games played), Johns Hopkins–Navy football rivalry, Constitution State Rivalry, Dayton–Drake football rivalry, Gonzaga–Idaho football rivalry, Brain Bowl (MIT–WPI), Mayor's Cup (Missouri–South Carolina), Safeway Bowl, Minnesota–Penn State football rivalry, Royal Rivalry, Catholic–Gallaudet rivalry, Battle of the Valleys, The Battle for Greater Baltimore, etc. Cbl62 (talk) 20:04, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

It was, but with no consensus. I think it's a clear example of if I took any of these articles and then flooded it with random sources about the game. I totally am with you that there are many pages that need to be nominated. glman (talk) 20:11, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Here are more rivalry articles under discussion:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nebraska–Texas football rivalry (closed as delete)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Penn State–Temple football rivalry (2nd nomination) (closed as delete)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Constitution State Rivalry (closed as delete)

funplussmart (talk) 22:22, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

See also:

• • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arizona–Texas Tech football rivalry. Cbl62 (talk) 05:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Appalachian State–Charlotte rivalry (closed as delete) Cbl62 (talk) 01:28, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Style of score on teams page

On a teams page, such as 2007 Missouri Tigers football team or 2007 Virginia Tech Hokies football team, which style should be used on the Championship/Bowl line in the info box? As an example, the two options in the 2007 Missouri case (on the Big 12 championship line) are L 17-38 vs Oklahoma and L 38-17 vs Oklahoma. Does the relevant team come first or the winning team?

I found this discussion that seems to mention a project consensus for relevant team first on team pages, but I can't find the original consensus. Plus, users seemed opposed to the idea of relevant team first, so I wanted to ask.

Thanks. Esb5415 (talk) 14:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

In prose, the winning score always goes first. But in tables like inboxes and schedule tables, the subject team's score goes first. Jweiss11 (talk) 14:34, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

TfD notice

Heads up that I have nominated {{CFB Yearly Record Subhead}} for deletion as it basically only exists to contradict our accessibility guidelines and it needs to be converted into more normal rowspan, semantically-appropriate cells. There's no way to include the notice in the template without breaking a bunch of tables, so I'm trying to give a good faith warning here.

Furthermore, the entire system of making these tables with five or so templates seems like a very clunky kludge that should be fixed soon. If you need help converting this into 1.) just normal tables or 2.) a single template that isn't spread out across a bunch of components and that is semantically meaningful and not hostile to the blind, let me know. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:25, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Koavf, I've opposed your nomination. While this template may contradict our accessibility guidelines, that's not why it exists. It exists to render standardized tables on nearly 7,000 articles. The five-template system dates back to 2007. If the code of this template needs modified, or if a template needs to be built to replace this one and its cousins, I'm all for that. But we can't simply delete this one first. Frietjes has helped this project in the past with templates like Template:CFB schedule, which replaced older, clunkier templates. Perhaps she can assist again. There's also the analogous Template:CBB yearly record subhead and its cousins, used for basketball and other college sports. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:24, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

So you're admitting that it's inaccessible, but that's okay somehow? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:26, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

It's currently accessible to anyone who can see. If you delete it, it's accessible to no one. That's not an improvement. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:30, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

That is not what Web accessibility means. Have you read MOS:COLHEAD? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:31, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Koavf, we've butted heads on this stuff before. And you've butted heads with many others on this as well. You need an attitude adjustment on your accessibility crusade. Try to be more collaborative. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:35, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't answer my question. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:55, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I read MOS:COLHEAD. It frowns upon headers inside tables that span across multiple columns. I also notice that the top of page (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Data tables tutorial) states that: "It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting." Jweiss11 (talk) 20:59, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Okay, so why do you think we should retain something that is inaccessible? As I hope you know, CfD is not a unilateral and instantaneous deletion of a template. As I already wrote above: I am willing to help you convert your inappropriate solution to acceptable tables. Knowing that I would help you and that there's a 0% chance that things will be broken, I am confused as to why you want to retain this kludge from 15 years ago. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:01, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Step one should be to build a new template. I look forward to draft versions from anyone! Jweiss11 (talk) 21:06, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

And to be clear, is there a reason that you think there needs to be a template rather than a table? And a reason why you think there needs to be a distinction between NCAA and NFL (and CFL and etc.)? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

There seems to be some confusion about the deletion process here. No one is proposing to instantly delete the template with no replacement. Please see WP:CFD. The template would be replaced with an appropriate alternative before deletion. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:59, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Picking off CFB Yearly Record Subhead from its cousins and putting it in a deletion holding cell does not seem like a good first step here. If we can't have headers spanning multiple columns, the entire template scheme for these tables needs to be redeveloped. And the CBB analogs should be included in that effort. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:03, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

"the entire template scheme for these tables needs to be redeveloped" Agreed, this was my proposal above. "the CBB analogs should be included in that effort". Agreed. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:04, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not all into the technical tables and stuff so I'm not completely sure what this would do: if the result is delete, what would the tables change to / what would be the differences? BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:27, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

If the outcome is delete, the templates would just stay in place on articles indefinitely until the replacement was ready. That's what happened with the NFL coach infobox. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 21:36, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

What would a replacement look like? Or has that not been determined yet? BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:38, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

That has not been determined but see the examples below for NBA teams. There may well be some row that has a rowspan.

Furthermore, it's not clear to me why the NCAA should look different or function differently than the NFL or CFL, etc. It's not clear to me how that's an asset. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:42, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The difference would be that there wouldn't be a single row that has a header-like appearance. Look at (e.g.) Hue_Jackson#Head_coaching_record. See how the table for the NFL does not have a single row that says "Below/above this is the Oakland records" and "Below/above this is the Cleveland" records, but the NCAA one has a row that says "After this is Grambling State stuff"? That would not exist in the future. See also (e.g.) this old, inappropriate table and the current, appropriate one. Please let me know if I'm being unclear. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:40, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

So, this would be removing the row that says "Grambling State Tigers (Southwestern Athletic Conference) (2022–2023)" and "Grambling State: 8–14 6–10 "? If that's it, I don't see the point to be honest. To me, this seems to be a case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Though if I had to choose, I'd lean towards keeping it as I think its better to have the information about what conference the team competed in. BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:51, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The purpose is explained at MOS:COLHEAD. Have you seen that yet? And it would omit the row that reads "Grambling State Tigers (Southwestern Athletic Conference) (2022–2023)" which itself is already redundant and serving no real purpose anyway. If conferences are important, we can introduce a column for conferences and have a table cell that says "Southwestern Athletic Conference". Again, please let me know if any of this is unclear, including the MoS page on accessibility in tables. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:02, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Noting conferences is vital in the these tables. Jweiss11 (talk) 22:49, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Then I think the solution is a column for the conference. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:51, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Developing new version of templates

I've mocked up User:Mackensen/CFB with Nick Saban's record without the headers. Mackensen (talk) 23:57, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Nice. The columns and rows will also need to have scopes and the ability to add a table caption. (Sorry if these features already exist--I'm responding as I'm walking out the door.) ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

If they didn't before I didn't add them. This is the basis for a discussion; it doesn't handle conference independents well; maybe it doesn't need to. Mackensen (talk) 00:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

The existing templates do have the ability to add a caption and I already added appropriate scopes, so if you copy/pasted, then it's all good. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:10, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

If we're going to redesign this and finally get it all right, the school subtotals from Template:CFB Yearly Record Subtotal should also be moved to the bottom of the table. In doing so, we are then able to make the table's columns sortable, whereas the subtotals would be incorrectly sorted (and misplaced) with the single-season stats. For example, see Saban's Sports-Reference.com table. —Bagumba (talk) 01:28, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

In the mockup, the "Standing" column seems overloaded, with the conference moved and combined in there now too. Make the conference a dedicated column, then even the season-specific conference page can be linked from there. The table can then be sortable by conference with a dedicated column. —Bagumba (talk) 01:35, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I played around some more and came up with a mockup that's sortable: User:Mackensen/CFB. Mackensen (talk) 02:48, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

To be clear, the rev you have here still has a few serious accessibility and semantics issues: 1.) you are using color for something meaningful without some other fallback in opposition to MOS:COLOR, 2.) the table includes non-tabular data, and 3.) the key/value pairs at the bottom should be in the form of a definition list which is made in MediaWiki with a semi-colon and a colon. Again, I'm happy to help revise these if you want instead of just giving the feedback. Thanks for everyone trying to address these issues. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:02, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Go ahead, I've forked all the relevant templates. Mackensen (talk) 03:05, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Merci, amigo. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:06, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Stepping back here to look at the big picture, if we are going to reconfigure these templates, we should do so in a way that eliminates the multi-template kluge from 2007 in favor of a new streamlined template, much like what we did with Template:CFB schedule in 2018 with Frietjes's critical coding help. There we also eliminated the cumbersome need to manually turn fields off and on. We should do the same here. I presume that will entail using Lua. As for the layout of Mackensen's mockup, I don't think abbreviating the conference names is ideal, as these templates are also serving historical and lower-division conferences for which common abbreviations either don't exist or are far less obvious to the average reader than "SEC". And two-tiered headings with "Name" under "Conference" are clunky. We also need to think about how we are going to convert the 7,000 instantiations of these templates over to the new scheme. We were able to achieve the changeover with CFB schedule scheme mostly with bots. What we should not do is rush a half-baked solution through just to meet the requirements of a non-policy-based accessibility agenda. Jweiss11 (talk) 06:59, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I really don't understand this kind of comment: no one here is advocating for a half-baked solution (that's what exists now!) and accessibility isn't optional. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:11, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

MOS:COLHEAD is "not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting." That sounds optional to me. What we have now is a 7/8th-baked solution and missing 1/8th is entirely on the backend. What I don't want to see happen is a regression to a 5/8ths-baked solution in which we lose something on the front end. A half-baked solution is exactly what happened last time your accessibility agenda collided with template-based college sports tables in 2020, when you force-fed a clunky, clutterly, utterly meaningless "Statistics overview" caption at the top of Template:CBB yearly record start. Let's not have a repeat of that sort of thing. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

No one is arguing for what you're concerned with. How is there a problem with the caption? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

That caption is utterly meaningless. "Statistics" tells us nothing. It's quite clearly tabular data with a lot of numbers. "Overview" is also meaningless. Is it an overview? Overview of what? Jweiss11 (talk) 07:35, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

It's a statistical overview. Do you have a better caption? What is the table about? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:10, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

It's certainly a table of data. Should the caption maybe say "Data table"? That's terrible and yet still better than "statistics overview". The data in the table is not an "overview", and "statistics" is so general as to be meaningless. When the table is a head coaching record table, it's about a head coaching record. But these same templates also sometimes render tables for things that are not head coaching record tables, like yearly records for a program. Perhaps we should have separate a template for that. At any rate, you force-fed meaningless clutter into Template:CBB yearly record start, and the fact that you can't understand that gives me pause about your intentions and involvement here. Jweiss11 (talk) 08:23, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Accessibility features are not meaningless clutter and your conspiratorial nonsense is not welcome or warranted. If you can articulate a problem, that's great. A solution would be even better. If you're so shocked and worried about a two-word line of dialogue, there are also display solutions for that. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:10, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Conspiratorial? What's the conspiracy here? I've only discussed the miscalibrated priorities of one person here, you. You need more than one person for a conspiracy. Yes, the "Statistical overview" caption is meaningless clutter, as explained above. I see no good reason why we couldn't have notes or direction for screen readers that don't unnecessarily clutter the visual display, like the alt fields that describe images. Perhaps employing Template:Screen reader-only? But "statistical overview" isn't helpful even for a screen reader. I've already articulated the problem with that two-word line of dialogue. It's a force-fed piece of meaningless clutter stubbornly implemented to meet the narrow requirements of the accessibility agenda at the expense of the mainstream visual presentation of Wikipedia. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

You keep on telling me that I need to adjust my attitude: please read the posts you've made here. Yes, as I wrote, if the problem is the display, you can make it not display. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:24, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm quite aware of the content and tenor of the posts I've made here. Criticizing bad arguments and poor editing behaviors is not uncollegial nor is it non-collaborative. What is non-collaborative is ramrodding bureaucratic quasi-policy with little to no concern for the collateral damage that such quasi-policy may inflict upon mainspace content. Your advocacy for accessibility has a pattern of such insufficient concern for the standard visual presentation of Wikipedia. Any fallout that your accessibility measures incur appears to be, in your estimation, someone else's problem to fix. That's the attitude I want you to adjust. Jweiss11 (talk) 21:50, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Wow. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:03, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I'd step back and forget about MOS and say that empirically, having headers mid table is not elegant, and makes the table non-sortable. (If we're going to nitpick, MOS:DTAB (an actual guideline) reads Because the row header and column header may be spoken before the data in each cell when navigating in table mode, it is necessary for the column headers and row headers to uniquely identify the column and row respectively That's not met if we're overriding a row with content that doesn't match the column header descriptions.) —Bagumba (talk) 07:51, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Just curious, what's the accessibility purpose of the "Statistics overview" caption? Shouldn't a screen reader be able to pick up the "head coaching record" header ? ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 07:55, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Bagumba, for a large table, the experience of having a screenreader read each cell's data preceded by it's corresponding row and column seems excruciatingly laborious and completely lacking in enrichment for the listener. Imagine the screenreader experience for John Gagliardi#Head coaching record or List of college football coaches with a .750 winning percentage. The intrinsic value of these tables lies in the user's ability to scan and compare. There may just be no practical way to make such tables truly accessibly for the visually-impaired. Jweiss11 (talk) 08:04, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

...completely lacking in enrichment for the listener. I dont use a screenreader, and will leave it to those who do and the accessibility experts to determine if its more useful or not than not being able to see the table at all. That aside, as someone who can see the existing tables, the mid-table headers are just not optimal. We're all volunteers, so I respect all the work put in to get where we are at, but we can still be open about how to improve and reimagine this, if some other volunteer wants to invest their time to go that route.—Bagumba (talk) 09:19, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Technology like screen readers (but also other software) can quickly use this for navigation and to announce "This is what's coming up: you may want to skip it or listen, based on what this is about". See more at MOS:TABLECAPTION. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes. This also applies to data scraping and AI to be able to make sense of each cell in the table in the absence of sighted humans using intuition to parse non-regular, mid-table headers. —Bagumba (talk) 09:25, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

And search engines and software that makes outlines of pages and styling for print editions, etc. etc. etc. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:10, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

@WikiOriginal-9: Are you referring to a section like Nick Saban § Head coaching record? Note that "Head coaching record" just happens to be a dedicated section that only has a table. The table could just as easily be under something like "Career" or "Biography", or the section could have multiple tables. So I'm guessing that the web standards (this isn't homegrown for Wikipedia) say to add a header that is specifically tied to the table's syntax. —Bagumba (talk) 09:54, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the pages linked to on the college basketball template CBB yearly record start, it appears that they are all head coaching records? So, maybe it should just say "head coaching record" instead of statistics overview? That seems more descriptive. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 13:14, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Speaking as a web developer, accessibility isn't optional, from either a legal or ethical standpoint. That's a total non-starter. You wrote above It's currently accessible to anyone who can see. If you delete it, it's accessible to no one. We can't treat non-sighted people as second-class citizens just because it suits us. Mackensen (talk) 11:31, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Mackensen, we don't help disabled people by diminishing service for people who are not disabled. That was my point. We don't built a wheelchair access ramp up to the high diving board at the municipal pool. What would be the point? Jweiss11 (talk) 13:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Leaving aside that people do in fact build wheelchair access to swimming pools and high-dives, people with sight issues probably want to access head coaching statistics as much as sighted people do. No one's proposing deleting anything. I don't understand your attitude at all. Mackensen (talk) 16:23, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Mackensen, people in wheelchairs jump off high-dives? There are wheelchair-accusable ramps that take one right up the diving board at elevation? Citation needed please. As I said above, a sufficiently large data table, like the ones found at List of college football coaches with a .750 winning percentage or John Gagliardi is going to be of minimal use with a screen-reader. No one's proposing deleting anything, huh? This entire discussion began with malformed proposal to delete a widely-used template. Even your mockup, as it stands now, has effectively deleted content included in the existing tables: team fight name, full conference names, and wikilinks to program articles. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:53, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

As has been written multiple times now, deleting the template as a kludge is not the same thing as deleting the information that the template is rendering. Additionally, as has been written multiple times by multiple editors now, please be more collegial. We're all trying to collaborate here. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:02, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Koavf, please refrain from spurious warnings about collegiality. That's not a good way to collaborate. As for deleting the kluge, step one should not be the nomination of one of the five pieces of the kluge for deletion. Step one is to develop a new template. Step two is roll out the new template. Step three is to delete the old kluge of templates. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:08, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, okay, going in the exact opposite direction is another approach. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Why do we have templates for these record tables?

I missed Koavf's earlier questions above about the why we even have templates to render these tables. The reason is for standardization and efficiency, which is same reason we have templates for infoboxes, citations, and any other structures that appear thousands of times across Wikipedia. College football is far more expansive and has a longer and more complicated history than the NFL or any of the other major sports leagues in North America. We need standardization to present the topic consistently and coherently across thousands of articles. Consider the example of Bill Walsh (American football coach)#Head coaching record. The manually rendered NFL record table is not something to which we want to aspire. We do not want to manually retype table headings on every article. The headings on the Walsh example are improperly capitalized and misspelled ("Post Season"). Winning percentages, if presented, should be automatically calculated from wins, losses, and ties. And what if we want to change or eliminate the color scheme used to denote various championships? That should be done once in a centralized template instead of hundreds or thousands of times with local coding on each article. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

In that case, there should be a single template for football records or sports records, rather than multiple templates. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:33, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I do think there is value in having it separate, as different versions of football have different things worth mentioning (e.g. there's no bowl games in the NFL/CFL like there is in college football, and there is also no national rankings in those leagues whereas is there is for college. Additionally, while all of them have conferences, conferences are much more important in the college ranks than in the NFL/CFL; I don't think mentioning conference really adds anything for NFL whereas college football it is very important). BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:24, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

BeanieFan11, indeed. College football is far more expansive and complicated than the NFL or the CFL. I think we should come up with a new template-based solution for college football first. Then we can apply it to other college sports. And then we may be able to apply that solution to the NFL, etc, with irrelevant fields unused. Jweiss11 (talk) 17:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

User talk:143.59.16.219 and the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry

An IP editor is engaged in repeated edit warring to impose his will at Michigan–Ohio State football rivalry. They been given mutliple talk page warnings about this by User:Sungodtemple User:Wikipedialuva, User:Chaotic Enby, and User:Materialscientist. See User talk:143.59.16.219. Despite these warnings, the disruption persists. Extra eyes on the article would be helpful. Cbl62 (talk) 04:45, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, and thanks to User:Materialscientist for blocking them! ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 04:58, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Preemptive conference affiliations

Based on what I have seen in multiple pages, there are already editors that are placing teams in their 2024 conferences in navboxes and on pages. I have WP:BOLDLY started the process of organizing certain navboxes using commented out parameters in a preemtive move but I now think this is ineffective. My point is that we need editors to have eyes on pages such as SMU, and all the other pages where there will be conference realignments.- UCO2009bluejay (talk) 20:20, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

AFAIK, the changes are not effective until at least after the spring sports, and surely an exact date is sourceable. Unless people are already creating 2024 team pages, it seems a conference change now is inaccurate and fails WP:V. —Bagumba (talk) 07:38, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

For the new Big Ten teams, it's not effective until August 2024. See here. Cbl62 (talk) 11:14, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Frank Howard: Is there more than one in AmF?

Is there another Frank Howard in American football that is preventing Frank Howard (American football coach) from being named simply Frank Howard (American football)? —Bagumba (talk) 06:26, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I can't find anyone else on the stats sites. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 06:32, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

If nobody comes up with anything, I might end up boldly moving it. —Bagumba (talk) 06:34, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't even consider that bold. There is no other article at the moment regardless. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 06:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Bold in the sense of bypassing WP:RM and its overhead. I just wanted a quick check that say like some Frank Howard politician didn't play college football, but it's not noted on the dab already.—Bagumba (talk) 07:11, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

College Football Playoff needs annual article that covers Selection, Semifinal bowls, and National Championship Game

When I google for "2023 College Football Playoff" I get no Wikipedia results, an odd omission. If I add "+ wikipedia" the top google result is 2023 College Football Playoff National Championship... which is the 2022 season's national championship game.

Same for "2017 College Football Playoff".... top result is the 2016 season's 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship. Much lower down in the results is 2017–18 NCAA football bowl games.

Template:College Football Playoff navbox contains the semifinal bowls and final, but does not link to any annual discussion of ranking, selection, or controversy. These are all, let's say, major parts of the College Football Playoff.

The term "20XX College Football Playoff" or "20XX–XY College Football Playoff" is in common use to cover the entire annual process of ranking, selecting, and seeding the four teams, the two designated bowl games, and the culminating national championship game. This is a distinct and more specific article subject from that of the 20XX–XY NCAA football bowl games articles. The obvious parallel is 2023 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament vs. 2023 NCAA Division I men's basketball championship game.

It's currently very hard to find information on Wikipedia for each annual iteration of the College Football Playoff. No single article seems to cover the entire process from selection to champion.

PK-WIKI (talk) 15:38, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I've created the article 2023–24 College Football Playoff.

Help appreciated on expansion, or arguments against at WP:AFD

PK-WIKI (talk) 18:48, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

2023 Colorado Mines

I have nominated 2023 Colorado Mines Orediggers football team for DYK with the following hook...that the No. 1-ranked 2023 Colorado Mines Orediggers, "college football's nerdiest contender", feature players with pigtails and drawn-on blue mustache, friar haircut, and Harry Potter cosplay? Extra eyes are welcome to whip the article into shape before it appears on the Main Page. Cbl62 (talk) 19:08, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Still pending rivalry AfDs

For those interested, 10 of the recent rivalry AfDs closed as "delete". Still pending are the following:

1. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of the Border (Lamar–McNeese) (closed as "No consensus")
2. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mayor's Cup (Missouri–South Carolina)
3. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arizona–Texas Tech football rivalry (closed as "Delete")
4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Elm City rivalry
5. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Grand Canyon Rivalry
6. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boston College–Virginia Tech football rivalry
7. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gansz Trophy

Cbl62 (talk) 22:07, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Louisville Cardinals football needs lots of cites

I added Louisville Cardinals football to the front page seeking assistance, but I haven't noticed any effect from that. So, if there's anyone who can help with citing this article, it will be very much appreciated. It is a C-class article of high importance to WikiProject Louisville, and has gotten over 32K views over the past month. I would work on this myself, but college football is very much outside my comfort zone for editing (i.e., I don't really know how best to source this kind of material). Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 23:21, 10 December 2023 (UTC)