Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football#Unnamed parameters version of CFB schedule template

{{u|Dissident93}} made some edits to Template:CFB Yearly Record Subhead and Template:CFB Yearly Record End yesterday that removed gray background coloring for heading and total rows in the college football head coaching record tables. This has something do with rendering in light-on-dark color scheme ("dark mode") it seems. The gray background color is still present in the analogous templates for college basketball head coaching record tables. Doggie Julian#Head coaching record is a good example where you can compare the two. I certainly think the tables look better with the gray shading. Dissident93, can you explain what the problem was with the "dark mode"? Is there a way we could keep the gray shading by default, but change things as needed for dark mode? I know you also have some more general concerns about the layout of these tables. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:54, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:I thought I was going crazy, my eyes are not fond of these all-white record tables. Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 20:14, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

::It looks better with the gray. It's a little easier to distinguish between tenures when the whole table isn't white. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 17:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

:::{{u|Dissident93}}, can you explain the dark mode issue here? Jweiss11 (talk) 03:26, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

::::It is [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Recommendations_for_night_mode_compatibility_on_Wikimedia_wikis#Avoid_static_values_for_inline_background_and_text_colors recommended to not use inline colors] within articles and templates for better dark mode compatibility unless necessary, which apparently this was. I've re-added the color with a {{code|!important}} tag so they should look normal again in light (default) mode. Can somebody confirm? ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 00:41, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

:::::Dissdent93, thanks for the explanation and making the change. Yes, things look normal (or as they were before) in light (default) mode. Jweiss11 (talk) 16:10, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

The deletion rationale given was:

• {{tq|"Searches did not turn up enough in-depth coverage from independent, reliable sources to support meeting WP:GNG."}}

We have a series of 27 articles about All-South Independent football teams:

• :Category:All-South Independent football teams

All of these articles are similar to the 1969 All-South Independent football team article and each cites a newspaper article.

Also see this 2024 conversation about these articles:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Archive 28#All-South independent football teams

We should probably either keep this article or delete all 27. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 00:51, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Pop Warner 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) 12:55, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

The following deletion discussion may be of interest to project participants. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:09, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

There's a split proposal/discussion at WT:NFL#Split proposal for Field goal that involves some college football material. You are invited to join there. Left guide (talk) 21:51, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Is there any opposition to creating more award categories like :Category:Fred Biletnikoff Award winners and :Category:Chuck Bednarik Award winners to match :Category:Heisman Trophy winners and :Category:Walter Payton Award winners? I would usually just WP:DOIT but they involve a large number of pages. My rational is that if a standalone article and navbox already exist for them, then a matching category should as well. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 19:54, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

:Are these awards really as defining as the Heisman Trophy? Looks like we have the following categories for college football player award winners:

:* :Category:Heisman Trophy winners

:* :Category:Jon Cornish Trophy winners

:* :Category:Maxwell Award winners

:* :Category:Walter Camp Award winners

:* :Category:Walter Payton Award winners

:* :Category:William V. Campbell Trophy winners

:I'm certainly in favor of keeping the Heisman winner cat. There others run the gamut from pretty obscure and probably not defining, like Jon Cornish, to kinda close to the Heisman, maybe, like Maxwell and Walter Camp. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:25, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

::The same defining logic should also apply to their associated navboxes, which nobody has stated any opposition to. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 00:46, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Not sure whether there was discussion of this before implementation, but there's been a change this year of putting each captain's name on a separate line in the season article infobox. The impact is to make our already-long infoboxes even longer. The 1972 Iowa Hawkeyes football team infobox is an example of this. With two or three captains, the information previously displayed on one or two lines (depending on screen width), but now it spreads the same information over three separate lines. I'm not seeing the benefit of this change. Cbl62 (talk) 20:32, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

:It can be a bit much sometimes (see 2019 Anna Maria Amcats football team with seven) Thetreesarespeakingtome (talk) 20:38, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

::Cbl62, as part of a massive effort to cleanup and standardize these infoboxes and lots of other stuff, in recent months I've been cleaning up those captains fields. The template documentation always indicated that separate fields should be used for each captain. In practice, sometimes that was followed, but in many other cases a single field was used for multiple captains with break tags or commas separating each captain. A negative of the later practice was that a field containing multiple captains would carry the singular label "captain" instead of the more appropriate plural label "captains". That same issue applies to MVP fields. To make this all work better, we've expanded the number of captain fields from 6 to 8 and MVP fields from 2 to 4. Much of this was discussed at Template talk:Infobox college sports team season. There are still some rare cases of more than 8 captains (e.g. 2003 Louisiana Tech Bulldogs football team) and more than 4 MVPs (e.g. 1985 Iowa Hawkeyes football team). If we think it's better to have the lists of captains/mvps on a single wrapping line separated by commas instead of one player per line, we could easily tweak the code of the template. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:18, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

:I don't see captains as being significant enough to meet MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. Note it on the roster, or temporarily in a section listing if a roster doesn't exist yet. —Bagumba (talk) 06:42, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

:We should generally design infoboxes to reflect the weight of sources. Are captains a key part of season summaries in reliable sources? If so, include them; if not, leave them out. Left guide (talk) 06:57, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

• I came upon this issue while building out the Iowa season articles. 1979 Iowa Hawkeyes football team is an even more egregious example: With five team captains, the list takes up a disproportionate space in the infobox.

:As for Bagumba's suggestion to delete the field: Team captains were much more significant historically than they are today, and I think the field should be maintained at least for older season articles. The significance of the captain has definitely diminished as teams went from having "a captain" to having two, three, five, or even seven co-captains. I'm open to deleting the captains display for modern teams -- though I'm not sure what the cutoff date would be. Or maybe we just adopt a rule that captain names aren't displayed when there are multiple captains. I'm open to suggestions, but displaying four, five, or even seven captains in the infobox is undue.

:As for the display format, I definitely favor going back to how it's previously been done by wrapping the captains on a single line. And FWIW, template talk pages don't generally get followed. For significant changes like this, it's probably best to discuss at the main college football talk page. Cbl62 (talk) 11:36, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

::{{tqq|As for Bagumba's suggestion to delete the field}} Is the suggestion being made to delete the captain field from the infobox template itself? If so, that would be a bad idea. The template is shared with many other sports, in some of which captains seem to be more important, like hockey and soccer. Such a change based only on football issues would also be a sort of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. If there are design considerations in CFB that drastically differ from how it's often used in other sports, it may be best to split off football into its own infobox template. Left guide (talk) 12:05, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

::: I didn't phrase that well. The issue is not removing the field from the overall teamplate. The issue is making a decision as a college football project as to whether to fill in the field when a team has three, four, five, six, or seven captains. At the extreme, when you have so many captains (maybe three or four on the field at the same time!), the concept of a "captain" loses its significance, and we can decide as a project that this is not the sort of core information that belongs in an infobox. Cbl62 (talk) 12:24, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

:::: I think this is an example of something that's not broken and doesn't need to be fixed. From the beginning of college football in the late 1800s through the mid 1900s it was most typical to have one team captain, maybe two. In the early days, rosters were much smaller and players played both ways. The same set of 11 guys played on offense, defense, and special teams, with maybe a few permanent substitutions late the game, similar to how soccer or baseball still works now. Since the two-platoon system and free, at-will substitution and re-entry was adopted in the 1940s, college football rosters have continued to get larger and larger, and players more and more specialized. And the number for team captains has often grown in like kind, first to 2 and 3 in the latter decades of the 1900s and then often to a handful, like 4 to 8. Take the 2023 Michigan Wolverines football team for example, which had 6 team captains: 3 on offense and 3 on defense. Captains have leadership roles not only on the game field itself, but in practice and the "lockeroom" development of the team. I think this remains core information about a team that belongs in the infobox. With respect to Cbl's suggestion, wherever possible we should avoid subjective cutoffs of articulated sets of coherent and objective data points. Jweiss11 (talk) 15:02, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

::::: Actually, the role of a team captain has changed dramatically over the course of college football history. In the early days, the captain had major responsbility in running the team. Today, it is often just an "honorary" title bestowed on a group of senior players. It is no longer core information worthy of infobox treatment. If it is to be included, it should absolutely not receive separate lines for each "captain" -- doing that makes it grossly undue in a modern team infobox. Cbl62 (talk) 16:03, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

There's a discussion at the lower portion of WT:NFL#TV / streaming networks in schedule tables about possibly removing TV-related parameters from {{tl|Americanfootballbox}}, which would affect college football articles that the template is used on. You are invited to join there. Left guide (talk) 11:22, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Colt McCoy 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) 14:01, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

I was looking through the pages for the upcoming 2025 season and noticed that the ACC season page had not been created yet. I thought I remember looking somewhere and seeing that it was in draft space because of WP:TOOSOON, however now I don't see anything there either. I'm happy to create it but didn't want to duplicate work that had already been done. Thanks in advance for anyone's help! Swimmer33 (talk) 18:40, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

:{{yo|Swimmer33}} Looks like {{t|2025 NCAA Division I FBS football season navbox}} contains the standard set of relevant season pages. Based on that template, most other conferences have a live 2025 season article. There's also :Category:2025 NCAA Division I FBS football season. Left guide (talk) 20:19, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

:: I guess my point was I swear this page was created at some point and just never got moved to main space? I was hoping someone could figure out where it went from deletion logs. I seem to remember the page being fully created with the schedule filled in as well.Swimmer33 (talk) 20:36, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

:::Untouched drafts are automatically deleted after 6 months. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=delete&user=&page=Draft%3A2025+Atlantic+Coast+Conference+football+season&wpdate=&tagfilter=&subtype=&wpFormIdentifier=logeventslist The deletion log for the link you provided with a "Draft" namespace prefix is empty], so it's possible there is/was a draft attempt under a different title, or in someone's userspace somewhere. Left guide (talk) 20:41, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

::::Guess I missed it somewhere then. I'll get around to creating the shell soon. Swimmer33 (talk) 17:51, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

I've tried on multiple occasions to publish articles concerning the 2025 season for various FCS teams, but they get denied on not being notable enough, despite previous articles for the team having the same number of sources. Does anyone know how to combat this? VermontPowderKing (talk) 20:52, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

:for reference: Draft:2025 LIU Sharks football team VermontPowderKing (talk) 21:00, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

:Don't use Articles for Creation. Just create it yourself. AfC is broken by design. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 21:03, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

::Thanks VermontPowderKing (talk) 21:05, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

If anyone could provide a review at the above football player featured article nomination, it would be appreciated. Thanks, BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:53, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

The P4 conference pages have Apparel sections (Big 12, ACC, SEC, Big 10) with only the Big 10 page being properly cited. I remember a while ago the conference pages didn't have these sections, and the smaller FBS conferences don't have these sections. Should these sections be included? I personally don't find them as having much encyclopedic value and may violate WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Esb5415 (talk) (C) 15:01, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

:While on the topic, having Key personnel sections (Big 12, Big 10, SEC, ACC doesn't have one) also seem indiscriminate to me. Should these be included? Esb5415 (talk) (C) 15:05, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

::I'd remove. I think those people are more associated with their school that the conference. They can be in season specific pages, like at 2025_Southeastern_Conference_football_season#Coaches_2. —Bagumba (talk) 10:01, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

:MOS:EMBED says: {{tq2|Embedded lists are lists used within articles that supplement the article's prose content.}} Team's apparel doesn't seem to supplement anything. —Bagumba (talk) 15:57, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

:Does anyone else think this is also getting into WP:NOTPROMO territory? Lists of corporate sponsors/affiliates with zero prose or context provided. Left guide (talk) 09:34, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

I've done some work in the past few days to expand Eastern Pennsylvania Collegiate Conference (1926). We have a separate article for Eastern Pennsylvania Collegiate Basketball League. I wonder if this was all the same organization? Pinging {{u|Zachlp}}, who created the basketball league article, {{u|Wmtribe2015}}, who created the football-focused article, and {{u|PK-WIKI}}, who did some excellent research a few months back on another forgotten conference from the early 1900s, Northwest Conference (1908–1925). Jweiss11 (talk) 16:04, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

:Here is [https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-patriot-news-1932-easter-pennsylvani/174974435/ a 1932 wire service story] discussing in the "Eastern Pennsylvania Collegiate Conference" championship in basketball. Lists the same champion as Eastern Pennsylvania Collegiate Basketball League for 1932. They appear to the be same conference IMO. PK-WIKI (talk) 16:35, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Jamaal Westerman 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) 15:07, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League#High school statistic tables that editors may be interested in. UCO2009bluejay (talk) 02:02, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

See, Talk:2025 NBA Finals#No wikilink to teams. While not college football related, commenters discussed other major leagues. It could have an impact on this project.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 16:26, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Hey folks. I suggest renaming a few bowl game articles, to follow our usual disambiguation guidelines. (Pinging Butters.From.SouthPark, who recently created some articles for 2025–26 bowl games.)

• New article:
• 2025 Citrus Bowl (December) → 2025 Citrus Bowl
• Older articles:
• 2025 First Responder Bowl → 2025 First Responder Bowl (January)
• 2025 Gator Bowl → 2025 Gator Bowl (January)

— Mudwater ^(Talk) 09:36, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

:Mudwater, I get the first one, as the disambiguation is unnecessary. I don't understand the last two, because the disambiguation there also looks unnecessary. Jweiss11 (talk) 15:30, 29 June 2025 (UTC)