Talk:Minor league football (gridiron)

Wikipedia's quality standards

@Demokra you added a Maintenance template to the history section stating "It frequently presents the NFL as the dominant nationwide league throughout history, even in the eras when it was not". Can you please elaborate on what you meant? As the article specifically stating: "The (golden) era is also considered the best of all time, because the quality of play, as there was only 250 players in the NFL, while the regional leagues could sometimes offer better pay and jobs, and offered black players opportunity to play during the period when they were excluded from all NFL teams (1933–1946)". From my research after the 1958 NFL Championship Game the NFL considered the prominent league in the US (although other leagues claimed the "major league" designation through the years). BabyBOY789 (talk) 17:33, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi, BabyBOY - sorry about the delay in replying! First I have to say, the page has the makings of a brilliant article, it's got so much detail.

The thing that's confusing me about the article is how it introduces the minor and major leagues, and how it defines them at the start -- maybe including the definition of the NFL, but not just that league specifically.

At the start, it introduces the NFL and CFL as major leagues today (no problem, nice and clear), and then the 'History' section goes right back to the start, to 1890-1919, and describes many minor leagues (all good), but the NFL only gets its earliest mention in the 1930s. So, maybe there's an opportunity to explain more about where the NFL originated, and how it related to and interacted with other leagues in its early years. (Or maybe I just missed that!). Also, it's a little confusing to call it a "vacuum" in non-NFL regions in that era, since it implies that the NFL had already been active there, and then left. When the issue was more that the NFL hadn't grown so large yet. So, maybe a different word could be clearer? ("non NFL-affiliated" regions?)

To help readers to understand the Major/Minor distinction quickly, I would suggest (it's your choice whether you want to try this), maybe a short section, 'Definition', before the 'History' section, to define the different levels of league -- that info is already well explained in 'System and structure', but maybe that info should be earlier in the article?

Anyway... sorry about this tired typing. Hope it can help the article. :-) Demokra (talk) 06:38, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Demokra, thanks for taking the time to answer!

I appreciate the compliments but this article wasn't my brainchild, I just fell in love of it and try to expanded as much as I can (and sometimes it's harder to edit than write it from scratch) :-).

In the 1890-1919 section I added an explanation to what happened to those leagues: "The rise in level of play resulted in barnstorming tours between the circuits, which laid the foundations for the first truly national "Major" league – The American Professional Football Association in 1920 (which was later became the NFL)" (much of it was already there, I just added the end). Also, I changed the word "vacuum" in the 1930s section.

Regarding the "connections" between some leagues and the NFL: There was one attempt to establish a "minor league system" (Association of Professional Football Leagues) which is mentioned in the article several times, and another one with the establishment of NFL Europe (also mentioned several times) - while both have separate articles. Please let me know if you think it's necessary to expand it in this article.

Also, please let me know if you have any more feedback, as we try to improve this amazing article :-). BabyBOY789 (talk) 16:24, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

International leagues

This article is about minor leagues in North America, compere to the NFL/CFL. The international leagues shown in this article are those who have some type of a connection to the NFL/CFL - like the LFA, ELF and Australian leagues (through Prokick Australia academy). Other "strong" leagues like X-League (Japan) or other European leagues do not belong in this article as long as they don't have any relationships with one of the major leagues. BabyBOY789 (talk) 15:05, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Minor league football (gridiron)/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: MrLinkinPark333 (talk · contribs) 02:24, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Hello. Thank you for submitting this article to GAN. I noticed that this article had been previously nominated at Talk:Minor league football (gridiron)/GA1. Taking a look at the previous review, I notice that the verification issues have not been resolved. Therefore I will have to quick fail this based on criteria #3 and #5 WP:GAFAIL. I also found some other issues in this article. Here is what I found:

Verification issues

• I see many uncited paragraphs in this article. The Early 2000s section needs the most citations as paragraphs 1 through 6 are uncited. The other uncited paragraphs are: System and structure (3rd paragraph), Modern circuit (2nd and 4th paragraphs) and International American Football Leagues (3rd paragraph).
• Alternatively, I see some sections have some sentences that are uncited, such as The Golden Era and NFL Europe. However, The second wave section has 10 individual sentences that are not cited.

Unreliable sources

• Ghosts of the Gridiron is a self-published website, which is unreliable per WP:SELFPUBLISH. The author does not look like a subject expert, which makes this source not usable.
• Similarly, Lucky's Amazing Sports Lists, Birmingham Pro Sports, Semi=pro Football Headquarters, and Eirball look like self-published websites as well by non-expert authors.
• The Blogspot source should be replaced by the NFL Films source by Chris Willis, instead of having a copy from a blog.
• 1888 Press Release does not have editors, so this should be replaced.
• Per WP:FORBESCON, Forbes articles written by contributors are not reliable. This needs to be replaced.

Neutrality issues

• I'm seeing issues in the way the article sounds based on the phrases that are used. Specifically these issues are MOS:EDITORIAL and MOS:EUPHEMISM. Some examples include
  • "most notably with the establishment of a coalition of teams"
  • "as the controlling owner Thomas Dundon decided to pull the plug"
  • "Although the vast majority of Australian players in the NFL are punters, there are a few exceptions. The most famous is offensive tackle Jordan Mailata,"

Therefore, I suggest that this article should be fully rechecked to make sure it is written neutrality to avoid editorializing and without using euphemisms.

Other issues (non GA)

• There are many incomplete citations that only provide the title of the source, such as "To Avoid AAF's Fate, XFL Must Have a Better TV Deal". There are also two Google News Archive Search links that do not specify which article is being cited. All sources should at least have the author, date, and news/website name where applicable.

Overall

Although I have made a quick check through this article, I've found that the verification issue brought up in the last GAN have not been resolved. I am mostly concerned about the 6 uncited paragraphs in the Early 2000s section and the 10 uncited sentences in The second wave section. Alternatively, there are issues with unreliable sources, neutrality issues and incomplete citations. I believe that if these issues were to be resolved, this article would have a better chance at GAN. I hope you are encouraged to help fix these issues, especially the unverified parts. Thank you for submitting this article to GAN!

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.