Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Memphis Tigers head football coaches/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was archived by Giants2008 via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 31 May 2021 (UTC) [1].

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List of Memphis Tigers head football coaches

List of Memphis Tigers head football coaches (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured list candidates/List of Memphis Tigers head football coaches/archive1

Nominator(s): PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 07:44, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list because I have created the article, it is comprehensive in the history of Memphis head football coaches, and has a lead that is well-sourced. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 07:44, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Resolved comments from ChrisTheDude (talk) 12:59, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

;Comments Please bear in mind that I am no expert - where I come from "football" is played with a spherical ball and university sport is so minor that the students generally don't even know when the uni sports teams are playing, let alone the national media, but nonetheless I will do my best.......... Is "the program" the same as "the team"? Comment: the two terms can be used somewhat interchangeably - "program" is often used to refer to the entire entity as one, much like a professional American football "franchise". I have gone ahead and switched the two instances of "program" to "team" just for clarity. "As of the conclusion of the 2020 season" - note 5 refers to the "2020-21 season", which is correct? Fixed: I have changed note 5 to refer to the 2020 FBS season (as the targeted link already does), which is more specific and refers to the division in which Memphis plays. The 2020 FBS (top-level) season differs from the FCS (second-level) season this year in that the FCS season will be played largely in the spring due to COVID, while the FBS season was played as usual in the fall, so I've clarified FBS. "a game not sanctioned by the NCAA" - I would suggest a link to the actual NCAA article here, as the earlier reference to that body linked to a sub-article (for want of a better term) Fixed: linked NCAA; if you think I should expand to something like "National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)", I will. "started a streak of six bowl games in seven years" - suggest a link to the article bowl game Fixed. What is the difference between "overall wins" and "conference wins" (and the same for losses, etc)? Where did the other wins occur if not in the conference? Comment: the vast majority of college football teams compete in conferences (Memphis competes now in the American Athletic Conference), and games against teams from the same conference make up the majority of any team's schedule in a given year. In addition to in-conference games (usually 8-9 per year), a team will play a handful of games against teams from other conferences (usually 3-4 per year), so those non-conference games are the ones counted in the overall record but not in the conference record. Note 1 says ""—" indicates any season prior to 1916 when postseason games were not played", but there are many rows after that date with dashes, so what do the dashes indicate there? Fixed: that note is included within {{List of College Football Program head coaches key}}, and I guess I looked right over it (most of the other head coach-lists use the dashes in this way), but I have removed them. Shouldn't Clyde H Wilson still have the dashes, as per note 1....? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 21:42, 1 February 2021 (UTC) The note is worded confusingly to me, but the 1916 Rose Bowl it mentions was played on January 1, 1916, at the end of the 1915 season. So I suppose it'd be technically possible for Memphis to have played in that game, however unlikely it'd be, so in my mind the prospect of a postseason berth wouldn't be totally impossible. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 03:02, 2 February 2021 (UTC) The biggest question of all - what is actually sourcing the data in the table? I can't see a ref against anything other than the two awards..... Fixed: I have added a source next to each coach's name in the table, either from the media guide (which, on pages, 262 to 271, lists each individual season with the coach and the conference record noted for applicable seasons) or Sports-Reference, which shows postseason records for certain coaches. That's what I got on a first pass..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 17:08, 1 February 2021 (UTC) OK, after some digging it seems that some of the stats come from the Media Guide PDF. This should therefore be put as a General Ref. It doesn't however, source the conference or post-season stats as far as I can see, and it also only covers Silverfield's 2019 stats (one game) -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 17:18, 1 February 2021 (UTC) Comment: The 2020 media guide only covers up to the end of the 2019 season (as it was published before the 2020 season began), so it only covers Silverfield's first game (2019 bowl game). I have added another source with his record with the team in 2020. ChrisTheDude, thanks for taking the time to review this. If there's anything else I need to fix, just let me know. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 18:04, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support - thanks for bearing with someone who knows little about the topic (although way back in my student days I was actually friends with someone who played for the university American football team. I was occasionally one of the 20 or 30 people (all friends of the players) who used to make up the "crowd" watching the game - that's how different university sport is in the UK :-) ) -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 12:59, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
• Comment I think these kinds of lists now look for a lot more info on the topic, e.g. look at List of Arsenal F.C. managers. I'm not sure that other sports should be getting a free pass on this. The Rambling Man (Stay alert! Control the virus! Save lives!!!!) 22:27, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Comments by WA8MTWAYC

• Link Head coach

  Fixed.

• In the lede, maybe indicate which coach has the highest win % and/or won the most championships?
• "Postseason play" could use some short explanation or should at least be wikilinked. WA8MTWAYC (talk) 20:26, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Comments by Lil-unique1

• Why is text in the key unnecessarily small? I can't see any reason per MOS:SMALLTEXT justifying this.

  Comment: I agree with you; that is not a page-specific issue as the key is {{List of College Football Program head coaches key}}, so the change would have to be made there.

• Easily done - I've fixed it myself. ≫ Lil-Unique1 -{ Talk }- 09:16, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

• In the coaches table, shouldn't {{abbr}} be used for the acronyms?

  Lil-unique1, are you proposing this instead of having the key? If so, I'm happy to make that change. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 23:44, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

  Both could coincide ≫ Lil-Unique1 -{ Talk }- 09:15, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

  Done.PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 15:06, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

• Also, not all references are achived which leaves the article open to linkrot in the future. ≫ Lil-Unique1 -{ Talk }- 22:21, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Comments

• The lead does not summarize the entire list well. The second paragraph focuses on bowl appearances, which (a) ignores many other elements of the list and (b) produces a steep bias towards the most recent head coaches. I would add discussion of other elements of the list – longest-serving coaches, most wins, history of the program, etc. – and trim the current information.
  • Also, it might be nice to note the conference with which the program has been affiliated – since there have been times it was an independent, this would clarify why some coaches have no conference records.
• "In addition to coaching at Memphis, McKeen spent nine years as the head coach at Mississippi State, where he earned SEC Coach of the Year honors in 1940." – unsourced and has no clear relation to the topic

  Removed. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 21:08, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

• I know this comes from a template, but I really dislike abbreviating "overall ties" as "OT". Most casual readers won't notice the key and will assume this means "overtime", since that is the more common usage in football discussions. I think that "OW", "OL", and "OT" should just be "W", "L", and "T", respectively.

  That would mean that the list and the key disagree; would you recommend removing the key altogether to fix this? PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 21:07, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

  I've started a discussion at the template's talk page to address this and the dashes; I also notified WT:CFB of the discussion. If the template isn't changed, we might want to consider removing the template and creating a custom key. RunningTiger123 (talk) 02:31, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

• Having blank cells makes the table look incomplete. I would suggest adding "—" to those cells to indicate they are not relevant. You could also put "0" in some columns to clarify if they were eligible to win something or not. For example, you could put a "—" under conference championships for Clyde H. Wilson to indicate the team wasn't in a conference and a "0" for Ryan Silverfield in that column to indicate the team is in a conference but hasn't achieved any titles yet.

  These dashes were taken out at the recommendation of ChrisTheDude above. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 21:05, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

• Archiving the sources is essential, especially since so much of the list relies on a single source.

— RunningTiger123 (talk) 18:43, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Just to follow up: Are you still making changes to the page? It looks like some, but not all of my comments were addressed. (I'm not too worried about the key; we can stick with the template for now unless there is a consensus to change at that talk page.) RunningTiger123 (talk) 15:34, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

RunningTiger123, thanks for checking back up - I am still planning to improve the page but school has taken a lot of my time recently (coming up on finals week), but once that is over I will have more time to dedicate to this page. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 22:48, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

• Quick comment – In the second paragraph, Ryan Silverfield doesn't need a link, as his name is already linked at the end of the first paragraph. In fact, you could get away with excluding the first name entirely. Giants2008 (Talk) 02:21, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Giants2008 (Talk) 22:24, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.