Talk:1922 Vanderbilt Commodores football team/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Daniel Case (talk · contribs) 18:33, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

I am printing this out for review ... hopefully I will have something to say within a day or two. Daniel Case (talk) 18:33, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Many thanks Daniel. Cake (talk) 00:14, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Alright. This didn't take long when I got down to it; it shouldn't take long here.

I regret to say that I do not find it is up to the good article criteria.

It was clearly well-researched. But even so, far more paragraphs end without footnotes than I was able to tag as needing such; which alone was enough for me to rule out passing this. The solution to that problem, however, may actually be easy, for there is far more detail than necessary, to the point that the article is almost collapsing under its weight. Do we really need separate sections for each half of all but one of these football games played almost a century ago? Especially all the substitutions (see long list in last graf of Week 2)? You've got the box scores; that and a paragraph or (at most) two summarizing the game is all we need (oh, and I'd consider cutting the box with the conference standings as well). The current level of detail would probably be expected of a wiki devoted to Vanderbilt athletics, and would be a definite FA on a wiki devoted to Vanderbilt generally. But it is way more than we need on Wikipedia.

Fortunately, one of the nice things about writing so much is that improving the article becomes a matter of subtraction rather than addition. This may eliminate the need for some (probably many) of those uncited paragraphs, and the tedious and error-prone process of matching them to sources that you probably already have. In other words, you've done the hard part (at least physically—emotionally I suspect you will have some darlings to kill, as William Faulkner once put it) I recall hearing once, and never forgetting, that the secret of writing well is not so much knowing what to put in but what to leave out (I wish I could find out who said it; Google is not being helpful). Certainly an article about such a narrow subject as this with 174 separate footnotes that took 53 pages to print out (in Firefox, anyway) cannot but benefit from trimming.

Having gotten leaner, however, the article will still have to get meaner. Its tone, style and usage is far too often too journalistic ... it reads too frequently like it was written by a retired sportswriter for the anniversary special program, not an encyclopedist, waxing (or trying to wax) lyrical when it tells us how the new stadium was named after a former quarterback who "died over French skies" during World War I. Just tell us his plane was shot down—that's more direct and tells us what we need to know (And I like that "over French skies" bit—was he in a space capsule or something? That would be interesting ). Of course, since I've changed this already, you'll have to consider an example to follow. Elsewhere, years "see" often enough that I wonder why we aren't training them to assist the visually impaired, and the passive voice leads sentences and clauses too often ("It was noted ...")

There is also much inconsistent usage. In the same second graf of the intro we read of ties being "with" other teams, then later of Vanderbilt's tie "against" Michigan. Numbers seem to be spelled out or not for no particular reason.

And lastly, despite the level of detail of gameplay, there are places where I was interested enough to want to know more. The second graf of the intro tells us this was "one of the best seasons in Vanderbilt and Southern football history"? There's a huge difference between the first and second set. In the first case I'd be interested to know how it ranks among Vanderbilt seasons, and I believe this is something you can find out and tell us. In the second ... wow. Was that just at that time? Or ever? If the latter, it's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof, given all the Southern college football that's come since.

I'd also like to know why this was the first season to bar freshmen from play. Was this a conference rule? A school rule? Surely there would be some source offering more explanation here.

There are more issues with this article than could be addressed in the time that putting it on hold would last. For these reasons I am failing it. Certainly, you would be free to renominate it after you have addressed the issue (I'll also add it to the WP:TENN worklist too; maybe you could get some help that way if you want it). Daniel Case (talk) 03:05, 20 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks again. I am not dogmatic about what to cut, but admit pleading ignorance on just what to cut, and hope you can provide some guidelines. Yes I seemed to mix a metaphor which was not a metaphor with over France and in the sky. Quite bad there. Passive voice is something which I should be able to fix soon enough. Things such as the inconsistent use of with or against to describe a tie is likely due to hoping to find which I should use eventually or someone coming along and picking one. I suppose "with" is more neutral–yet it also does not sound like the match was a competition. And "versus" or anything else I could come up with comes across as jargon. "years "see" often enough that I wonder why we aren't training them to assist the visually impaired"–think the joke here went over my head.  Unfortunately the source for barring freshmen from play does not elaborate, but it's a fair point. I fear I won't find any more but I will definitely look.


 * On one of the greatest teams in Vanderbilt and Southern history. Well, it's a subjective claim which seems important to note among sources. As my sources were contemporary, I've added text which I hopes reflects that. In case you still wish for your question answered it requires what might seem a ramble. In other words, no problem if you have stopped reading. In a broad sense of what that claim has come to mean when one says, for instance "1922 Vandy was one of the greatest southern teams" or "1917 Georgia Tech was one of (if not the) greatest southern teams," one would mean at least up until 1930ish when the "Eastern bias" of the late Walter Camp had been all but purged; probably up until 1945 and the Second World War. Then, for lack of a better term an inductive approach, where the game has changed since before WW2 but still nobody seems to rival those old greats in accomplishments, one could say up until the 1960s for what one means by this era of football in the south. Though of course, the south is not the rest of the world, and so typically 1945 is a cut off point. It helps that in that year Army had a great backfield in the old sense of, say, a 1917 Georgia Tech, featuring Doc Blanchard. Due to contemporary opinion of the 60s one can also use a three pronged approach which instead uses the First World War, and which has the nice feature that, with 1918 as the year most affected by the war for football and I guess not counted, one can use the 50 year span from 1869 (the first football game, north or south) to 1919 as an era, then another 50 for 1920 to 1969, and then from things such as the AFL–NFL merger to the present day. To say those which rank highly in their time given by any splitting of eras, would not still at least rank among various modernes if evaluated qua era seems unfounded to me. But then that's just me.


 * For Vanderbilt history, the team has not won its conference since 1923 and has hardly had even a powerful team since the 1930s. Or, if we are charitable, giving them for instance Bill Wade and Bucky Curtis in between, we might say not since 1955 with an 8–3 record and the first bowl appearance. Those which rank among the greatest Vandy teams are arguably 1904, 1905; 1906; 1907; 1910; 1911; 1915; 1921 and 1922. The 1912 and 1926 teams both lost a single game to the national champion. 1912 was so dwarfed by 1910 and 1911, and 1926 had the national champion come out of the south; and so these are not often mentioned though on paper they are there too. Of these, 1904, 1910, 1921, and 1922 finished undefeated. 1905 and 1906 were bickered about in their day as greatest Vandy team. 1910 and 1922 had scoreless ties with heavily favored Yale and Michigan, respectively. 1907 had a tie with heavily favored Navy and defeated one of Sewanee's strongest units. 1906 had the biggest victory when it defeated Carlisle. Lynn Bomar of 1921-22 was the first Vanderbilt football player inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Josh Cody was on the 1915 team and later received that honor–though he also was a prominent coach (an even better player, granted). If you include 1926, then you've also Bill Spears for teams including hall of famers. 21 and 22, of course, also have the combined forces of McGugin and Wade, with which say McGugin and Manier does not compete. Cake (talk) 21:37, 22 March 2015 (UTC)