Talk:South Florida Bulls

Move / article name change? Requested move 1 March 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 18:43, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

South Florida Bulls → USF Bulls – The university has tried to distance itself from the potentially confusing "South Florida" name for several years now, as described in detail in this article from today's Tampa Bay Times, which prompted me to make this overdue move request. The older generation of Tampanians and USF grads still occasionally throw out a reference to "South Florida", but "USF" is much more commonly used. This change in usage is difficult to substantiate using search engine results, as "South Florida" is much more likely to being up items related to Miami rather than to USF in Tampa. But upon further reflection, perhaps that does prove the point after all. In any case, a move and redirect is appropriate here, imo. Zeng8r (talk) 15:04, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose move. This is similar to the Northern Illinois Huskies situation, wherein the university brands its sports teams under an initialism but reliable sources use the longer name. In addition, unlike with NIU, the name "USF" is ambiguous at the Division I level because of the San Francisco Dons.
 * reply As explained in the linked article and explained by yours truly above, "reliable sources" pretty much unanimously use the initials in this case, and have done so for over a decade. And there should be no confusion with San Francisco since, as you pointed out, they're the Dons, not the Bulls. Zeng8r (talk) 02:10, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Counter-argument: For my San Francisco argument, though there would be no conflict in article titles, there would be confusion in contexts where only the school names are used - such as team schedules and the like. As for your other attempted rebuttal, the linked article certainly qualifies as a reliable source, but the majority of national reliable sources continue to spell out "South Florida".  ONR  (talk)  03:10, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Major media outlets like ESPN are still using 'South Florida'. Corky  03:18, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * comment I'm not going to get into a heated argument over this, but the responses to what I thought was a no-brainer move are puzzling. The university has used "USF" as its official name since 2003, as reflected in the article above and (more importantly), in its brand management guide (link here), which never once uses the phrase "South Florida". Why wouldn't the athletic department's main Wikipedia article title reflect the name of the school, as determined by the school? Articles about companies or people shouldn't arbitrarily reject their current names just because some media members still use outdated versions, so why should that be the case here? The ESPN score crawl should not take precedence over what the school actually calls itself, imo. Zeng8r (talk) 11:48, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The standard on Wikipedia at least since 2012 (when I joined Wikipedia) has been to use the COMMONNAME which takes precedence over WP:OFFICIALNAME. That's why Northern Illinois is named that way and not NIU. It's not just ESPN that uses 'South Florida', it's NBC Sports, CBS Sports, etc. Corky  15:46, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Clearly, the main article about the university belongs at University of South Florida. But in the case of the sports program, the name was changed 15 years ago, which was before you joined Wikipedia, or I joined Wikipedia, for that matter. The relevant guideline at WP:OFFICIALNAME is the part where it says that "historical names should be preserved as redirects", which was my proposal. And while, yes, some national media outlets still use the "South Florida" verbiage, it is extremely rare here in Tampa, where the school is actually located. Zeng8r (talk) 20:00, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. "South Florida Bulls" appears in books much more often than "USF Bulls". Many of these books were published in the last fifteen years. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 00:00, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Initialisms such as USF are obscure to outsiders, which is another reason to use the more explicit South Florida. The important thing is that titles exist to serve the needs of readers, not the university's public-relations strategy. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 12:14, 3 March 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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