Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League/Archive 16

List of Super Bowl jersey colors worn
Should List of Super Bowl jersey colors worn be nominated for deletion? There are no sources and jersey colors are not important at all. This is a completely trivial list. – Sabbatino (talk) 20:37, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. This is trivia at its finest. I wouldn't even go ahead with a proper AfD nomination either, I'd just boldly redirect it to Super Bowl or something. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 20:47, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * PRODed it. Lizard  (talk) 21:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Concur. I also removed the "Record by jersey color worn" section. - BilCat (talk) 21:58, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The article was probably inspired by the fact that white jerseys have dominated recent Super Bowls. Still doesn't justify it though. Lizard  (talk) 22:06, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * A few sentences regarding it can be added to the main Super Bowl article, but no way should this deserve a detailed list, it's just trivia. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 04:30, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

The PROD's been removed with only 2 days left by some do-gooder who wants to see a "full deletion discussion". So now we're stuck with this idocy for at least another week. Send to AFD? - BilCat (talk) 07:50, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Fine with me, no way it remains after a proper AfD. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 09:52, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Articles for deletion/List of Super Bowl jersey colors worn. Lizard  (talk) 03:01, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

All-Pro navboxes TFD
You are invited to comment on the annual All-Pro navboxes at Templates_for_discussion/Log/2018_February_22.—Bagumba (talk) 10:43, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

1982 and 1983 All-Pro Team navboxes
Hey guys so I'm working on making navboxes for the AP All-Pro first team since the merger (1970). Well as I was creating 1982 and 1983, I got the titles mixed up. I tried to move them, but because they are each others titles, it won't let me. Can someone fix this? Thanks, RoyalsLife 22:01, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Just rename one of them to kdjsgajdkdfh or something so you can do the moves. Lizard  (talk) 22:03, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Or just swap their contents. Lizard  (talk) 22:04, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Lizard thanks, it's fixed now. RoyalsLife 22:12, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Lizard can you check and make sure everything looks good? I've made over 100 edits today so I might not catch everything haha. RoyalsLife 22:21, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

As a followup to the thread above, is there a compelling reason to keep these given the clutter they can create?—Bagumba (talk) 09:44, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I dunno. I can't think of a good reason. But the reasons I'd give for nuking them is the clutter, and the fact that they only account for the AP teams (in the infobox we take all teams into account). Lizard  (talk) 15:16, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Though on the subject of how we do it in infoboxes, that may be something we should reconsider. The AP team is far and away the most notable. Google search "2017 All-Pro team" and try to find an independent source that mentions a team other than the AP's. Lizard  (talk) 15:29, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

I have to agree with Lizard  on how we do it in the infoboxes. On the subject of the navboxes, I personally like them for research. In a way, getting rid of those would be like getting rid of the Super Bowl champions navbox. For a guy like Tom Brady with five, that kinda adds clutter. I say keep them and it was time consuming making them, so they would feel like a waste if we delete them. RoyalsLife 15:45, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, time invested in creating something isn't taken into account in deletion discussions. What is taken into consideration is cruft; I'd imagine many people wouldn't be fond of the idea of having as many as 10 of these things on a single player's page. The comparison to Super Bowl champion navboxes is WP:OTHERSTUFF, but Brady and Charles Haley are the only ones with 5 of them; many players would have 5 or more All-Pro navboxes. Lizard  (talk) 16:06, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Appreciate the work that you put into it. The worst part is that I'm sure you saw the existing All-Pro navs and assumed there was prior consensus for them.  I agree there should be a way for a reader to research and get from a player to the individual All-Pro teams.  In NBA bios, this is typically done by linking to the annual honors like at Stephen_Curry. For players with only a few honors, this can be place directly in prose instead of a list. From there, readers can see the other members of the team that year. Regards.—Bagumba (talk) 11:13, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Lizard I guess so. I'm not doing anything before 1970 which means only Jerry Rice, Anthony Muñoz, Bruce Smith, Lawrence Taylor, Reggie White, John Hannah, Ray Lewis, Peyton Manning, Bruce Matthews, Mike Singletary, and Randy White would have more than 6+. That's only 11 guys compared to the hundreds that make the team. Making the team is in fact considered a big honor. RoyalsLife 16:27, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I would support deletion of the annual All-Pro navboxes. In addition to the clutter factor, I don't think they serve a particularly valuable navigational function. Cbl62 (talk) 16:36, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Games played notability
There was a discussion back in 2007 (here), that didn’t go very well as far as I’m concerned and perhaps 11 years later we can maybe finally get this right moving forward.

The case in question is, should a player who has never appeared in a season game, although being signed to a contract, and/or playing in preseason but being cut before the season starts, should have the merits (categories etc) of what a player who has played in a game should have. As far as I know, one has to have played in an official game to be considered “notable”; therefore if a bio has done nothing else to be considered notable, their article probably would not exist. Somebody like Brock Lesnar for example, has an existing article because he is notable in other fields not related to football. Therefore, I do not think it is appropriate for people like him to be categorized as an American football player. Thoughts please. Savvyjack23 (talk) 19:24, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Ricky Williams
I noticed there is confusion on Ricky Williams's page. NFL.com lists him as on the Dolphins 2006 roster while he was suspended. People don't want include the 2006 season in his infobox because he also played in Canada that season. He was on the Dolphins roster which led to the whole thing with Joe Theismann saying that they (Toronto) shouldn't play an addict and a player still on an NFL roster. This means that the 2006 season should in fact be included in the infobox. If not, then players like Josh Gordon's infobox should be changed so that it doesn't include the 2015 and 2016 seasons. RoyalsLife 16:35, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If he was contracted to the team during the 2006 season and either on the active roster or a reserve/injured list, surely the 2006 season should be listed in his infobox? – PeeJay 17:27, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

PeeJay He was on the reserve/injured list just like Josh Gordon, Aldon Smith, and Randy Gregory. I'll change the infobox then RoyalsLife 18:00, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Playing position
Do we need a  parameter for articles like Matt Daniels? seems suboptional to put both the coaching and playing positions in the same arg. Frietjes (talk) 00:47, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, unless he's the first player-coach in the NFL in roughly 70 years. Lizard  (talk) 02:58, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The question is relevant for the coach's position during their playing career. Basketball infobox has this e.g. Luke Walton.—Bagumba (talk) 07:00, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe a separate field is warranted for their position as a player. As long as we don't do it like baseball does it, which makes it seem like Mark McGwire is currently a first baseman and coach for the Padres. Lizard  (talk) 07:15, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Exactly. I think basketball used to comingle also before the additional field.—Bagumba (talk) 07:36, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that Mark McGwire infobox is an example of poor design. I've seen similar stuff for NFL players where the position field is populated with something like "Head coach / linebacker".  I'm in favor of a dedicated playing position field for Template:Infobox NFL biography since it is used for players, coaches, and executives.  Take John Dorsey (American football) for example.  Nowhere in the infobox is his playing position mentioned.  How about Bill Cowher?  Since he's retired, looks like the position field at the top has been purposed to indicate his playing position.  But should his playing number and position be the first two bits of info listed given that he was more noted as a coach? Jweiss11 (talk) 21:25, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Brian Dawkins' playing career position was tossed to the side in favor of his current position as executive assistant vice president of coffee-making affairs for the Eagles. Lizard  (talk) 21:44, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * In short, Frietjes, yes, this is a good idea, and yes, we do need it. Ejgreen77 (talk) 11:48, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think a seperate parameter is a wonderful idea. I've always had issues with that when editing a coach that used to be a player. There's seperate parameters for teams as a player, coach, and executive, so it makes sense. Though that brings up a seperate question though, should we only include positions played in the NFL or should we include what they played in college, like with Andy Reid being a guard in college or Marvin Lewis being a linebacker even though neither one played in the NFL. -- Rockchalk 717 03:09, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Category:Unconferenced Pro Bowl players
From 2014 to 2016, the Pro Bowl game was between two teams picked by captains, so I get where Category:Unconferenced Pro Bowl players came from. However, isn't it more historically significant which conference the player was picked from, not which team they actually played on? Also pinging, who created the category.—Bagumba (talk) 11:20, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think so. If the Pro Bowl had always been unconferenced, would we still segregate Pro Bowlers into AFC/NFC categories? I'd think not, since it'd be largely arbitrary. Lizard  (talk) 15:56, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * AFAICS, Pro Bowl selections were still by conference in those years, even though the game itself was not AFC vs. NFC. And the fact is that all the other conference-specific Pro Bowl categories did already exist, so it's a little too convenient too discount that fact.—Bagumba (talk) 20:11, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not stating an opinion in this comment, just trying to get the facts straight. This says "Players were selected without regard to conference in voting by fans, coaches and players and will later be assigned to teams via the Pro Bowl Draft." "The AFC had 38 different players named All-Stars and 48 NFC players were honored." WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 22:56, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clarifying that the picks were independent of conference. Serves me right for only reading 2014 Pro Bowl LOL. I though it was like the NBA ASG this past year where it was just captains picking teams, but the player pool was still equal from AFC/NFC.  My bad.—Bagumba (talk) 02:31, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

Which staff positions belong in infobox
How far down the totem pole do we want to go with which coaching staff positions to include in the infobox? See Kevin Mawae. He was hired as an "offensive analyst" by ASU. What that entails is anyone's guess. For all we know he's a shoe shiner. "Mawae and former ASU quarterback Danny White will be analysts in 2017-18, a role White also held last season. Herm Edwards also is expected to add several more analysts or consultants." Note that Danny White's infobox makes no mention of this, nor does the rest of his article for that matter. This is a college hire but I'm asking here since it's also relevant to the NFL. What's Brian Dawkins' role as "executive of football operations for player development" for the Eagles? And is that role significant enough to have the infobox display him as a member of the team? And even include a highlight in his already jam-packed infobox that he's a Super Bowl champion in this capacity? Did he even get a ring? (And before makes me look dumb, the first and last questions are rhetorical.) I think we need to draw a line somewhere. Lizard (talk) 08:54, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's hard to tell what's important sometimes. There are a lot of different positions. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 09:16, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Pro Football Hall of Fame members navbox TFD
Template:Pro Football Hall of Fame members has been added to Templates for discussion/Log/2018 March 20. Feel free to comment. – Sabbatino (talk) 17:26, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Steelers MVP, Rams MVP, and Rams ROY navbox TFD
Template:Pittsburgh Steelers Team MVP, Template:Rams Rookie of the Year, and Template:Rams MVP have been added to Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 March 21#Template:Pittsburgh Steelers Team MVP and after. Feel free to comment. –RoyalsLife 02:47, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Players who were suspended (again)
We've had this same discussion a year ago, but it doesn't appear that it was ever resolved. How should we list players' careers who were suspended for a full year or more (e.g. Josh Gordon, Ricky Williams)? The argument against including their suspended years is that they weren't active and didn't play. The argument for inclusion, suspended or not, is that they were on the team's roster, the same as a player who may have missed an entire season on IR (e.g Kevin White). Thoughts? (pinging Crash Underride as we have different opinions on this.) Jauerbackdude?/dude. 18:20, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Just for the record, there was also a discussion earlier this month. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Football_League. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 21:46, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm in the they were on the team's roster camp. Suspended players are officially placed on the team's reserve list. The only difference between them and players on IR/PUP/NFI is that they don't get paid. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 21:51, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Don't forget Aldon Smith and Randy Gregory. Especially Aldon Smith now that he was released. All of these guys were in fact on the team's active roster, just on the reserve list. Michael Vick and Sean Payton should be thrown in too. All of these guys were still a part of the team, but were forbidden to go on the field or get paid. For guys like Paul Hornung, it's hard to tell because it was so long ago. –RoyalsLife 23:09, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Guys like Justin Blackmon (and Josh Gordon before his reinstatement) are even more extreme examples. If they haven't been terminated from their contracts, they should still be considered members of the team. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 01:05, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Unless I'm reading it wrong, it looks like (so far) we're all pretty much in agreement. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 13:29, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Whatever is decided, Hornung, Alex Karras, and other old-time players should be treated the same as these more recent ones. Lizard  (talk) 20:00, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've made the change to Karras's page for now. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 20:43, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've done the same for Hornung, since the two of them were suspended basically as a package by the league. Lizard  (talk) 21:01, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, a footnote wouldn't hurt in these cases. Lizard  (talk) 21:03, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
 * No, but then people could make the case we should always footnote suspensions. The prose should make it clear enough that one isn't necessary. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 21:28, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

NFL catch rule controversy not covered on Wikipedia
Unless I'm missing it, I don't think we cover the NFL's ongoing catch rule debate anywhere on Wikipedia despite the exhaustive attention it's gotten over the better part of the past decade and especially during this year's playoffs. Not on American football rules. Not on Reception (gridiron football). Not on Completion (American football) nor Incomplete pass (which should probably be merged together). Not on National Football League controversies. But I'd say it's worth its own article. Just throwing that out there if anyone wants to catch it (but make sure you maintain possession throughout the process of going to the ground). Lizard (talk) 01:13, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If someone wants to start the article I'd be happy to help expand it. I'm just too lazy to start it myself. I'm thinking it should discuss the current previous rule, ways the NFL is currently trying to fix it tried to fix it, and a "Notable non-catch rulings" section which would have to include Calvin Johnson in Week 1 2010, Dez Bryant in the 2014 playoffs, and Jesse James in this year's playoffs. Lizard  (talk) 19:59, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't really think it deserves its own article. Start out on the National Football League controversies page first and see how much there is to even go on. If it's plenty of information (4-5 paragraphs), then it should be done. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 04:37, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Steve Largent Award navbox TFD
Template:Steve Largent Award has been added to Templates for discussion/Log/2018 March 21. Feel free to comment. –RoyalsLife 03:01, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Can Sabbatino, WikiOriginal-9, Bagumba, and Dissident93 check this out? You guys know more than me so I want to hear what you guys have to say. –RoyalsLife 18:50, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I closed the TfDs, which were all unanimous to delete.—Bagumba (talk) 10:50, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Philadelphia Eagles/Green Bay Packers/Buffalo Bills in the Hall of Fame templates TFD
I nominated Template:Philadelphia Eagles Pro Football Hall of Famers, Template:Green Bay Packers Hall of Famers, and Template:Buffalo Bills Hall of Famers for deletion. They aren't necessary and cause clutter because there is the regular Hall of Fame template and people can navigate from that. I don't see a reason for keeping them especially when there's only these three. If we keep them, we need to make one for the other 27 (being that the Jaguars and Texans don't have any yet). See Templates for discussion/Log/2018 March 28 and after. Feel free to comment. –RoyalsLife 22:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I disagree with the deletion for the Packers and Bills templates, since we have relevant articles on the subjects of the template. WP:NAV is pretty clear that nav templates can be used to connect related articles under one umbrella topic. Now whether or not nav templates are actually useful is a separate debate, but I think general consensus on Wikipedia is that they are useful. I am fine with deletion of the Eagles nav template as there is no associated article for Eagles Hall of Famers. « Gonzo fan2007  '' (talk)  @ 15:30, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If such a navbox is fine for the Packers and the Bills merely because they have an associated article, then either those articles need to go (along with the navboxes) or an Eagles article should be created (as well as ones for other teams). I lean towards the latter, especially since the Packers article is a featured list. – PeeJay 21:46, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * PeeJay I say delete them because thats gonna be a lot of templates and guys like Reggie White, Jerry Rice, John Elway, and Brett Favre already have too many. We already got rid of the All-Pro templates. –RoyalsLife 00:55, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, the guys in the template could've only played one snap (we know that never happened in this case) and they would make the template. It's not really relevant. I also just nominated Template:Falcons Pro Football Hall of Famers because I just found that one too. –RoyalsLife 17:57, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, because most wouldn't think of Eric Dickerson as being with Atlanta.—Bagumba (talk) 10:16, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Aren't players inducted into the Hall as members of a particular team/teams? If the team is listed in their profile on the PFHOF website, I don't see any issue with them being listed together with other players from that team. Besides, this is an easy way to navigate between them. That said, as long as the lists aren't deleted, I guess I'm not fussed. – PeeJay 14:55, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I think only baseball associates a HOF inductee with one team.—Bagumba (talk) 15:01, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Check out this link. Perhaps we could keep the templates but list only the players listed in bold in that link? – PeeJay 15:09, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

There a few more unaccounted for at Category:Pro Football Hall of Fame navigational boxes. Another option is to nominate the rest as a group once a clear consensus is established with this initial wave.—Bagumba (talk) 15:08, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Bagumba the yearly class templates should be kept. But any team associated ones should be deleted in my opinion. Maybe we can put in the infobox? –RoyalsLife 19:40, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I nominated the Ravens, Dolphins, Saints, and Jets templates for deletion. See Templates for discussion/Log/2018 April 2 and below. Feel free to comment. –RoyalsLife 21:39, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Ken Norton Jr.
There is some controversy on Ken Norton Jr.'s page. Right now his one week stint as the 49ers assistant head coach is in his infobox. Some people are removing it and then others are saying that it should be there. I'm not really sure it should be there since it was only for one week AND he never contributed to the team because OTAs and training camp hadn't even started. –RoyalsLife 18:29, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to delete Portal:NFL
A proposal has been made to delete Portal:NFL (and all other portals) at Village pump (proposals). What are folks views on the NFL portal? It doesn't appear to have been maintained or updated since it was created by User:Jj98 in 2012 (Jj98 retired from Wikipedia in 2017). Do folks think it is useful? Did people even know it existed? (I didn't.) Even if the broader RfC fails, should Portal:NFL be deleted? Alternatively, would anyone want to volunteer to update and maintain it? Cbl62 (talk) 16:07, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

RfC Notification
There is an RfC at the Kate Mara article talk page members of this project might interested in taking part in here. <span style="text-shadow: 4px 4px 15px #0099FF, -4px -4px 15px #99FF00;">-- ψλ  ● <span style="text-shadow: 4px 4px 15px #FF9900, -4px -4px 15px #FF0099;">✉ ✓ 02:37, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Glyph of puzzlement. She's related to Art Rooney, is there some other connection that would make NFL project care about her picture? <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 03:02, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I removed the WP:NFL banner as she doesnt appear to be an owner nor a superfan. But I wonder if 's bot will restore it again.  Perhaps he can tweak it for an exception to not autotag Category:Rooney family pages.—Bagumba (talk) 03:49, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Oops, shoulda pinged instead.—Bagumba (talk) 14:07, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * She's not only Art Rooney's great-granddaughter, but Tim Mara's great-granddaughter as well. I'm pretty sure I've removed the NFL banner on her and her sister Rooney Mara's talk page at least once before. They're just mega-heirs with no actual connections to the teams. Lizard  (talk) 22:16, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Minor infobox request
So recently we decided to omit the visibility of any entry in the number parameter if the team one is set to free agent. I'll add that we should also do the same to the status parameter, because it shouldn't be shown if a player isn't under contract with any team. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 01:19, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes. Do this. Lizard  (talk) 07:28, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Bump. This would only take a minute or two to implement. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 21:14, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Team/year draft picks
User:ZappaOMati has been creating navboxes for the Bears' historical draft picks by year. See 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941 Bears Draft Picks. These are in addition to such navboxes as Bears first round draft picks and 1941 first round draft picks (navboxes which I have no quarrel with). Is there a consensus that year-by-year, team-by-team draft templates are desirable? I may be in the minority on this, but being one of the Bears' 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940 draft picks is not even remotely close to being a defining characteristic, and such navboxes serve no useful navigational purpose and are a source of growing navbox clutter. Tom Harmon, Bulldog Turner, and Joe Stydahar really don't need 12th/13th navboxes identifying them as a Bears 1941/1938/1939 draft picks. What do others think? Cbl62 (talk) 20:01, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I've noticed and have been bothered by this for a while, since it means every first-round pick will have 3 navboxes dedicated to their draft status. Lizard  (talk) 22:33, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Exactly ... seems excessive. Cbl62 (talk) 22:39, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Of the three, I'd rather keep these and get rid of stuff like Template:GiantsFirstPick, or even Template:2015 NFL Draft. When you think about it, there's really nothing all that special about being a first round draft pick. I'm not sure why we ever started making navboxes based upon that distinction in the first place. Ejgreen77 (talk) 22:49, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm strongly in favor of keeping the team's yearly draft class navboxes. I can't speak for everyone, but I've found those navboxes to be very useful. You can easily navigate/link to a teams' entire draft class in a selected year through those navboxes. I strongly disagree that a team's draft class in a partiicular year is "not even remotely close to being a defining characteristic." That is just plain false. A team's yearly draft class is certainly a defining characteristic. I mean even a draft's "QB class" is often used as a defining characteristic like the famous 1983 QB draft class with Elway, Marino, and Kelly. Edday1051 (talk) 02:09, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You have a lower bar than I for what constitutes a "defining characteristic". For me, it's things like winning a Heisman, playing on a Super Bowl championship team, leading the NFL in rushing, induction to the PFHOF, etc. Being part of a group selected by the Chicago Bears in the 1940 NFL Draft (half of whom never played a down in the NFL) is not remotely close. Based on your low bar, we should also have navboxes on the "Quarterbacks selected in the 2018 NFL Draft"?  How about "Alabama Crimson Tide players selected in the 2018 NFL draft"? How about "Notre Dame Fighting Irish players selected in the first round of the NFL Draft"?  Soon we'll have players with 5, 6, or 7 navboxes covering minute details relating to their having been selected in the NFL draft.  Cbl62 (talk) 16:55, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * you're way off man. Just google nfl draft class. You get hit after hit of analysis of a team's draft class in any particular year. This is pretty common knowledge. An NFL team's draft class is analyzed in the same way a college recruiting class is. You can point to a year's draft class to heap praise or criticism on a team's front office. I'm pro-information, you want to go ahead and create "Quarterbacks selected int eh 2018 NFL Draft," go right ahead. You won't hear complaints from me. Though, it's comical to compare that to a navbox of a team's yearly draft class. I mean that seems to be just a standard sensible navbox to have. You went from that to QBs and each university....come on man, don't be silly. You have draft classes now for the current years, why wouldn't you include those for year's past? How did you even figure out some of those players didn't play in the NFL? Oh right, through researching the names through the navbox...I guess they are pretty useful after all. Edday1051 (talk) 19:07, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The fact that many of these navboxes contain more red links than blue ones is a pretty convincing argument against them. Navboxes are for navigation between pages. Red links have no business being in a navbox unless a page can be made for them, which isn't the case here, as most of these red links wouldn't pass WP:GNG. Lizard  (talk) 22:07, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * red links are just opportunities for people to create those pages. If they were good enough to be drafted, they must of have been solid college football players. If we are to have navboxes for recent draft classes, we sure as hell should have them for past years. I hadn't even looked at the navboxes....I just checked them out and you guys act like the entire navbox is just red links. Most of them have a good number of active pages/links. I'm even more in support now to keep those navboxes. Edday1051 (talk) 00:42, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Being drafted does not on its own guarantee notability. In fact there have been several articles on players who were drafted that have since been deleted in AfDs. The relevant guideline is WP:NGRIDIRON. Lizard  (talk) 01:04, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't agree with that at all. Even if you are a 7th round draft pick, that to me should be well within the notability guidelines. You get picked anywhere in the draft, that is pretty effing notable. Regardless, I don't think individual draftees is the central point here. The central point here is the team's draft class as a whole and that to me is pretty clearly notable on several levels. Edday1051 (talk) 01:29, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Injured/redshirt years in stat tables
I notice on some pages (Robert Mathis, Sam Bradford, etc.), we include their injured season in the stat table and put DNP — Injured. Do we really need to include it? Also, Tanner Lee's college stat table is kinda weird. He redshirted his freshman year, played two year then had to sit out due to transfer rules. Is that relevant? It just takes up space and doesn't really do anything. Dissident93, Lizard, Bagumba, Sabbatino, and WikiOriginal-9 what do you guys think? —RoyalsLife 01:26, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * as the editor in question that edited the Tanner Lee page, I'm obviously in support of including redshirt/years in which no statistics were recorded as it paints a much clearer picture of the player's entire college football career. Using the Tanner Lee example, just by looking at statistics box, you can figure out that he redshirted his first year at Tulane in 2013 and in his first year at Nebraska, he sat out and recorded no statistics. I don't see why you would be against this, unless you favor a more muddied statistics box. Otherwise, you look at Lee's statistics and you are automatically inclined to believe that 2014 was Lee's true freshman year at Tulane and then he transferred to Nebraska and played immediately. Edday1051 (talk) 01:36, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Eh, no opinion either way. PFR usually includes the injured year and just leaves the row blank. Other times they'll specify the injury in the table, like they do for Peyton Manning. Lizard  (talk) 01:40, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think we should keep it because it looks strange if the table just skips a year, but I wouldn't oppose consensus to remove it either. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 02:19, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Dwayne White
This is an unreferenced BLP and should be fixed or deleted. Perhaps someone here can find some sources. Johnuniq (talk) 01:55, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Added some refs and other info. Lizard  (talk) 02:31, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

player's college in infobox
is there a guideline on which colleges are listed in the nfl infobox? It appears the standard is you only list the most recent college the player attended/played for. Russell Wilson is one of the few that has both colleges he attended listed. I'm generally in favor of just listing the most recent college as that college would be the one listed in any draft analysis, but I'm not opposed to including other colleges in the case of grad transfers. Wilson did graduate from NC State and played there for 4 years prior to transferring to Wisconsin. To clarify, I would only be in favor of listing additional colleges in the case of grad transfers. Edday1051 (talk) 19:29, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * See prior discussion of this topic at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League/Archive 15. Cbl62 (talk) 21:19, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks for the link. I'll go through it line by line, but as far as I can tell from skimming through it, it doesn't look like there was any type of consensus. Edday1051 (talk) 00:44, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I favor Jweiss' suggestion of listing all teams a player lettered for. Lizard  (talk) 01:17, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * lizard, can we agree on anything? lol, I hope I'm not coming off like I'm trolling you and disagreeing with everything you say. The only two options I'd be in favor for is list only most recent college or list two colleges and only in the case of graduate transfers. Edday1051 (talk) 02:03, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * A little dissension never hurt anyone. Ok that's not wholly true. But I know you're not trolling. In fact it's refreshing having someone to debate with here for a change. Lizard  (talk) 02:10, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm more in favor of only including the school he graduated from/attended last, which I guess is the status quo currently. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 02:28, 2 May 2018 (UTC)


 * My position remains as it was in the prior discussion. If a player has significant playing time as a starter with two Division I programs, both schools should be listed in the NFL infobox. Accordingly, players like Crazylegs Hirsch (jersey retired at Wisconsin, later starred at Michigan), Bill Daley (two national championships at Minnesota, All-American at Michigan), and Jake Rudock (starting QB at both Iowa and Michigan) should have both schools displayed. Cbl62 (talk) 02:29, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd also be ok with the "listing all teams a player lettered for" as advocated by Lizard and Jweiss. Cbl62 (talk) 02:48, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * But even the non-notable ones? If a player didn't play any games at a school for a year, transferred, and had all of his notability come from the second school, you'd still argue in favor of adding the first school? That's where I disagree. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 04:54, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * My preference would be to limit it to schools where the player had significant playing time. My second choice would be the Jweiss option, which may not be so different, since a player who didn't play in any games presumably would not be awarded a varsity letter. Letters are generally only awarded to players who had significant playing time. Cbl62 (talk) 05:32, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Follow up on high school display
Hey everybody. I know it was discussed earlier this year to make the high school parameter in NFL pages more like NBA names, however multiple editors are still using the old way and are even oblivious to it changing to the couple I've brought up to. I'm not setting out to edit these pages but just in my normal editing I'm trying to convert it to the new consensus when I see one with the old way. I was just hoping everybody can do the same thing that will be extremely helpful!!-- Rockchalk 717 05:44, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * were still in discussion about whether we should add any formatting exceptions to the "nba style." The discussion is taking place under the title "Next steps for HS." I don't know how much longer that discussion will be open, but until we formally decide a consensus on that, hold off on making any changes right now. Edday1051 (talk) 22:00, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

PSA: There is a difference between between signed UDFAs and rookie tryouts
Undrafted free agents(UDFA) who have been officially signed to a contract should have their pages reflect that in having that team added to their team history in the infobox. Along with other corresponding changes to reflect they are no longer a free agent and are officially signed to an NFL team. On the other hand, there are UDFA who have not been signed to a contract, but have been invited to a rookie camp on a tryout basis. These players are not under contract and are technically still free agents and their player pages should remain as if they are free agents and the NFL team's rookie camp they are attending should not be added to the player's career history section. I corrected this on John O'Korn's page last week and it looks like the same mistake was made with Malik Zaire. In fairness, according to this source:, Zaire was signed by the Jaguars, but it looks like it was solely based on a tweet by Matt Freeman, but I could not find any official source confirming this nor was Zaire added to the official Jaguars roster on jaguars.com. I found another source here:, saying Zaire is a tryout participant at the rookie camp. So even some sources will get this wrong, so I suggest double checking the official roster and other sources, preferably one directly from the team.Edday1051 (talk) 20:03, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * We really should not even have to explain this, as being signed and hoping to be signed by way of a try-out should be obvious they aren't officially on the team, as they would count way over the 90-man roster limit. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 20:40, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think this PSA is better served for our IP's and inexperienced editors lol. Most people who are a part of this project already know this. Though, I will say, occasionally it's the sources that get it wrong. I've seen people reported as being an UDFA on well known and reliable websites when they were in fact a tryout.-- Rockchalk 717 02:06, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm aware, but also think people should have enough common sense to realize this without being told. Then again, if it's the sources that are misleading people, then yeah, I can see why this would be an issue. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 03:37, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * yeah we shouldn't have to, but we do have to realize were deep into this stuff. Not everyone, even those that follow the NFL closely, are aware of how UDFA/rookie camps work. It's not unreasonable for an editor to see these players running around at an NFL rookie minicamp in full uniform, jersey with name and number and everything, and think that player is an official member of the team. And as you guys already mentioned, even reputable sources referring to these tryout players as "signed" is the more problematic issue here. Edday1051 (talk) 23:48, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we just gotta stay on top of our game and try to catch these edits and research them ourselves first. NFL.com's undrafted free agent tracker is usually pretty accurate. That's what I try to use.-- Rockchalk 717 05:03, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

NFL draft standardization
In the NFL draft lists I noticed that there are several differences between the early and late formats to the lists on wikipedia. Also, wouldn't it be easier to convert the links to the colleges to the Template:Cfb link format. If it already has, or in the future will have a link to the season page it will automatically link it to it, and a bot will clean up the link. Most football programs without a program page will at least have a redirect to the athletic program or institution. This seems like a much easier option than the redundant links on pages such as the 1936 draft page.--UCO2009bluejay (talk) 19:22, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Nick Toon's place of birth
His article says Middleton, Wisconsin, which this RS says. However we have another WP RS that says Madison, Wisconsin. To top things off, we have the New York Daily News saying he was born in Mineola, New York while his father Al Toon was playing for the New York Jets. The third makes some sense, and I've seen other instances of reliable sources confusing the town a person went to HS at with the place they were born. I'd like to hear some other opinions....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 17:20, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There are no hospitals in Middleton, never have been. 99% probability he was born in a hospital in Madison or in Mineola; 1% he was born at home in Middleton. 32.218.32.155 (talk) 17:29, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * More sources:
 * "Toon, 25, who still lives in Madison..."
 * "Madison is where he and his wife live and spend most of their time." "So why does Al Toon choose to live in Madison?"
 * "Al Toon of the New York Jets, who played at Wisconsin and lives in Madison"
 * 32.218.32.155 (talk) 17:55, 29 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Middleton is incorrect IMHO. But is it Mineola or Madison? The NYDN says 'Nick was born in Mineola, L.I., not far from the Jets' old training complex at Hofstra.' I'd believe NYDN article as it is based on a interview on interviews of the Toons. (Note- Nick Toon would have no personal memory of where he was born. That reminds me of a regular witticism of my Philippine born wife- "I don't remember. I was still small then.") What do you think?


 * One other thing. Is either from Middleton. Notable people criteria say a person has to be born or lived there. Not gone to school or worked. The NYDN points out that AL Toon lives in Madison but has a business in Middleton. Could Nick lived in Madison too but attended school in Middleton? I went to Centereach High School and Deerfield Beach High School but respectively at time was living in Lake Grove, New York (our mailing address was Centereach but our home was within the boundaries of Lake Grove) and Lighthouse Point, Florida. That's just my personal experience and other experience with people living in one town but going to high school in another....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 18:28, 29 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Your original question was about the birthplace of Nick Toon, not about whether he could be included in some "Notables" list. If you read the three sources I provided, you'll see that his parents lived in Madison throughout 1988, the year Nick Toon was born. Ergo, it is most likely that Nick Toon was born there, not in Mineola. The answer to your question as to whether Nick Toon could have lived in Madison and gone to school in Middleton is a resounding "no". The Madison Metropolitan School District serves Madison and has four high schools, none of which are in Middleton. Middleton High School, the school Nick Toon attended, is in the city of Middleton, Wisconsin and is administered by the Middleton-Cross Plains School District. There is no cross-district attendance in the area - public school students in the Middleton-Cross Plains School District attend Middleton High School and public school students in the Madison Metropolitan School District attend one of the schools in Madison. Let's not try to make this more complicated than it is. 32.218.32.155 (talk) 20:01, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject
The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

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Background
On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

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Thank you. &mdash; The Transhumanist  07:49, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Marcel Reece
On the page Marcel Reece, UW Dawgs keeps adding an additional year to his infobox. He played for the Seahawks during the 2016 season. He then re-signed for the 2017 season but was cut before the regular season started. UW Dawgs is adding Reece already has ↓ from playing with them the year before. We usually don't include the season they aren't on the active roster. Example: Robbie Gould —RoyalsLife 00:58, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Seattle Seahawks (2017)*
 * Seattle Seahawks (2016)
 * This is a perfect example of why we should do away with this convention of listing off-season teams. It doesn't account for cases like this. If it's the exact same scenerio but Reece signs with, say, the Bengals in 2017, we'd include "Cincinnati Bengals (2017)*" in his infobox. Why should this be excluded simply because it's with the same team? Lizard  (talk) 01:14, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I've advocated for something like this before, but it didn't get much attention/support. I advocated for including the year in which the player gets cut because they technically were part of the team for that NFL year, even though it was before the start of the regular season. The new league year starts sometime in February IIRC, so technically, if you are on the roster anytime after that, you technically were part of the team for that year. In this case, Reece was on the 2017 active roster, just not during the regular season. Players on the roster during the offseason and preseason are on the active roster and should be noted as such. We do this with the notation, but only for those that either never were on the active roster or only spent that one offseason/preseason with the team. But we do not do this for those players like Marcel Reese who were active during the regular season for the Seahawks previously, but then were released the next offseason or anytime before the start of the regular season. I advocated for just simply including the year so in the case of Reese, we would just have it as "2016-2017," but this looks misleading, as it looks like Reese may have played for the seahawks during the 2017 regular season, when he did not. The way UW Dawgs is the much better way of doing this. I'm in support of this. Edday1051 (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * lizard, are you suggesting we don't list NFL teams in the infobox if the player wasn't on the regular season active roster? I don't agree with that if that is what you are saying. I think we should include those teams because the player was officially signed to that team, whether they end up on the regular season active roster or not. Have you checked out the way UW Dawgs listed it on Marcel Reese's page. I think that is the best way to do it. Edday1051 (talk) 01:24, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Edday1051 I see what you are saying. The only thing is that if they are released before the regular season, they only get what is guarenteed, meaning they don't get the seasons pay. Also, the roster isn't seperated (the injured reserve is always around) into active roster and practice squad until days before game 1. I don't know what to do though. Doing it how it is with Marcel Reece, it causes clutter in the infobox that we're trying to clean up. Dissident93, Bagumba, Sabbatino, and WikiOriginal-9 will know better than me. —RoyalsLife 01:44, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * the regular season pay checks shouldn't have much bearing on this discussion. The only thing matters here is that they were officially signed to a contract with the team during that particular season, whether it be during the offseason, preseason, or regular season. I understand it can get pretty cluttered in the infobox, but I'm the wrong person for that. Look up at the high school infobox discussion above...I'm clearly in the "sacrifice clutter for the sake of clarity" camp. Edday1051 (talk) 01:53, 2 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Here's my full edit history on the article where 'keeps adding' appears to be 'reverted once.' Regardless in this specific circumstance the Marcel Reece section states:

"On July 28, 2017, Reece was re-signed by the Seahawks.[9] He was released on September 2, 2017.[10]''"


 * RoyalsLife removed the content from the Infobox without an edit summary.. I restored in the next edit using an edit summary of "rvt; valid and appropriate per existing cites".
 * If a player is cited as being on the roster for the entire preseason (2017 Seattle Seahawks season), an Infobox description of "* Offseason and/or practice squad member only" will read entirely accurate to any reader. There were veteran/salary cap reasons for his specific signing date, though not relevant to the Infobox discussion.
 * I'm going to distance myself from any broader debate of whether the 'offseason' distinction belongs in project-Infoboxes at all and those wishing to do so likely should create a new section for discussion with more compelling examples which certainly exist. RoyalsLife, 90.3% of your ~5k edits lack an WP:EDITSUMMARY, food for thought I hope. UW Dawgs (talk) 01:51, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I do think if there's a gap in the tenure, as seems to be the case with Reese, UW Dawgs' listing is the way to go. But I don't think this should be done for players who remained with the team the whole time. Gale Sayers played in the 1972 preseason for the Bears before retiring. Should his infobox include a separate line that says "Chicago Bears (1972)*"? That seems rather silly. Lizard  (talk) 02:02, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I didn't even think of that. That does complicate things a bit. I'm all for consistency, so I would suggest we do in fact do that if it were the case we implemented this new way to list team in the infobox, but yes, that would be pretty silly to do so for those cases like Sayers. Edday1051 (talk) 02:06, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * another thing is the notation should include "preseason" as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the offseason does not include preseason, right? Edday1051 (talk) 02:13, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The "offseason" ends around the start of training camp, so no. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 02:25, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * yeah that is what I thought. The notation should be updated to "Offseason, preseason, and/or practice squad member only" Edday1051 (talk) 18:19, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I support the removal of mentioning any tenure with a team in the offseason/preseason in the infobox entirely. I remember we had a debate around Ray Rice's playing time for the Ravens extending to 2014 because he was on their roster in the preseason, but did not play in any regular season games that year. Due to that, we decided to just list 2013 as his final year (as that was the final year he had recorded stats/meaningful playing time), so I think the same logic should apply here. Any information regarding time with a team in the offseason can instead belong in prose. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 02:25, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Dissident93 Yeah because both baseball and basketball infoboxes don't include offseason/preseason tenures. In fact Adrian Gonzalez and Derrick Rose are great examples. Gonzalez was traded to the Atlanta Braves in the offseason (Adrián González) but was released before the season started. His tenure with the team is not included in the infobox. With Derrick Rose, he was traded to the Utah Jazz midseason but was waived three days later while never playing for the team (Derrick Rose). His tenure with the Jazz is not included. I think that offseason/preseason tenures shouldn't be included. Practice squad tenures on the other hand, I'm not sure. —RoyalsLife 17:50, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't agree with listing only teams that the player was on the active roster during the regular season. If a player is officially signed to a contract, they should have that team listed in their career history in the infobox. I think it's misleading not to. If a player spends an entire offseason and the preseason on a team, and then gets cut in the final round of cuts before the start of the regular season, it would be wrong not to include the players time with that team in their career history section of the infobox. A reader shouldn't have to dig through the main article to find that information. Edday1051 (talk) 18:23, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with Dissident93. Cbl62 (talk) 15:22, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

These types of tenures are less significant for most players, and should be removed. Per WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE, the point of an infobox is to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored). The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance.—Bagumba (talk) 15:14, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I strongly disagree with this. The career history section of the infobox is probably the most useful and informative part of the infobox. Looking up which teams a player has been a member of is probably one of the top reasons a reader visits an NFL player page. A list like this absolutely should be comprehensive in the infobox. It should include every team a player has officially signed with, whether they ended up on the regular season roster or not. Not including those teams in the infobox is just misleading to readers, many of whom won't bother to dig through the main article, nor should us editors force them to if they want to quickly discover every team the player signed with, which is the entire point of the infobox. Retrieve quick biographical information about a player without digging through the main article. I reiterate the misleading argument here: only listing teams which they were regular season members in the infobox makes it appear that those teams are the only teams that player played for. Additionally, listing the "offseason, preseason, practice squad" teams gives the reader useful information. Example: a reader sees "San Diego Chargers (2003)*"....they see the notation and they go I had no idea this player was on the Chargers in 2003. Now they can scroll to the main article for additional information where they can discover the player was signed by the Chargers during 2003 free agency and cut during the 2003 preseason by the Chargers. Many readers will simply take a quick glance at the infobox without digging through the main article. These readers will certainly be mislead if we don't include all the teams the player has signed with. Edday1051 (talk) 23:00, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * "which is the entire point of the infobox. Retrieve quick biographical information about a player without digging through the main article." You know what? I agree with this. Whether we like it or not, you know this is how it works in the real world for most of our readers out there. Ejgreen77 (talk) 00:12, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

It's either the case that this is WP:FANCRUFT for the infobox, or all the other sports projects are blind and have this wrong. This is also the same project where it is customary to have week-by-week stat lines in prose for bios like Tom Brady.—Bagumba (talk) 15:51, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't even see this as a controversial topic. If you were officially signed to a contract by an NFL team for any length of time, that absolutely should be noted in the infobox. Again, it is misleading not to. As for the other sports leagues, MLB is interesting in this respect in that don't they have minor league contracts? So I understand if a player only was under a minor league contract and was never called up to the majors, then I get not including the MLB team in their career history, but otherwise, if they are under a major league contract, that team should absolutely be included in the infobox. And I think NHL is similar with AHL teams and entry level/draftees who remain with their club teams even after getting drafted. The NFL on the other hand is different in that they don't have a minor league. If you get signed to an NFL franchise, you are officially a professional football player and member of the official roster of that NFL franchise. I think it's absurd to refer to that as "fancruft." Edday1051 (talk) 19:46, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * We don't need to list every single thing ever in the infobox. You seem to think that if something is not listed in the infobox, it's basically being censored/deleted from the article entirely, even though a lot of the time its either misleading (like with my Ray Rice example) or just unnecessary bloat (as with high school city/state location). ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 20:55, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * dissedent: yeah sure, we don't have to make wikipedia more informative for the reader. We can choose to make the infobox, which is often the first place the eyes of a reader will go to, be less informative and less convenient for a reader to find information. I really am baffled by this insistence to make NFL infoboxes less informative and intuitive for the reader to acquire useful information. As for the Ray Rice example, for one, that is such a rare circumstance and I personally think we should have a notation for that. Leaving 2013 as his last year is just misleading to the reader. He was released on September 8, which was a day after the start of the 2014 regular season. IMO, that should unequivocally be included in his infobox career history. It is otherwise misleading to the reader. Regardless, that is a rare circumstance and a far cry from the typical circumstance of a player being cut in the final cutdown during preseason and not appearing on a regular season active roster. And were past the high school discussion. How long are you going to continue to protest that? Edday1051 (talk) 23:23, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Surely no one is actually trying to discuss/change consensus of Infobox treatment of 15k articles via a section titled "Marcel Reece." In the off-season. That would be absurd.  UW Dawgs (talk)
 * for better or worse, this is the reason most of these discussions of major changes rarely ever result in any changes. It would be a difficult task to go back and delete every offseason/practice squad team from every NFL player page that has ever existed. That said, if we are to make changes to one player page, it should be made for all of them. Edday1051 (talk) 08:30, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * re revert. UW Dawgs (talk) 20:52, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Draft Histories Lists
What is everyone's opinion on articles like this: Green Bay Packers draft history? At first glance, it is WP:LISTCRUFT to me. We have consistently noted that first round draft picks are notable as a group, as they are routinely discussed in sources together (such as List of Green Bay Packers first-round draft picks), but very few sources discuss every draft pick a team has ever made in the same source (except sources that just list team data). I am inclined to WP:AFD it, but wanted to hear some opinions first. Thanks, « Gonzo fan2007  '' (talk)  @ 15:27, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The picks from individual years is presumably already in it's respective page at Category:Green Bay Packers seasons. Don't think it's special enough to duplicate in a master list.—Bagumba (talk) 16:36, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * For some perspective, this type of list article is frequently used by other sports projects (List of Boston Bruins draft picks, etc.) and is commonly accepted there. Ejgreen77 (talk) 12:36, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
 * FWIW, and while flowing in the opposite direction, comprehensive, all-time lists of NFL players drafted "from" particular universities have also become common. See List of Alabama Crimson Tide players in the NFL draft, Category:Lists of National Football League draftees by college football team. Cbl62 (talk) 13:35, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Was going to point out this same thing. And also, a team's draft history can very well be notable; the Jets are notorious for their numerous draft blunders, while the Jaguars have consistently hit home runs (although they're only just recently capitalizing on them). Lizard  (talk) 14:41, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I guess the question I was asking is whether a team's entire draft history is notable just because it exists as a fact that the team has drafted people. In my mind it's a slippery slope, could we have List of players traded by the Green Bay Packers, List of players who have scored for the Green bay Packers, etc.? Sure these lists could be factual and properly sourced, but the topic of the article, imho, lacks notability as a group. It's not like there are any sources out there that list every player drafted by the Packers, except the data heavy sources (Pro Football Reference, NFL.com, etc) that merely list the fact they were drafted, and don't discuss the group as a whole. « Gonzo fan2007  '' (talk)  @ 16:15, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I think your points are valid, but it would also seem "wrong" to just delete these lists too, so I'm not sure what the best way to handle this is. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 18:34, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's why I posted here instead of AFD, . My initial thought was that this information is already covered in the yearly NFL draft articles (i.e. 2018 NFL Draft) and/or the team's season article (i.e. 2018 Green Bay Packers season). Based on sourcing and notability, draft selections seem more appropriate in these articles than in full draft history lists. Just my opinion though. « Gonzo fan2007  '' (talk)  @ 20:01, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah that's true, the information would just be contained in the relevant season article. In that case, I'd support deleting all these team draft list articles. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 01:26, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps try redirecting pages like Green Bay Packers draft history to Green Bay Packers first-round draft picks. If there is any subsequent objection, we can proceed to AfD. It does seem like a valid search term.—Bagumba (talk) 09:45, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

HS labeling conventions when city name in HS name
and I cannot agree on the following issue, so I'm asking for additional opinions. The labeling scheme of high schools in our NFL player infobox so far has been <tt>city (state) school name</tt>, for instance Very often, however, the city name is part of the school's "common name". So far, we handled these cases like this: If the high school name is basically the city name only, we just wrote The issue between and me is now about Paramus Catholic High School in Paramus, New Jersey. Should the label in Jabrill Peppers' and Rashan Gary's infobox be or This is a matter of preferred style as much as it is about consistency, so please leave you comments. --bender235 (talk) 20:32, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Odessa (TX) Permian
 * Las Vegas (NV) Bishop Gorman
 * Washington (DC) Ballou
 * Long Beach (CA) Poly
 * Miami (FL) Northwestern
 * Midland (TX) Lee
 * Auburn (AL)
 * Pahokee (FL)
 * Springdale (AR)
 * Paramus (NJ) Catholic
 * Paramus Catholic (NJ)
 * Under the standard naming scheme it was "Paramus (NJ) Catholic." This is wrong as it makes it appear that the school name is "Catholic High School." The official name of the school is "Paramus Catholic high school" and should be noted as such. Under the standard naming scheme, the correct version should be "Paramus (NJ) Paramus Catholic." I'm fine with this version as well, but I changed it to "Paramus Catholic (NJ)" as I felt having Paramus twice was superfluous. I had this same discussion with another user and we came to the agreement that my version was correct. Bender keeps bringing up other examples like "Northwestern" and "Poly" as an argument against, but there are obvious differences here. "Northwestern" and "Poly" are the colloquial versions used for Miami Northwestern and Long Beach Poly, so I think it is okay to use those names for the school name. Oppositely, nobody would refer to Paramus Catholic as "Catholic." If you are in Los Angeles and you say you go to Poly, people will know exactly what you are talking about. If you are in Bergen County and you say you go to "Catholic," people will look at you with a puzzled look. Bergen Catholic? Paramus Catholic? There are two versions that are correct here and that is either "Paramus (NJ) Paramus Catholic" or my shortened version "Paramus Catholic (NJ)" Edday1051 (talk) 20:49, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * As a reality check, outside of Miami or Long Beach, people will not associate just "Northwestern" or just "Poly" with either school. On the flip side, a person in Paramus, NJ, will cause no ambiguity by saying "I attend the Catholic High School." In other words: I doubt the validity of this line of reasoning. --bender235 (talk) 23:24, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * as a reality check, you again are avoiding the actual argument. You keep deflecting and talking about "Poly" and "Northwestern" when that is not the argument. The argument isn't whether we should only put "Northwestern" or "Poly" alone in the infobox. Nobody here is arguing that. On the other hand, the argument is whether the school name should only be "Catholic" for "Paramus Catholic." That should be an unequivocal no. Considering Poly and Northwestern are two well known high school football powerhouses, I guarantee you a lot more people know about Poly and Northwestern than a "Catholic high school" in Paramus, New Jersey lol. Yeah you really are a German who knows nothing about America. You really think people will just automatically associate "Paramus" and "Catholic?" with "(NJ)" sandwiched in between? That is idiotic. Why make it ambiguous when you can just clearly state "Paramus Catholic" and leave no doubt. Again, this whole argument comes down to you thinking that "Northwestern" or "Poly" is equivalent to "Catholic." I understand English is not your first language and your knowledge of America and geography is awful, but this is pretty simple to understand. Edday1051 (talk) 02:57, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * and for the record, even though this is just part of the deflection of the actual argument by Bender, I would be for the change of the Northwestern and Poly names to "Miami Northwestern (FL)" and "Long Beach Poly (CA)." I think we should treat any high school name with a city or town as part of the name as the same as the high school names that are the same for the school and city like one of the examples bender wrote above. Again, I don't mind the three name template for something like "Northwestern" because as I've said a million times already, "Northwestern" and "Poly" are the common colloquial names for the school, unlike "Catholic," which is not at all a name that anyone would say to refer to Paramus Catholic. This is the point that underlies this whole argument, which our German friend just does not seem to understand at all. Edday1051 (talk) 03:06, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm living in the US. But thanks for the nationalist ad hominem. I'm not going to debate with you anymore, you have disqualified yourself from this discussion per WP:NPA. --bender235 (talk) 00:27, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * is this what you do when you lose the argument? You take your ball and go home? I only guessed you were a non-native English speaker because this whole argument boils down to you believing that "Poly" and "Northwestern" is considered to the be the same as "Catholic." This is a mistake only a non-native English speaker would make. Then I go to your page and it turns out you are a native German speaker. No surprise there. What in the world does me bringing that up have anything to do with nationalism? I'm sure as a non-German speaker, I would make a similar mistake if we were talking about something similar with the way German schools are named. Only difference is I would realize I made a mistake once someone corrected me. And even though I gave you a clear explanation over and over again, you remained stubborn and unwilling to even consider the possibility that you were wrong here. Edday1051 (talk) 13:45, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. --bender235 (talk) 02:14, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I accept your apology and appreciate you finally admitting you were wrong. It happens to the best of us. Edday1051 (talk) 04:10, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Actually this was a response to your null argument of "I see you're German, so you must have no clue. I'm American, so respect my authority on the matter." But nevermind. --bender235 (talk) 14:50, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * dude, when someone offers you a way out of a bad situation, just take it. You admitted to something that makes you look even worse in this whole thing and I offered you a nice little olive branch and there you go again not understanding small nuances of American English. You sure you are American? You just play one on TV, right? Edday1051 (talk) 20:59, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a competition, 'dude.' We had a debate on which way to implement the current naming scheme, and the (unexpected) reaction from the community was to abolish the current scheme all together. There is no winners and losers. We are in this for a common goal. --bender235 (talk) 16:09, 11 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I've always hated this naming scheme and have no idea why we can't just go with the article name for simplicity. Does the convoluted format come from college scouting reports or something? ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 07:39, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The current naming scheme for HS is an extension of the naming scheme for colleges (like "Miami (OH)" or "California (PA)"). --bender235 (talk) 22:01, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Which are rare-ish exceptions that are used for disambiguating from the primary usage of the name. Not sure why we took the standard form from that. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 04:55, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Personally, I have no problem with "Paramus Catholic (NJ)" see as it's the schools full name. That, or "Paramus (NJ) Paramus Catholic". (talk page stalker) <b style="color:#008caf">Crash</b><b style="color:#6000c6">Under</b><b style="color:#6000c6">ride</b> 16:51, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You'd still pick the second example over just going with the easy to read (and article name) of Paramus Catholic High School or Paramus Catholic? ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 04:57, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree with that the current <tt>  </tt> format used in football inboxes is unnecessarily cryptic. Aside from niche followers of the national high school football scene, this format is non-intuitive. Non-football fans who attended the high school wouldn't be familiar with the format. Take Josh Rosen, soon to be in the NFL. He went to St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower, California, but his infobox lists "Bellflower (CA) St. John Bosco". Now if anyone asks me which HS I went to, I mention the HS name, not the city and state first. UCLA's website lists Rosen's HS as "St. John Bosco". MaxPreps' last football poll lists the school as "St. John Bosco (Bellflower, CA)". <tt> </tt> would be so much more intuitive to the average reader, and avoids issues like above whether to repeat the city name or not. It is also the WP format used in basketball bios. Keep it simple, for readers and editors alike.—Bagumba (talk) 05:19, 25 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I like the idea. But how would this scheme look like for Paramus Catholic High School? <tt>Paramus Catholic (Paramus, NJ)</tt>? Or in general, for high schools that only have their city's name, like Auburn High School? Do we make it <tt>Auburn (Auburn, AL)</tt> or just <tt>Auburn (AL)</tt>. The advantage of the existing scheme was, I guess, that there was little need for exceptions to the rule. --bender235 (talk) 02:10, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Just look at the way it's presented on the pages of NBA players. They have the school name(City, State) whether the name of the school and city are the same or not. With the city and state together inside the parentheses, it actually doesn't look superfluous, it actually just makes everything look clearer. The first name is the high school and then city and state in the parentheses. Very clear to the reader even in cases where the school and city have the same name. For your example, you would just present it: Auburn (Auburn, Alabama). I think in these situations where the school and city have the same name, you could put city and state on the second line, so it doesn't appear superfluous, but here with Iowa Falls on Nick Collison's page it actually doesn't look bad on the same line. With Carmelo Anthony and Jordan Bell, the city and state are on the second line. Both look fine to me. Edday1051 (talk) 04:22, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd personally just settle on Paramus Catholic with no mention of city/state, but this would still be an major improvement over the current method. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 06:16, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree there's no need to repeat a city name. In the case of Paramus Catholic or any school where the city is included in the school name, it should be either Paramus Catholic or "Paramus Catholic (NJ)", but not "Paramus Catholic (Paramus, NJ)". Cbl62 (talk) 07:09, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear: I'm not clinging to the current naming scheme, all I'd like to see is consistency. For this, I'd like to see a rule established that guides even the corner cases. How about this for a first draft:
 * Schools with "unique" names are listed <tt>schoolname (city, state)</tt>, such as
 * Permian High School becomes "Permian (Odessa, TX)"
 * Bishop Gorman High School becomes "Bishop Gorman (Las Vegas, NV)"
 * Schools with city names (at least as part of their name) are listed <tt>schoolname (state)</tt>, i.e. the city name is not repeated, e.g.
 * Auburn High School becomes "Auburn (AL)"
 * Paramus Catholic High School becomes "Paramus Catholic (NJ)"
 * Suggestions for improvement? --bender235 (talk) 14:50, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * That looks quite reasonable and efficient. Cbl62 (talk) 19:54, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not opposed to Bender's new naming format. It's infinitely better than what we have now, but I just look at the NBA player pages and think why are we not just going with that. Just have school name(City and State) no matter what. This way any sticklers for consistency have nothing to complain about and it shows all of the relevant information in a fairly clear way. By only putting "Paramus Catholic," you are just assuming a reader is aware that "Paramus" is a city or town in the state of NJ. The vast majority of readers will not be aware of the formatting exception for names that are the same for the school and city. I think the way the high schools are presented here with Carmelo Anthony and Jordan Bell is just perfect It's all of the relevant information right in your face. There is no guessing what city the school is located in and what is the school name. It's all there without even taking up all that much space. Edday1051 (talk) 21:12, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Infoboxes should not be all encompassing. The school itself matters way more than its physical location on earth. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 03:26, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure adding the city name is "all encompassing." No one here is suggesting we add the name of the school's mascot and the year of the school's founding. On a more serious note, the city here is important because you will have a number of cases where there is a common high school name like Central High School, even within the same state. Those cases would need to be differentiated with the city name. I don't see a reason to create formatting exceptions for these special cases and again, this appeases the sticklers for formatting consistency. Additionally, I can't speak for everyone, but isn't location a big part of the reason why someone would even look up what high school a player went to. I know that is the case for me personally. Outside of the handful of well known high school powerhouse teams like Bishop Gorman or Mater Dei, I don't so much care that player X went to some random high school named "Mount Bum." I want to know where the hell "Mount Bum" is located. Again, referencing Carmelo Anthony, I can just look at the infobox and right away know that the two high schools he attended are located in Towson, MD and Mouth of Wilson, VA. I don't have to click on the high schools and go to their pages to find this information or scroll through the body of Carmelo Anthony's page. It's all conveniently right there in the infobox and it's not like it takes up a ton of space. It's one extra line and in the case of Nick Collison, it's all on the same line. Edday1051 (talk) 07:38, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree with Dissident93, disagree with Edday. Jordan Bell is a perfect example of what NOT to do; in that case, the infobox discussion of the high school is just as long as the discussion in the body of the article. The extra detail should be saved for the body. Cbl62 (talk) 08:13, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * that is exactly my argument for the inclusion of city and state in the infobox. The fact that I don't have to scroll to the body for the information is argument for, not against. Isn't that the whole point of the infobox? Were adding literally one additional word. I'll repeat this part from above comment: "On a more serious note, the city here is important because you will have a number of cases where there is a common high school name like Central High School, even within the same state. Those cases would need to be differentiated with the city name. I don't see a reason to create formatting exceptions for these special cases and again, this appeases the sticklers for formatting consistency." For this reason, you have to include the city the high school is located in the infobox. We could make special rules for these cases, but why? Just keep everything consistent. We need the NBA editors to come join the NFL wiki. The goal here should be to make things as clear as possible. I mean no disrespect to all the NFL editors, there's very few of us and overall you guys do a great job, but it's like our aim is to make things as ambiguous as possible. The idea that the clear, but concise way the high school is presented for Jordan Bell and NBA players is "what NOT to do," while we've had this odd three name template for high schools on NFL player pages for a long as I can remember is this discussion in an nutshell. Edday1051 (talk) 10:43, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The same argument can be made for including every bit of trivial information in them, then. I'd argue to remove the city/state from schools in NBA player articles too. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 20:55, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * so for common high school names like Central High School. In the state of Alabama, there are two "Central" high schools...one in Tuscaloosa and the other in Phenix City. We shouldn't differentiate these two high schools by simply adding the city name because the addition of 3 additional words to the infobox is just simply too cumbersome. The internet and our low tech internet devices just would not be able to to handle that. Again, the goal here seems to be to provide pertinent information in the most ambiguous way possible. Edday1051 (talk) 23:29, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm with Bagumba; this is unnecessarily convoluted. I would also add that the manual of style recommends against the use of postal abbreviations such as NJ in text and in infoboxes. That's not writ, but we shouldn't depart from it unless there's a great reason to do so. If this convention is based on Miami then I'd call that a doubtful precedent. That's a strange situation, where the real world disambiguates with OH, usually "Miami of Ohio" when spoken, to avoid the ambiguity. Mackensen (talk) 05:45, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree with Dissident93 and Bagumba. Cbl62 (talk) 06:29, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * nice to see a consensus here. I'm just puzzled why it has taken this long for a discussion on changing the high school format. There is no reason at all for the city to come first before the high school name. Look at the way high schools are presented for NBA players:Carmelo Anthony. It takes up a bit more space is the only negative, but I think we can sacrifice an extra line for clarity. Look at the way Poly is presented here: Jordan Bell. It's just perfect. You have the entire official name of the school and since the city and state is presented on the second line, Long Beach appearing twice doesn't feel superfluous, as it would if it were on the same line. I'm all for changing the high school format to the NBA style. Edday1051 (talk) 13:32, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree with Dissident et al., this standard has always been odd to me. Lizard  (talk) 20:57, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I think I'm in agreement with Dissident et al as well. Another wrinkle to consider: much of my relevant editing on this point concerns the infoboxes of the college sports coaches, principally college football coaches. I've generally followed the form of the school name with "High School" abbreviated to "HS" and then the state code in parenthesis attached to the end. See: Hayden Fry, Gerry Faust, and Len Casanova for some examples. In this context, I think it makes sense to explicitly convey high schools with the "HS" to differentiate them from college and pro teams. Rikster2 has objected to the my use of parenthetical state codes in this manner for college basketball coaches on at least one occasion, offering that it's a "football thing". Whatever the case, we should come up with a unified scheme to represent high school in the contexts of all sports. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:27, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Important to note that in many cases basketball has different concerns than football. Basketball is a global sport and we have people from all over the world who read and edit basketball articles (today's All-American is tomorrow's Serbian League All-Star) and they often aren't as familiar with state abbreviations or high school conventions. So we pretty much never use state abbreviations (I think they are just in the recruit templates) and try to just put the name of the school (minus "high school" because it is clearly in the high school field) plus full city, state. It is just clearer to the reader, even if it takes a little more space. As for the issue jweiss mentions, if a coach has a high school in their coaching tenure we just put the HS name and "HS" (e.g. "Auburn HS") at the end with a hotlink. I don't think we need to come to a consensus way of listing (I don't change them if the coach is primarily a different sport than basketball), but if we do I would like to see abbreviations and parenthesis largely eliminated for space/readability concerns. The high school stint with fuller info should be documented in the prose anyway. Rikster2 (talk) 20:58, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with Bender's proposal of: schools with "unique" names are listed <tt>schoolname (city, state)</tt> and schools with city names are listed <tt>schoolname (state)</tt>. However we should spell out the state name, since as Mackensen says, the MOS advises against postal abbreviations even in the infobox. Lizard  (talk) 16:51, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Spelling out the state makes the label too long, in my opinion: Junípero Serra (San Mateo, California), or Century (Bismarck, North Dakota). --bender235 (talk) 18:18, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree, and would much rather abbreviations but I'm a stickler for following the MOS. Then again, we've been using abbreviations for this long and no one has brought it up as an issue. I can go with it if everyone else does. Lizard  (talk) 18:46, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Again, we could just go with the school's name without any mention of its location if this turns out to be an issue. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 20:52, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * spelling out the entire state name is too cumbersome? It's like the addition of 8 characters at most if we spell out the state. We are adding like 3 words at most to the infobox with the inclusion of city and state. For the sake of clarity and consistency, just include city and state like the nba player pages for every scenario, whether the school name is same for school and city. It simplifies everything and it is crystal clear to the reader. You can't not include city and state because there are cases where there are common high school names like "Central." Some of them are even within the same state like the Alabama example in my comment above. I'm all for the new bender format where we do include city and state, but my only issue is the exception that we make for the high schools with names that are the same for school and city. As I've said above, why make special rules and complicate things? Just include city and state for every situation and keep things consistent. It also assumes the reader will figure out why some high schools have city and state together, and others only include the state. Using Towson Catholic as an example, we should just assume the reader knows Towson is a city in Maryland? I didn't even know that. I knew about Towson University...had no idea Towson was an actual city. Look at the way it's presented with Carmelo Anthony. I'm not sure how anyone looks at that and thinks that isn't the way we should be doing it. Were adding one additional line at most. You guys are discussing this like were contemplating adding the school mascot, the all time high school football record of the school, and all of the head coaches in the history of the school. Edday1051 (talk) 23:58, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer the new scheme to have as little exceptions as possible. --bender235 (talk) 23:41, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
 * by adding city and state to all scenarios, you create exactly zero exceptions. Like I already said above, not including city and state like dissident suggests, that creates a huge problem with common school names like Central High School. Edday1051 (talk) 00:00, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * To be fair, the infobox isn't the place to be specific. It's important to remember the infobox is merely an extension of the article; it's not meant to stand alone. It's meant to give the reader general information, and if they want to know any specifics (such as the location of Central High School) they can look in the main text of the article. So I'd be fine with excluding city and state. Lizard  (talk) 03:24, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * lizard, I understand the infobox is not a place to write a short story about the history of the city the high school is located in. I hope my sarcasm is not coming off as abrasive, I really mean no disrespect, but I find the push back on this very odd. It's like I'm suggesting we include the entire mayoral history of the city and every principal in the school's history. I mean, is it really that big of a deal to include the city and state of the school in question? It just seems pretty standard thing to do, particularly in the situations I outlined in a previous comment. If player x attended Central High School, we should make it crystal clear that we are referring to the one in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as opposed to the one in Phenix City, Alabama, or the one Grand Junction, Colorado. Why make a reader click on an additional link to find this information? It's like our goal here as wikipedia editors is to make things as ambiguous as possible. It works great on NBA player pages. The precedent has already been set and it's not like it takes up some absurd amount of space in the infobox where that is some big issue. It's literally 3 extra words in the infobox. I'm of the opinion the infobox can handle 3 more words in the interest of clarity and consistency. Edday1051 (talk) 04:50, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The three extra words should be in the body of the article. We don't include a parenthetical (City, State) for colleges, so why do it for high schools. An NFL's player's high school is not so critical as to warrant two lines in every infobox. And the high school, as displayed in the infobox, in almost all cases has a wikilink, so a reader who is so interested in the precise location of the high school can find it by looking in the body or simply clicking on the wikilink. Cbl62 (talk) 06:45, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * there are only 130 D-1 football programs, while there are more than 30,000 high schools/secondary schools in the United States. Colleges are far more well known to the general public than high schools are. And how many colleges share the same name? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Miami University and University of Miami, which we differentiate with "(OH)" and "(FL)." High schools on the other hand, there has to be hundreds of examples of schools that share the same exact name, but located in different cities and states. I've already brought up the case of Central High School, where nearly every state has one or more schools named "Central High School." Many of them have multiple schools of that name in the same state. Another great example is Independence High School. If I counted correctly, there are 14 "Independence High School" in California alone. Again, why are we making it harder for readers to find out which "Independence High School" the infobox is referring to? I mean, the whole point of Wikipedia is to give people quick and easy access to information. Why are we making them click on an additional link to find out which "Independence High School" player X attended. This is a no brainer here. There are simply way too many high schools with identical names where we have to have some form of differentiation and the simplest way is to just simply include city and state along with the high school name. Edday1051 (talk) 08:20, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Edday1051. Few high schools are nationally known, and even then it would be by niche, diehard, national high school football fanatics. Without the added context of city and state, we may as well remove high schools from infoboxes altogether. However, my preference remains to list the HS with format <tt><high_school_name> (, <nonabbrev_state>)</tt> It's the same format already used in basketball articles. It's also not much longer than the existing football format, which is generally <tt> (<abbrev_state>) <high_school_name></tt>—Bagumba (talk) 15:28, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * An infobox is supposed to summarize the truly essential elements of a bio. I frankly think including two lines of detail in the infobox about a professional football player's "high school" is pure fancruft. The optimal solution IMO would be to eliminate such trivia from the infobox altogether, but if the majority view is for inclusion, keep it simple with no more than one line devoted to such nonsense. Cbl62 (talk) 16:46, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Other than football/basketball, no other bio infoboxes that I'm aware of even include a parameter for high school. Compare Template:Infobox ice hockey player, Template:Infobox baseball biography, Template:Infobox football biography, Template:Infobox sportsperson, Template:Infobox person, Template:Infobox tennis biography, Template:Infobox golfer, Template:Infobox gymnast, etc. The inclusion of such information in the box is part of a trend toward inclusion of all sorts of recruiting web site fancruft into football bios. Cbl62 (talk) 17:17, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There is a pretty big difference between the coverage high school basketball and football get vs. (say) baseball and hockey. For better or for worse, it is essential info for basketball at least. Rikster2 (talk) 17:31, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'll reiterate what rickster said, comparing high school football and basketball players to other sports is just silly. Look at how big high school recruiting is in football and basketball. There are multiple websites that are entirely dedicated to high school recruiting. ESPN spends an entire day televising national signing day. With basketball and football players, what high school they attended is an essential piece of information that unequivocally, should be part of their respective infoboxes. You list tennis, golfers, and gynmasts? A lot of those athletes don't even attend high school or their club teams are far more important. Hockey players in particular, especially top level Canadian players play junior hockey, instead of for a high school. For baseball players, high school baseball recruiting is not a point of interest for the general public, especially compared to basketball and football recruiting, but I would not be opposed to listing high schools for baseball players. Edday1051 (talk) 01:17, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * There's basketball players that go pro directly out of HS, so that's another distinction for hoops. I'd be ok with removing HS for NFL players; however, the format discussion is still relevant for college players.—Bagumba (talk) 12:37, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that inclusion of high school in the infobox is more justifiable for college players, but once a player is elevated to the NFL, it is no longer "essential" information. Cbl62 (talk) 14:47, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Since one of your concerns is keeping HS on one line, would you be amendable to <tt><high_school_name> (, <abbrev_state>)</tt>? The state would be abbreviated, and the other components are the same as the existing format, just reordered. With all due respect to MOS:POSTABBR, I think using abbr would be a reasonable exception (WP:IAR) in this case.—Bagumba (talk) 12:59, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * An abbreviated state is better than whole state names like Connecticut or Rhode Island, but there's also no justification for repeating a city name when it's already in the school name. Consider the case of Gavin Escobar. If we use the full high school name and then repeat the city name and the state with no postal code, the high school consumes a ridiculous three lines in the infobox: "Rancho Santa Margarita Catholic HS (Rancho Santa Margarita, California)". There is no justification for such infobox clutter since (a) the high school is not "essential" information, and (b) anyone seeking more information on the high school can either scan left to the body of the article or click the wikilink for the high school. Less is better in the infobox. Cbl62 (talk) 14:47, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * you would just place city and state on the second line. This idea that a few extra words clutters the infobox is just ridiculous. Look at Jordan Bell, it looks totally fine. All of the information you need to know in two lines. There is no confusion and it maintains consistency across all examples. How is less information better in the infobox? As a matter of fact, we should put more information in the infobox. What is the point of the infobox then? The fact that I can go to career history and quickly see what teams the player has played on without scrolling to the body of the article is the entire point of the infobox. Give quick access to basic information at the very top of the page. The college and high school the player attended is the exact type of basic information that belongs in the infobox, in which a reader should not have to click on an additional link or scroll to the body of the article to discover. Is clarity, consistency, and quick access not enough justification? I can't speak for everyone, but I often look up what high school a player attended. Considering how big high school football and recruiting has become, it is a point of interest for many football fans. I do the same for college and NFL players. Did they go to some powerhouse high school like Bishop Gorman or were they able to make it to the pros from a high school in some small town in Texas. It's particularly nice to have in the infobox as it is right below the place of birth. You can see whether the player attends a high school in his hometown/place of birth or has since moved and attends a different high school. We should not have to force a reader to have to scroll through the body of an article or click on an additional link to find such basic biographical information. Edday1051 (talk) 21:59, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * forgot to mention this. Bagumba, the one year college rule was implemented years ago, unless you're referring to older players still in the league. And just to add to this idea that the high school is non-essential information. I could not disagree more with this. What high school you attended is essential information for any person. Think about what high school you attended and think about how that shaped you as a person. Now think about that in the context of a football player. Statistically, you are far more likely to make it to the NFL if you attended a high school in Florida, California, or Texas. In 2016, 34% of NFL players attended a high school from one of these three states. If you attend a football powerhouse like Bishop Gorman, you are far more likely to get recruited by a major college program, which in turn paves a clearer path to the NFL. The high school also tells you where a player spent their teen years and also the level of talent they played around. Not only on their own team, but also from the high school league they played in. This is all part of their biographical history, especially in the context of being a football player. This doesn't become less important when they become NFL players. It is all part of their path to becoming a professional NFL player. Edday1051 (talk) 22:57, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * A person's high school is not "essential information for any person", at least not in the Wikipedia infobox sense. Were that so, then Template:Infobox person would include a parameter for it.  It does not. The only Wikipedia infoboxes that include such recruiting-web-site fancruft/trivia are those for American football and basketball players. Cbl62 (talk) 18:54, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * yes because the standard for wikipedia infoboxes or any other editable part of wikipedia are not subject to change and the whole point of wikipedia is all about being static. Why are even having this discussion at all if things cannot be changed for better or for worse. Again, excuse my sarcasm, but the counter arguments you are presenting are just ridiculous. I've countered each and every one and then you just move the goal posts with another inane counter point. You are the "contrarian" guy right? This discussion went from changing the wording format, then to whether we should include city and state, then to whether we should just remove the high school altogether. You've disagreed and moved the goal posts every step of the way. By the end of this discussion, you are going to make the case that we should should get rid of wikipedia altogether. Just shutdown the entire website lol. Whatever discussion there is for the relevance of high school for other biographical pages is a whole another discussion. Like you said, the high school parameter does exist for football and basketball players and they exist for a reason. This discussion, pertaining to NFL players, the case has been made clear why high school is a relevant piece of information that absolutely should be included in the infobox. Edday1051 (talk) 20:38, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Not sure why you are personalizing this. I suspect we both share the same objective, which is to improve Wikipeida, not to "shutdown [sic] the entire website" as you suggest. We simply disagree as to how much space should be consumed in a football player's infobox by the high school he attended. Not the end of the world either way. Cbl62 (talk) 22:08, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * sorry man, it wasn't my intention to make it personal. I just wanted to point out that it just feels to me you are just being the "contrarian" guy. You and others may disagree, but I feel I've presented valid counterpoints to whatever disagreements you may have had and you just keep on moving the goalposts. I give you a reason why including the city and state is important, then suddenly you are in favor of just removing the high school parameter altogether. I give you a reason why high school is particularly relevant for football players, then it's...well other biographical infoboxes in other parts of wikipedia don't include high school...etc. This has been the same pattern over and over. Edday1051 (talk) 22:24, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Well we're in a pickle. Looks like everyone agrees the current format needs to go. But from what I gather: I just wanna see it changed but ideally I also think we should list just the school name. ,, , and have also commented but haven't taken a side. Lizard (talk) 21:12, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Bagumba and Edday favor the basketball format of schoolname (city, state)
 * Bender is for the "unique names are listed schoolname (city, state) and schools with city names are listed schoolname (state)" format
 * Dissident and Cbl are for listing just the school name
 * Comment I don’t contribute enough to the project to feel like I should have a say if I won’t be doing the work to implement. Jweiss just pinged me and I thought I’d give context as to why basketball does it the way we do. Rikster2 (talk) 01:25, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I favor the third option but wouldn't mind the first. I fully object to the 2nd option as it's not really any better than the current version. (that being unnecessary complicated) ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 01:40, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * What exactly is complicated about it? Whenever the school name is the city name, we simply make sure there is no duplicate. So no "Pahokee (Pahokee, FL)", "Auburn (Auburn, AL)", "Midland (Midland, TX)". How is that complicated? --bender235 (talk) 15:30, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Because it could be even simpler by getting rid of the city/state. We don't include this info for colleges, so why do this for high schools? Because that's what scouting reports do? Using that logic is how we got to this bad format in the first place. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 21:03, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

At some point we should start implementing the new scheme. We do agree, as I see it, on the basic scheme of <tt>School name (city, state)</tt>, as in but we still have to come to an agreement on the city-named schools. Is it As mentioned before, I prefer the latter. But my #1 goal here is to simply establish a consistent scheme. --bender235 (talk) 16:09, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Permian (Odessa, TX)
 * Mater Dei (Santa Ana, CA)
 * Pahokee (Pahokee, FL), or simply
 * Pahokee (FL)
 * If these are the only four valid options left (I haven't paid much attention to the conversation above, it's gotta too long-winded), then option #4 is my personal favorite, as its the most simple. School name + state abbreviation, we don't need to list city names here. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 21:05, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
 * If the school is not the same name as it's city, e.g. Mater Dei High School (Santa Ana, California), are your proposing "Mater Dei (Santa Ana, CA)" or just "Mater Dei (CA)"? Thanks.—Bagumba (talk) 11:32, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The other option proposed was listing just the school name only with no parenthetical for city or state. I had favored this one, and from the comments above it appeared you did too. Lizard also stated that "ideally I also think we should list just the school name." Accordingly, and from those casting votes thus far, it appeared that was the majority view.  Cbl62 (talk) 14:25, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I prefer this one over all others. We don't mention location for colleges (in the infobox), so why do it for high schools? I would just go with Mater Dei and nothing more, although I'd still support Mater Dei (CA) if we don't go with that as it's still a vast improvement over the current format. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 20:44, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's a good idea. As was mentioned earlier in this discussion, there are only a couple of hundred of college, so there is little room for ambiguity. In contrast, there are tenths of thousands of high schools, lots of them with similar names. We should distinguish them a bit in these infoboxes. --bender235 (talk) 22:16, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I am in agreement with Dissident93. Colleges are far more significant for a college player and we don't burden the infobox with city/state details for colleges. For both colleges and high schools, such secondary details can be gleaned from either clicking on the wikilink or referring to the body of the article -- it's just not essential information.  The numeric count of colleges is a bit of a red herring, but in any event there are actually far more than "only a couple hundred colleges" with football programs.  Try 760: FBS (130), FCS (124), Division II (169), Division III (249), NAIA (88). Cbl62 (talk) 02:14, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * So I skimmed through this and don't think a straight forward answer was given for this, what should be done for when the the name has the city in it, for example my hometown uses the city name and what side of town the school is on.-- Rockchalk 717 03:06, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * it has come full circle...me and Bender are somehow on the same side of the argument now lol. The only thing I don't agree with Bender on is the exception we make for the schools in which the school name is the same for city and school. Just keep things consistent and list city and state no matter what. It works totally fine on the NBA pages and it doesn't clutter the infobox like dissdent and cbl claim. It's literally 2-3 additional words. It's not a big deal, especially for pertinent information like high schools. A lot of this argument is going in circles. I've already explained why high schools are pertinent information and it unequivocally belongs in the infobox of NFL players. Secondly, the other option seems to be to just get rid of city and state and that is another one that I've already explained why that has major problems. As I've already stated, there are over 25,000 high schools/secondary schools in the United States. Many of which share the same name like Independence High School or Central High School. There absolutely needs to be some differentiation and the simplest way to do that is input city and state. Edday1051 (talk) 09:21, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * CBL, how is that a red herring? First of all, even if you include every college football program, that is still only 760. That is still nowhere near the 25,000+ high schools in the United States and how many of these colleges and universities share the same name where we would need a method of differentiation with city and state? Secondly, that still doesn't take away the fact that colleges are far more well known to the public than high schools are. I mean even high school powerhouses like Bishop Gorman are helluva lot less well known that any major power 5 university. If you took a poll of 100 people and asked them what city and state Bishop Gorman is located...how many do you think would answer correctly? Now ask them the same question for the University of Washington or Stanford. I'm guessing Seattle and Palo Alto will be answers more commonly heard than Las Vegas, Nevada for Bishop Gorman. Edday1051 (talk) 09:31, 13 March 2018 (UTC)


 * "How is it a red herring?" Because you're missing the real point which is that infoboxes should be limited to essential information, and the city/state location of an NFL player's high school is miles away from being essential information. Even assuming arguendo that the point were not a red herring, it is certainly true that most people don't know where Bishop Gorman HS is located. But it is equally true that they don't know where Bethel College (KS)/Bethel University (TN), Anna Maria College (MA)/Ave Maria University (FL), Benedictine College (KS)/Benedictine University (IL), Wayne State University (MI)/Wayne State College (NE), or Franklin College (IN)/Franklin & Marshall College (PA), all of which have college football programs, are located. The city/state location for these high schools, colleges, and universities are minor details, and readers seeking such minor details can find them by clicking on the wikilink or reading the body of the article. The infobox should be limited to essential information. Cbl62 (talk) 10:13, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * aren't those differentiated in the infobox with the state abbreviation? If not, they absolutely should be, the same way we do it for "Miami (FL)" and "Miami (OH)". If we list "Independence High School" for player x, noting that we are referring to the one in North Carolina, as opposed to the one in California...is that not essential information? Making sure it is crystal clear to the reader which "Independence High School" we are referring to? How is that information not essential? So we are going to force a reader to click on an additional link or scroll through the body of the article to obtain this information when we can just clearly add that information to the infobox? Edday1051 (talk) 12:31, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * We just disagree. You view the city/state where Dick Butkus went to high school to be essential information to his biography. I do not. Let's let the vote initiated by Bagumba run its course.  We can then all abide by the result. Cbl62 (talk) 13:53, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * the precedent has already been set with nba player pages. Just look at the way high schools are presented here: Lebron James...Jordan Bell...Nick Collison.....what in the hell are we even arguing about? Why are we not just using the NBA format...it is just so straightforward. Cbl and dissident, you guys are in favor of less information and making people click additional links or scrolling to the body of an article to find information. Lets make it harder for people to find the information they are looking for, which is the complete opposite of the purpose of wikipeida and infoboxes. Edday1051 (talk) 09:51, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Just because the NBA infobox includes trivia doesn't mean we have to follow that. If you're looking at other precedents, the overwhelming majority of infoboxes do not include high schools at all. Cbl62 (talk) 10:13, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * you can read my previous comments addressing the importance of where a player attended high school, specifically for a football player. It's a pretty important part of a football player's biographic history. I don't even think that is even an argument. As for other infoboxes, we can have another discussion about that, but specifically for football and basketball players, I honestly feel that is not even worth a discussion. That is how strongly I believe high school should be pretty standard for football and basketball infoboxes. Edday1051 (talk) 12:31, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

HS convention poll
After lots of discussion above, it seems useful to have a poll to see where we stand on listing high schools. Please !vote on one of the options below in its respective section, or feel free to add a new option.—Bagumba (talk) 10:46, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Keep status quo: <tt> ( ) </tt>

 * 1) I know I'm adding this long after this discussion of a small number of users has run its course, but I prefer this format. It's cleaner, more visually inline with other material in the info box, usually only takes up a single line (like other infobox items are designed to be), and does so without sacrificing ambiguity. I don't think the concern that this format is only understood by hardcore recruiting or sports fans is warranted. Codifying standards for names I'm in favor of, but the two-line line-break format I am not. Especially when the city and state in parenthesis are both given separate wikilinks. Just make it one if we're actually going to do that format.  Green  Runner  0  06:56, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * City and state should just link to the city per MOS:SEAOFBLUE.—Bagumba (talk) 07:06, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Use basketball bio format: <tt> (, )</tt>

 * 1) Most people would not recognize the school name alone, and the location of where they went to school is actually more useful than the school name for most readers. The current football format (<tt>  </tt>) is a format most readers are not familiar with except for  die-hard high school fans who follow national publications.—Bagumba (talk) 10:46, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 2) I'm generally in favor of this option, with a fall-back simplification of <tt> </tt> if the <tt> </tt> and <tt> </tt> are identical, i.e. "Pahokee (FL)" instead of "Pahokee (Pahokee, FL)", and "Auburn (AL)" instead of "Auburn (Auburn, AL)". --bender235 (talk) 13:36, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Sure. We can easily discuss minor tweaks like that if this general option is chosen.—Bagumba (talk) 16:11, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) I'd say I'm good with this one over the others. (talk page stalker) <b style="color:#008caf">Crash</b><b style="color:#6000c6">Under</b><b style="color:#6000c6">ride</b> 14:29, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 2) Edday1051 (talk) 15:31, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 3) My vote is for this one. Even though different sports have different projects, we can still try to find some consistencies between them. But we would need to know what to do in the case of Darren Sproles's high school for example? Would we do Olathe East (KS) or East (Olathe, KS)?? -- Rockchalk 717  21:51, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * under bender's format, I think it would be "Olathe East (KS)". "East (Olathe, KS)" is just plain wrong IMO. It makes it look like the high school name is "East High School," instead of the official name "Olathe East High School." And this is why I strongly prefer the NBA style, where there are no exceptions. This way the format is consistent across all scenarios. By inputting city and state no matter what, you would have "Olathe East (Olathe, Kansas)." It's clear and concise and there is no confusion about formatting with the nba/no exceptions style. Edday1051 (talk) 10:35, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with you 100%. That's what I figured I just wanted to be sure if that's what the consensus winds up being.-- Rockchalk 717 16:12, 14 March 2018 (UTC)


 * There are really two options here that ought to be split. Bender’s version is preferable (less verbose) to Edday’s IMO, though I still maintain my main vote below.Cbl62 (talk) 16:21, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * it's one additional line at most and in many cases, it all fits on the same line as is the case here: Russel Westbrook. This idea that it clutters the infobox and it's too verbose is just puzzling to me. It's like were discussing whether we should add a list of every principal in the history of the school to the infobox. Even if it took up 5 lines, I think we can sacrifice a couple additional lines for the sake of clarity and consistency. Consistency is the biggest reason I oppose Bender's format. Just add city and state for all scenarios. Simple. No confusion. I'm glad Santa Margarita Catholic High School was brought up because this is a real tricky one. What happens if there are additional words like "Catholic" or "East," like in the "Olathe East" example. Does "Santa Margarita Catholic" qualify for bender's exception? Technically no, since the city is RANCHO Santa Margarita, but this certainly will bring up confusion and debate under bender's format. Under the NBA format, there is zero confusion or debate. You simply use the standard format and input city and state for every single scenario...no exceptions. Edday1051 (talk) 21:00, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * question so would we be looking at Olathe East (Olathe, KS)? That seems more clear as there are lots of "East" high schools or "Washington" high schools... a little more data to me isn't a problem.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:37, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, the listed name should be the school name sans any "High School" ending, i.e. "Olathe East". It should not be bastardized to be ambiguous whether the actual name is "Olathe East High School" or just plain "East High School". It is not OK to rely on a user to click on the link to confirm the real name.  Per MOS:LINK: Do not unnecessarily make a reader chase links.—Bagumba (talk) 01:39, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * So smaller towns where the high school and town are the same would look like this: Concordia (Concordia, KS).  Yeah, I support that.  might be a little awkward and wordy at times, but I think for consistency and clarity it's worth it.--Paul McDonald (talk) 12:30, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Care to place a formal vote at this point i.e. start line with "#" and add to tally? Thanks.—Bagumba (talk) 10:33, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) I generally favor this option, with reasonable exceptions, like bender said, for cases where the school and city name are identical and don't need to be repeated twice. The less ambiguity, the better, generally speaking. Ejgreen77 (talk) 20:10, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 2) Support --Paul McDonald (talk) 14:44, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

List school name only: <tt> </tt>

 * 1) City/state are unnecessary detail for the infobox and constitutes infobox bloat/clutter. Those interested in the precise location of the players high school or college can simply click on the wikilink or refer to the body of the article. Infobox should be limited to truly essential information. As noted above, the case of Gavin Escobar illustrates the bloat factor of including city/state, stretching the high school name to a ridiculous three lines in the infobox: "Rancho Santa Margarita Catholic (Rancho Santa Margarita, California)". Cbl62 (talk) 13:47, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * comment It's two lines here: Klay Thompson. You have to use the line break + (nowrap) Edday1051 (talk) 15:34, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment Actually, in the case you stated it would be "Rancho Santa Margarita Catholic (CA)" according to the shortening rule above. --bender235 (talk) 23:31, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Except that it's unclear if your proposed shortening rule would be accepted. Edday1051 and Rockchalk have stated that they are opposed to it. Cbl62 (talk) 00:06, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The fine tuning can be decided later. The major issue to close first is the general format of using parentheticals or not.—Bagumba (talk) 01:53, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe yes, maybe no. As noted above, seems like there's a pretty fundamental split on Bender's proposed shortening rule.  Which side to you support, Bagumba? Cbl62 (talk) 02:42, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Fundamentally, they 100% agree that it's better to have the city information of the school available. The area open for discussion is the 10% (perhaps) of the cases where the school name already includes the city name, and whether that should be optimized to drop the city name and only list the state.  I can go either way on what optimization is needed, and more discussion might sway me. I'm content with only being a tie-breaker on that, if needed.  Would you change your !vote if there was more certainty of how something like Santa Margarita Catholic High School was to be handled?—Bagumba (talk) 10:22, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I still prefer school name only, but if that does not prevail, I much prefer bender's shortened form, as repetition of a city name (particularly a long city) strike me as the worst of all choices. 14:42, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * responding to bender's comment above: as I wrote in a previous comment, Santa Margarita Catholic should not even qualify for bender's exception/shortening rule because the city is RANCHO Santa Margarita. The school name does not contain Rancho, so using "Rancho Santa Margarita Catholic (CA)" is just wrong imo. It makes it appear the school name is "Rancho Santa Margarita Catholic," when the actual school name is "Santa Margarita Catholic." And this is exactly why I'm opposed to bender's exception/shortening rule as it just creates additional formatting confusion. Under the no exceptions nba style, were not even having this discussion. You simply input city and state no matter what. Simple. No exceptions. Under both Bender's format and the nba format, the correct version is the way it is presented here: Klay Thompson. Edday1051 (talk) 19:45, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Per Cbl.  Lizard  (talk) 15:38, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 2) Per my previous arguments/Cbl. It doesn't matter if it "only takes up one more line", why is nobody arguing for college location with this logic then? ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 18:33, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * comment come on dissident, don't be disingenuous. You were part of the discussion above. Your question was addressed multiple times in that discussion. Edday1051 (talk) 10:45, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * And my opinions have not changed from anybody's counter-argument thus far. Keep high school location cruft in prose; the infobox is not meant to be all encompassing. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 19:45, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * so player x attended Central High School and we should just leave it at that. Let's put them on a treasure hunt to figure out which of the dozens of "Central" High Schools this player attended. The other option is we put city and state right next to the school name in the infobox like they do for NBA player pages. It takes up a whopping extra line in the infobox and in many cases, an additional line isn't even required as is the case here: Nick Collison, Russell Westbrook, Kyle Singler, etc. This argument that it clutters the infobox.....I just don't get it. Nobody here is suggesting we add 50 lines of new information in the infobox. This isn't even about adding city and state as a point of adding additional information just for the sake of adding additional information. City and state is important here to differentiate high schools due to the fact that there are 25,000+ high schools in America and many of them share similar or identical names. If you believe a reader should have to scroll to the body of the article or click on an additional link to find location information, and you believe "clutter" is such a huge issue with infoboxes, then you should be voting to get rid of the high school parameter altogether. Edday1051 (talk) 20:41, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Agree with Cbl62. Listing school's name is enough, because city/state adds unneeded clutter as infobox is supposed to be as short as possible. – Sabbatino (talk) 18:49, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Comment So what was the rationale for using a parenthetical state code for colleges, but not for high schools? Seems it's more needed for high schools given that they are intrinsically lesser-known than colleges. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:15, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Are you referring to exceptions for colleges like Miami (OH)?—Bagumba (talk) 01:45, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * , sure like Miami (OH) and a host of other lower division colleges and colleges that once had ambiguous names. See the infoboxes of Justa Lindgren, Maurice J. "Clipper" Smith, Bob Reade, Floyd J. Egan, Jeff Devanney, Earl Gartman, etc. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:57, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * "Miami (OH)" is common format used in boxscores and even sometimes in prose (New York Times). Sports, or not, Columbia usually brings to mind the New York university, not the Columbia in Oregon that is now University of Portland. So I guess the convention has been to disambiguate colleges instead of forcing users to click, which is also not an option for print versions. At any rate, listing the state does not necessarily have to be all or nothing for both colleges and high schools.  With colleges, readers are familiar with the big name ones, even moreso if they are sports fans.  Disambiguation can continue to be used on an as-needed basis. Same can't be said for high schools, where most readers wouldn't know the overwhelming majority of them by name only, for example Junípero Serra High School for Tom Brady, let alone when it's some format like "San Mateo (CA) Juniper Serra".—Bagumba (talk) 16:10, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Next steps for HS
If we agree that the consensus is to go with the format of <tt> </tt>, the optimization questions would be whether to alter anything if the city is already in the school name, and whether the state should be abbreviated or not.—Bagumba (talk) 12:34, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Short form where city and school name are the same, e.g., Cleveland Heights (OH) [22 characters long] rather than Cleveland Heights (Cleveland Heights, Ohio) [43 characters], and East St. Louis (IL) [19 characters] rather than East St. Louis (East St. Louis, Illinois) [41 characters]. The short formulation helps to trim excess verbiage with no loss in useful content. Cbl62 (talk) 15:53, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * in favor of strict, no exceptions nba style by adding exceptions to the rule, the shortening rule only creates confusion and more debate. We are assuming the average reader is knowledgeable about the formatting exceptions. Even most of the editors won't be aware of the formatting exception, except for the few of us that are participating in this discussion. I believe it should be crystal clear what the name of the school is and what city and state that school is located in. Unless you are from the area, you wouldn't know Cleveland Heights is it's own city. With the nba style, it is crystal clear that Cleveland Heights is the name of the high school and the school is located in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. And as I've said in the comment above, what do we do when there is an additional word like "Catholic" or "East" like in "Paramus Catholic" or "Olathe East." Were just adding to the problem here by creating additional formatting exceptions to the base rule. I just don't understand this verbose argument. Were adding 3-4 words at most and for the sake of consistency and clarity, it's well worth it IMO. It works totally fine on the nba pages. And I'm largely against abbreviations as a whole. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and the use of abbreviations should be limited. It should never be assumed that readers are knowledgeable of abbreviations of US states. Granted the vast majority of American football fans are American, but there are surely readers from outside the US that frequent these pages. So to be clear, I'm for no exception nba style, where we input (school name + (city and state)) no matter what for all scenarios/examples, even for examples where the school and city share the same exact name. Edday1051 (talk) 21:20, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * As always, I say we go even simpler with just the school's article name. No need to put in city/state which belongs in prose instead. Everything else is just overcomplicating things, which can be see by how long this debate has been going on for with no resolution. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 21:27, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * dissident, I think were past that point. I don't know if we've officially closed the poll, but as of the moment, NBA style is the consensus with a margin of 7-4. Now we are discussing whether we should create exceptions to the rule. Considering you have expressed a viewpoint previously agreeing with Cbl62 about verbosity, I assume you would be in favor of the shortening rule, but you also don't want to overcomplicate things, which in that case, you might be more inclined to share my opinion that there should be no exceptions at all and we go with the strict nba format for all scenarios. You should state your viewpoint on the topic at hand. We've come a long way here, let's not go backwards. Edday1051 (talk) 21:51, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Not sure how favoring the most simple and clean option, which we already for colleges, is "going backwards". While not ideal, the NBA style is better than the current version (but literally anything is), and I'll just leave it at that. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 21:12, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * "going backwards" as in you are attempting to go back to the long discussion we've already had on that topic and ignore the consensus that has been established by the poll on said topic. This section is specifically referring to what exceptions we should or should not make under the nba style format. You are going backwards by still suggesting we use the high school name only format. Edday1051 (talk) 01:54, 1 May 2018 (UTC)


 * NBA style Ceding because the current convention needs to be done away with. Lizard  (talk) 00:59, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * NBA style is straightforward and been working for years with no issues for NBA bios.—Bagumba (talk) 15:42, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * NBA style I had already started editing it this way thinking we had already reached a consensus. It just makes more sense. I never saw the logic in the old way were the city was included with the school name even if it's not a part of the school's name. Any other way would cause confusion and more debate.-- Rockchalk 717 22:45, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Strongly oppose As someone who has worked extensively to improve thousands of infoboxes by supplying high school information, I'd just like to chime in and say that I am gravely disappointed to see my work be rendered pointless by a small group of users deciding on some new consensus amongst themselves. I cannot say in strong enough terms how much I oppose this change. I'm sure my opinion is long past mattering in the face of this "new consensus" but I did want it to be known. Saget53 (talk) 23:26, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Initial HS changes
I've gone ahead and made changes to Tom Brady, Todd Gurley, and Aaron Donald per consensus above. Let's see if there is any remaining feedback.—Bagumba (talk) 12:50, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Changes seem stable. I've also changed at other popular NFL pages like Terry Crews, O. J. Simpson, Suge Knight, Michael Oher, and J. J. Watt.—Bagumba (talk) 21:52, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Packers sweep Review
All, I just created Packers sweep (after like three years of wanting to do it). If anyone has a minute to review/copyedit, I would greatly appreciate it. I would love to take it to WP:GA someday, but having never worked on GAs before, it would be awesome to have some input before I nominate it. Thanks! « Gonzo fan2007 '' (talk)  @ 17:21, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Problem with statistics at nfl.com
I just ran into a problem with statistics at nfl.com which I'm not sure what to do about. See Talk:Rob Ninkovich. In short, I think the stats line for 2014 for Ninkovich is incorrect, and I'm looking for an alternate source so I can fix the stats on the Wikipedia page - at the moment, I've convinced myself that the current values are incorrect. Any ideas on where else to find stats, or how to get nfl.com to take a second look at their own stats? <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 04:57, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Pro-football-reference.com lists the TD as a fumble return, not an interception return. So NFL.com looks to be correct, though incomplete.—Bagumba (talk) 12:05, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah. So TDs is specific to interceptions, not total TDs by the player. That was my misunderstanding - and the cite I need is here. Thanks! <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 15:58, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

What do you think
I don't necessarily want to submit this as an official move discussion, I just would like some input. So after Patrick Mahomes was drafted, I moved the page to include his suffix because it had appeared initially the Chiefs would include his suffix. Well, a little over a year later, they aren't listing the suffix and his jersey doesn't include it. So I went to move the page, but then I got to thinking right before I submitted it, should we keep the suffix to prevent confusion with his father's page or would the distinguish header be sufficient?-- Rockchalk 717 04:52, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * With only limited research, my impression is that the dad goes by "Pat" and the son mostly by "Patrick" sometimes "Patrick II' and even less so as "Pat". Names should be based off WP:COMMONNAME as found in all reliable sources (e.g. Google News search"), not just based off of what their team lists them as.  Therefore, "Patrick" should be distinguishing enough and is more WP:CONCISE than "Patrick II", and the hatnote would get someone to his father's page if they somehow used the dad's full birth name.—Bagumba (talk) 10:03, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Move to "Patrick Mahomes" per WP:COMMONNAME. It should only be kept at "Patrick Mahomes II" if his dad's article name was "Patrick Mahomes" (which it isn't currently), per WP:NATURALDIS. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 14:15, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * That's kinda what I was thinking. I'll go ahead and move it then.-- Rockchalk 717 22:02, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Broken player profile external links
Just a heads up, but it appears recent updates for various team websites (Redskins and 49ers, maybe more) have broken the old external link URLs for on player's pages, and should be updated with the new links manually rather than archiving the old versions. I'm personally going to fix the Redskins' players links, but if this is some league issued mandate to standardize website links, then we may have to find a way to automate doing this for the other teams. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 04:23, 16 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Bump. The player page URL structure on the official team site has changed, ex. for LA Rams' Dominique Easley where the OLD URL is 404:
 * OLD: https://www.therams.com/team/roster/Dominique-Easley/f8e13408-265d-4372-bb4b-fd2a74510e9e
 * NEW: https://www.therams.com/team/players-roster/dominique-easley/
 * While Ravens' Brandon Williams (defensive tackle) OLD URL redirects to NEW per
 * OLD: http://www.baltimoreravens.com/team/roster/Brandon-Williams/7a528eef-dd5c-4b37-84be-c3bdd8c841c9
 * NEW: https://www.baltimoreravens.com/team/players-roster/brandon-williams/
 * This implies that the redirects may be present on a per-teamsite basis. UW Dawgs (talk) 12:06, 27 June 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm late to the conversation here, but the URL changes aren't just restricted to the roster pages. Many of the news stories on team pages that I have cited as references are now dead links. So far, I have found examples from buccaneers.com, denverbroncos.com, packers.com, colts.com and seahawks.com.  caknuck ° needs to be running more often  18:25, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

How to handle player's unofficial retirement
So I have a question. For players who have unofficially retired or are highly unlikely to ever play again (looking at Kam Chancellor), but officially remain on the team's roster via reserve lists they can't be activated off of until the next league year, would it make sense to consider them retired/off the team in the lead and infobox, whilst keeping them in the team roster navboxes? ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 14:44, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Nobody has any differing opinions? ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 16:11, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Similar situation was presented with Prince Fielder in MLB, he was listed as a current player. Kam is still on the roster he is just not cleared by team doctors, until he is removed from the roster and actually retires he should be listed as a current player.
 * He was placed on the team's reserved list, meaning he can't actually play this year (can't be activated until the 2019 league year). He's also being treated by the team as if he is unlikely to ever play again, which is why I made the post. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 23:29, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * As long s he's listed on their roster, he's on their team. We don't do WP:CRYSTALBALL, guessing what the future holds, even if it seems blatantly obvious. As long as there is a reliable source that lists him on the team, he should stay on the WikiRoster, if nothing else to avoid edit wars over whether he belongs. Right now, an official source says he's on the team, inactive under PUP, that should end the question. <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 05:12, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not arguing that, but just saying that since third-party sources state he's done with football, that him being on the reserve/PUP list only means he should be listed on the rosters here. Calling him an active member in the team or not in prose is what I'm trying to get consensus for. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 15:32, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * He's part of the team, so it should remain in the opening sentence. Somewhere in the body can mention that he is on reserve/PUP.  It's speculation to say he's unquivocally retired.  If it's a really prominent opinion, WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV should be followed if it's to be mentioned at all.—Bagumba (talk) 16:21, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * But is it speculation if plenty of third-party sources claim it, as well as Kam basically saying his playing career is over as of today? Apparently he will be making a media appearance soon, where he is likely to clarify the situation. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 16:32, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * As long as we need to use words like "claim" or "basically", it's speculation. Now it could be WP:DUE weight to mention something, and there might be consensus for it, but the fact is that he is a member of the Seahawks still.  If someone was living off of a machine and sources and family "basically" consider them all but dead, we'd still write as if that person is alive, but can balance it with widely-held opinions.—Bagumba (talk) 16:45, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I get that, but if he comes out and clarifies that he's officially done with playing, his status on the reserve list should just become ceremonial, right? We already do this for players who are placed on the reserved/retired list. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 16:49, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Ceremonial or not, he's currently on the roster. We don't remove someone from rosters if the teams still claim them. <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 17:31, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Again, I'm only arguing against keeping that info from the lead and infobox, not removing him from the rosters. I think you guys are missing the original point. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 22:26, 7 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Infoboxes are a subset of the issue of WikiRosters. As long as a team claims them (by listing them on their roster), they are members of that team. Adding something in the lead that they plan on retiring is acceptable, but it should still say "of the Seattle Seahawks" rather than "free agent" or "retired", until bureaucratic mechanisms finish unwinding. <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 23:15, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Well I've added a note on his article saying to check here before editing, as it seems to be something that needs watching. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 17:06, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Relevant Merge Discussion
Regardless of where your opinion may stand on this proposal, please note an ongoing discussion regarding a merge proposal that falls under the purview of this WikiProject. Any input to help determine consensus would be appreciated: Talk:Green Bay Packers. « Gonzo fan2007  (talk)  @ 17:52, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Kansas City Blues / Cowboys
I added some information to this topics talk page but I did not want to edit the topic. The information relates to who owned the team. I included a link that lists George E. Muehlebach as the owner. I have had a few books in the past that also listed him as the owner but I no longer have them and can't remember the books names so that its difficult to find sources online. But, you are free to add the information or use it to maybe find more information about this online. I have put in a question with one of the citys libraries but other than this, I can't really be of further service. It seems the NFL itself doesn't have the information. So, if you can verify the info, you might just get something from the NFL to say thanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kansas_City_Blues/Cowboys Armorbeast (talk) 04:10, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

I think I broke a couple of NFL pages
I was updating the high schools to the new format and was updating the pages of Crespi Carmelite alumni. I updated Devin Lucien's page with no issues. I get to Randy Cross and the same exact edit seems to have broken the page. I'm not sure if this is only happening on my end, but if it's happening with everyone else, you guys can see that the infobox sections have empty space. Can anyone can confirm that you guys see this and if you do, can you figure out why it's happening. I even reverted my edit and it remains the same. I'm pretty sure my edit is what caused it, but weirdly I go to older versions of the page, and the same issue is present. It's very odd. I copy and pasted a different nfl infobox on the same page, and the same things happens, so it seems it's the issue is happening on these specific pages. Same thing is happening with Christian Fauria, Hroniss Grasu, Chris Harper, Babe Laufenberg, and a couple of other Crespi Carmelite alumni pages. Edday1051 (talk) 18:16, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Don't know why this is breaking the infobox, I've fixed it (on my end anyway) by changing the  tag in the high school parameter to   . Ideally, you should be using the unbulleted list template  instead of breaks anyway. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 19:11, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks man. Everything looks normal on my end. Strange that the lack of the dash did that. I've updated a bunch of pages already and this is the first time that has happened. Thanks again for the help. Edday1051 (talk) 20:03, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
 * There must be some sort of bug with the football infobox, because I've never seen an issue like this in other infoboxes. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 04:54, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Shoe Steels to Spartans to Lions and Jim Thorpe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_the_Portsmouth_Spartans#Shoe_Steels

I added the information with links. It's up to you guys if you want to add the information to the topic. It's worth discussion.

Armorbeast (talk) 11:49, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Saquon Barkley's height
We have a problem. I am sure some of you are aware of constant reverting on Saquon Barkley's page regarding his height. The problem is that neither side is wrong, because both 6ft 0in (sources: NFL.com, NFL Combine) and 5ft 11in (source: Giants.com) are easily verifiable. How do we deal with this? – Sabbatino (talk) 16:08, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I would use the NFL source height, and then add a footnote explaining the discrepancy between sources. « Gonzo fan2007   (talk)  @ 16:14, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I prefer team info as they get the info directly from the player. NFL.com is also outdated at times, not showing jersey number updates or position changes for weeks/months. I can almost guarantee that eventually, NFL.com will show 5ft 11in. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 18:09, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Unless we come up with a consensus on which source to rely on, we will have people changing his height. I do not have a strong opinion on which source (team or NFL) we should use so I would be happy with any outcome. – Sabbatino (talk) 13:40, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Zeke Moore
Someone had converted this article to a marginally notable basketball player three years ago. I moved that content to Zeke Moore (basketball) and restored the football content, but wanted to ask that someone from this project go in and address the multiple issues with the article. Surprising that this could go on for three years without anyone noticing. Rikster2 (talk) 12:31, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Jay Cutler move discussion
This requested move may be of interest to the members of this project. Lepricavark (talk) 00:28, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Brett Maher (American Football)
This page was moved from Brett Maher (gridiron football) which might be OK, but I'm not sure if the new disambiguation should capitalize both words. It seems as if "American football" is more commonly used for cases like this, but figured I'd ask here to see if that's really the case. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:05, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I changed it to lower case.—Bagumba (talk) 07:19, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking a look . -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:16, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject 49ers is not inactive
As a member of this WikiProject, I am restoring it to active status, prior to the beginning of the 2018 season, which looks to be an interesting one for the Niners. Cheers! Jusdafax (talk) 16:27, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Going to work on (slowly) destubbing all of our stubs.  Kees08  (Talk)   20:13, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Many thanks! And we need to fix the redirect, but it’s not in my skill set. The Talk page should go to WikiProject Niners, not here. Jusdafax (talk) 20:37, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to Archive Sub-projects
I imagine this has been brought up before, but I would like to propose that WP:NFL formally mark all of the team-based sub-projects with Historic. The only sub-project with any semblance of activity is the Green Bay Packers WikiProject, mostly because I and a few others keep it alive. I have moved WP:PACKERS to a "related WikiProject" on the NFL page instead of a sub-project and am happy to continue maintaining it and keeping it going. However, after reviewing the other sub-projects, I think it would be best if we move forward and archive them. None of them have had any real activity for years. Marking them as historic would be the easy part, but the next part would be nominating all of the associated templates and WikiProject-categories for deletion.

Many may wonder why I think think this is important. Having started and restarted WP:PACKERS, I can tell you how much time and effort it takes to get everything organized, tagged, and cleaned-up to make it all work. If we get new editors to WP:NFL, I would much rather they focus on improving NFL pages for whatever team they like, instead of spending a lot of time trying to restart a sub-project.

For a list of which projects I am discussing, see WikiProject National Football League. Note that I was bold and tagged the Defunct teams and Referee sub-projects as Historic because neither sub-project had any real activity (articles weren't tagged with a banner template). Interested to see what everyone's opinion is. Thanks for considering. « Gonzo fan2007  (talk)  @ 01:28, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * To elaborate, this would also entail the deletion of all of the WikiProject banners (such as WikiProject Chicago Bears) for these sub-projects, as well as associated assessment categories. Seems like it would be easier to just add the NFL banner, instead of a bunch of teams. Does anyone have an opinion on this? I would like to have some consensus before nominating them for deletion. « Gonzo fan2007   (talk)  @ 15:58, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I say go for it, small time Wikiprojects are both mainly unused and don't serve a purpose that WP:NFL (with way more activity) can't. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 16:13, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It has been ✅. « Gonzo fan2007   (talk)  @ 20:03, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I didn't notice this proposal until today, and I object. Just because the Vikings subproject (for example) hasn't seen any activity for a while doesn't mean the project isn't still useful. – PeeJay 22:12, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * , most of the sub-projects haven't had edits in years (some upwards of 10 years), but if one or more are still useful, than removing the historic tag for that project is fine by me. « Gonzo fan2007   (talk)  @ 22:27, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Likewise tardy to the party here, but I too object to this. If nothing else, the category structure of tagged pages for each individual project will always be useful. Ejgreen77 (talk) 19:48, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Can someone re-assess this article
Hi! So I know almost nothing about football and the NFL but I've taken an interest in the Vontae Davis article after the recent events at the Bills game. I've been trying to clean it up and add sources. I think it's gone a little past start class (its current assessment, but that was for the article as it stood in mid-2009), and its importance to the WikiProject hasn't been assessed yet (I would say maybe... mid based on y'all's subpage with the guidelines for importance). Was wondering if someone could hop on over and re-evaluate the article so I have a better sense of what I can be doing. cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 00:53, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Changes to "Pre-draft measurables" table
Just want to let everybody know that has changed the information in the "Pre-draft measurables" tables on various players' pages. I did not look through all of them, but there are differences from the officially announced results by the NFL. – Sabbatino (talk) 11:05, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Let's do a case-by-case analysis of sources wherever you see fit. I have relied on the official NFL Combine numbers. In cases where players did better at the Pro Day, I have used those numbers, although the official combine measurables have usually been lend primacy, stemming from an assumption of superior testing equipment at the combine. So, all the changes have been sourced and originate with the NFL. I am happily willing to discuss any changes with anyone. - Frauwa —Preceding undated comment added 11:21, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
 * My bigger pircture answer is that a slew of combine measurements is WP:FANCRUFT, and should just be removed. Notable ones can be explained in prose, instead of doing a random trivia drop packed in a bulky table.—Bagumba (talk) 11:54, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
 * 100% agree. A real encyclopedia would not have this number dump under this format. Any notable achievements (such as fastest 40 time at that particular combine) should just be written into prose instead. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 17:38, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Template NFL team merge discussion
There is a merge discussion at Templates for discussion/Log/2018 September 17 that editors may be interested in discussing.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 20:05, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
 * FYI it regards merging Template:Infobox NFL team-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 21:04, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Trying to build consensus on Taysom Hill's infobox position and statistics
Hey all, I have noticed that there have been a lot of back and forth edits on Taysom Hill's page regarding his listed position and statistics. So far I have seen Quarterback, Quarterback & Special Teamer, Quarterback & Kick Returner, and simply "Athlete". I have started a discussion on the article's Talk Page to try and form a consensus on which positions and which statistics to list. Best, GPL93 (talk) 12:41, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

"a NFL team" or "an NFL team"
There is a situation at George Taliaferro's page as people keeping using the "a NFL team" formation. The "an NFL team" (same goes to the NBA and NHL) is the correct formation, but people are just ignoring it. Anybody want to clarify this? – Sabbatino (talk) 05:19, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Procedural note: It's OK to start a discussion here and not the actual article page; however, it's good to leave a note there so those other editors (or other new ones) also have access to this discussion.—Bagumba (talk) 05:36, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * It would generally be "an NFL team", because pronouncing N starts with a vowel sound. However, the text in question at the article is "National Football League (NFL) team", in which case the article a goes with National.—Bagumba (talk) 05:36, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was a bit confused when I looked at the article and saw that it doesn't actually say "a NFL team"; it says "a National Football League (NFL) team", which isn't the same as what you said. If it said "NFL" rather than "National Football League", you'd be right, but in this case "a National Football League (NFL) team" is correct. – PeeJay 07:03, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clarification. I was sure that "an" should be used. – Sabbatino (talk) 09:35, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * No prob. Thanks for taking the initiative to start the discussion.—Bagumba (talk) 10:16, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

NFL Team Seasons Lists - Need Consensus
All, I undid changes at List of Green Bay Packers seasons here. I then checked their contributions and noticed that about there last 100 edits have incorporated similar changes to most of the NFL team seasons lists. I disagree with these changes, specifically the addition of the head coaches column, and unnecessary and outside the scope of the list. For the Packers, we already have List of Green Bay Packers head coaches which provides this information more clearly. I would like to get consensus here though on whether or not these additions are supported. , would you please explain the purpose of these changes and whether you gained any consensus for making them across all the various team lists? « Gonzo fan2007  (talk)  @ 16:06, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, we already have a better page of this sort of info. Seems to me like they are trying to replicate the Pro Football Reference format for it. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 18:56, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Providence Steamrollers
New to this. I am wondering why the Providence Steamrollers do not appear in the history of the NFL. What is the reason? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Providencesteamroller (talk • contribs) 01:18, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
 * They were mentioned already at List of defunct National Football League franchises and List of NFL champions (1920–1969). You can be bold and add content if you think it is due weight to mention at History of the National Football League or anywhere else.—Bagumba (talk) 05:20, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

Suspended players (for apparently the third or fourth time)
Hey guys, long time no see. Having a disagreement with User:Dissident93 on his talk page about showing players currently suspended by the NFL as members of their respective teams. This topic has apparently already been discussed several times before on this talk page (here, here, here, here, etc.) In the case of Tyrone Robertson, he was suspended by the NFL indefinitely in 2002 and remained on the reserve/suspended list until he was released from it in 2015. I changed his infobox to reflect his membership of the team from 2001-2015, to which Dissident93 reverted my change, saying "come on" as his rationale, as well as "I can't believe how you honestly think he was an active member of the team for this long". I made changes to other player articles to reflect their accurate NFL tenure, including Rolando McClain, R. Jay Soward, and Tanard Jackson. These players are currently on their teams' Reserve/Suspended list because they have not been released yet. Dissident93 wants me to provide evidence that these players were still members of their teams, which I can point to the Robertson case as an example of players remaining on the team's suspended list for a long time before being released. As far as I can tell, based on recent discussions on this page, Dissident93 wants desperately to be able to say a player's career is over, instead of being patient and waiting for the player and his team to make that decision. It is clear in the previous discussions on this talk page that Dissident93 has actually agreed with my argument before, but has now changed his mind because of "extreme example[s]" that "we shouldn't account for".  Eagles   24/7  (C)  21:21, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * If a player is on the suspended list indefinitely, what happens to their registration with their team? Surely they're no longer registered with a team once their contract runs out, right? When did Tyrone Robertson's contract with the Bills expire? – PeeJay 21:27, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * When a player is suspended, his contract with the team tolls. Josh Gordon was signed to a four-year contract in 2012, but the contract didn't expire until after the 2017 season due to his being suspended for two entire seasons. Robertson's contract never expired until the Bills terminated it in 2015.  Eagles   24/7  (C)  21:31, 4 October 2018 (UTC)


 * I need to clarify that I agree with listing them if the team still cares to officially do the same on their roster page. Players like McClain and Jackson haven't been listed/mentioned on the team's official roster in years, and players like Justin Blackmon, who I previously defended in the post you brought up, is also no longer listed on the Jaguars roster. You claiming that Robertson was an active member (by that, I mean attempting to return to the team/go through the reinstatement process, which he obviously never did) of the Bills for nearly 15 years because he just happened to be forgotten on the reserve list (which brings no harm to the team, as they aren't paid/listed against roster number limits) for that long of a time period is just way too technical. We need to account for common sense here, else we could probably find older examples of players being on the team's roster for 50+ years. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 21:32, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * So you're saying Mychal Kendricks should not be listed as a member of the Seahawks anymore since he does not appear on the team's website? Despite being suspended days ago and theoretically could return this season? Also, I did extensive research last week and there are currently five players suspended indefinitely but still a member of their respective teams: R. Jay Soward (Jaguars since suspension in 2002), Justin Blackmon (Jaguars since suspension in 2013), Tanard Jackson (Redskins since suspension in 2014), Rolando McClain, and Kendricks.  Eagles   24/7  (C)  21:36, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * He was just recently suspended, you are trying to argue that indefinite suspensions from 2+ years ago belong in the same discussion, to which I disagree. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 17:57, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This is odd, especially since agreed with this 6 months ago. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 22:58, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Read my first response here, I needed to clarify this. Both Josh Gordon and Ricky Williams were eventually reinstated and played in games again, but the examples Eagles247 provided didn't, which is where I disagree. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 17:58, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * If a team no longer publicly acknowledges a player is on their roster (and the usual way of doing that is having them on their website), what source do we have that they are still on the team's roster? <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 01:55, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * 100% my point. There may be players that were indefinitely suspended 20-30 years ago that technically never got removed from the reserve list, to which Eagles247 says they have actually been a member of the team for that long. There has to be a line of common sense here. To make things simple, if the team no longer lists them as a member of the team, then we shouldn't either. Tanard Jackson was listed on the Redskin's suspended list for around a year until just being removed. Can anybody prove he's still a member of the team? How are you so sure that you just didn't miss a transaction for these players somewhere? ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 17:57, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok, after looking at this closer, this isn't as straightforward as I thought. Especially one like Tyrone Robertson. He may have been on Buffalo's reserve list for 15ish years, but I agree that listing him as a member of the Bills for that length of time is kind of ridiculous. This now has me questioning if a player like Josh Gordon was handled properly. What if he had never been reinstanted? It would have eventually turned into a situtation like Tyrone Robertson. I'm somewhat leaning towards suggesting that an indefinite suspension (or even anything longer than a season) means that they are no longer a member of that team and that their infobox should reflect that. Just having the rights to a player doesn't make them a member of the team. For one example (unrleated to suspensions), the Calgary Stampeders drafted Laurent Duvernay-Tardif in 2014 and they have his rights if he ever decides to quit the NFL and join the CFL, but having the Calgary Stampeders own his rights doesn't get listed in his infobox and no one would argue that it would. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 21:33, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the common sense approach should be: If the team still publicly claims a player, we should list them as such, both on their own page and on the team pages. If a team no longer makes a public claim on a player, unless some unusual circumstance indicates otherwise, we should not list them. It might be worth a footnote in the player's article indicating that external evidence shows a particular team has some specified rights to the player (per WP:RS, citing the evidence), but the team articles and rosters themselves should not list the player. Sound reasonable?
 * (By the way, I'm on a semester-long wikibreak, rarely editing.) <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 21:56, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This was pretty much how we already handled it before these recent edits anyway. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 00:51, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

This is a gray area we'll always have to deal with, like how we assume players who haven't played after a few years are retired. We have to use editorial judgement and a bit of WP:OR because often there just won't be sources covering these things. Lizard (talk) 16:11, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Slightly off-topic, but why do we even list players as free agents anyway? If they aren't a member of a team, we should simply write them as "John Smith is an American football player." This way, we don't need to worry about removing "free agent" in 3-4 years after they last played. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 00:53, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I know I'm late but better late than never. I think that if they come back and play (For example: Ricky Williams and Josh Gordon), then leave their infobox alone. However, if they never return to the team, I'm not sure because their contract isn't terminated. Michael Vick was suspended for two years, then reinstated, then released by the Falcons. This means he was just on the exempt list until 2008. RoyalsLife 15:07, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm not up on the nuances of the NFL suspended list. For Rolando McClain, it looks like he signed a 1-yr deal with Dallas in 2016. While he is indefinitely suspended by the NFL, does his contract w/ his team (Dallas) remain on hold, or has it expired?—Bagumba (talk) 12:14, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Players are not paid as long as they are suspended, so time remaining on the contract does not accumulate either. So technically, McClain should still have that one-year contract with the team if he hasn't been waived since then. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 19:08, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

National Football League lore
Can we get some consensus here about what qualifies as "lore"? This article has had several edit wars going on recently, due to what qualifies as lore. I have been guilty of participating in some of the edit warring, so I would like to have some input from neutral parties on what games / plays should be included. Natg 19 (talk) 00:23, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Pinging, , to notify them of this discussion.
 * My guess is this is an WP:INDISCRIMINATE collection of miscellaneous notable events, and should probably be deleted.—Bagumba (talk) 07:18, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Any article notable enough to be included on that list should have its own article anyway, so no need for the overall list. – PeeJay 07:56, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The edit warring has started as a result of User:Tapper930 (hereinafter "Tapper") inserting a recent comeback by the Green Bay Packers onto the page. Several users, including myself, have removed it on the basis that it is unsourced, very recent, and not "lore" (a term that is subjective in nature).  Tapper reverted these edits eleven times over the last month, and various IPs (I believe some or all of them to be Tapper in disguise, although I have no hard evidence to support that belief) have accounted for six additional reverts.  Over the last week or so, Tapper has decided to remove other plays attempting to prove a point that if his play isn't "lore," then these other plays are not lore either.  (Although one of the plays he insists on removing, the Super Bowl XLIX interception, contains a source that explicitly calls this play "NFL lore.")  Recent edit summaries show a desperate attempt to impose his will on the article, including violations of WP:POINT and WP:CRYSTAL...
 * All that being said, I really don't see a need to have a list of these game summaries per User:Bagumba and User:PeeJay2K3. Most entries on the page have their own Wikipedia article, and the debate of "what is lore?" has been going on the article's talk page for years.  Perhaps a category would be more appropriate than a full article.  Frank Anchor Talk 19:25, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
 * If, as what people have already told me, is true, and my additions are not lore, then there are multiple others that are not lore either. A lore is something that will stick in the NFL history books for more than just when the game itself took place.  A lore is something that people from all fan bases remember, not just the two of the teams that participated.  If a play is remembered for a few months, that doesn't make it lore.  Many of the recent lores on here have been forgotten by fans who aren't die hards, and that alone is a problem. To answer Frank Anchor's statement, all of the links posted with "The Interception"-which, for another time, has to change its name if it does stay-are making predictions that the play will be NFL lore.  They make the statement the day of or right after, which isn't a proper source.
 * There should be rules put up for what lore is. From what people are telling me and complaining about, there has to be a minimum age for a play or game for it to be put up.  If anything is going to be added-or stay on the list-it has to be a certain age.  Other rules also have to be produced.  A play being made in the Super Bowl to end the game is fairly common.  Being an interception does not make the ending to XLIX any more unique than V and XXII.Tapper930 (talk) 02:49, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
 * To clarify, the source in question, which was posted in September 2016 - almost two years after the event happened - stated it is "an iconic moment that will forever be etched in NFL lore" - therefore is, not "might be" or "could be" NFL lore. There are a lot more issues with the NFL Lore page than this one properly sourced entry. Frank Anchor Talk 12:21, 31 October 2018 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree with User:Bagumba's statement above. There are no objective standards for what constitutes lore, and the list probably also violates Wikipedia's core content policy: No original research. Cbl62 (talk) 03:02, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Salvaging this Short of deleting this, the only possible alternative I can think of would be to covert this into a list pointing to standalone articles of famous NFL games and plays, say those at Category:American football incidents and Category:National Football League games. Otherwise, lore is subjective, and this remains a mess.—Bagumba (talk) 04:07, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Comment Surely a ton of notable plays/events from the NFL's history are closly related enough that they should be listed/grouped together somewhere other than a category, right? I think the least we could do is just remove all entries that do not have individual articles. Thus, stuff like "The Interception" and "28-3" would be removed, but the "Philly Special" and "Minneapolis Miracle" kept. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 18:11, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The issue is there is no clear-cut definition of what constitutes "lore" &mdash; the first sentence in the article says "The National Football League lore is a collection of information that National Football League (NFL) fans retain and share." Not a great delineation of what to include. Notable National Football League games or something similar would provide for a clearer scope of what the article could include. As an example, the Dolly Gray impostor is part of the lore (i.e. tradition) of the Green Bay Packers, but isn't an actual game. I would support the deletion of the article as it currently is written. « Gonzo fan2007   (talk)  @ 20:05, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Per above discussion, I have brought this article to AfD: Articles for deletion/National Football League lore (2nd nomination). Natg 19 (talk) 20:47, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

NFL teams' navboxes
I thought about working on the teams' navboxes but after looking through all of them, I decided to get some clarity about my observations: I am not going to fight over this, but navboxes are supposed to include key facts only and should not be a place to include hundreds of repetitive and/or unnecessary links. – Sabbatino (talk) 17:24, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Why are the teams' seasons listed in the main template (for example, Template:New Orleans Saints) and in a completely different template (for example, Template:New Orleans Saints seasons)? What is the purpose of listing the same information twice? Seasons should be in one or the other template but not in both.
 * 2) Why are the wild card berths, division and conference championships listed? They do not help anyone and it just litters the navbox with useless and repetitive information (some teams' navboxes even include the number of playoffs' appearances).
 * 3) I am also not sure about the current/former affiliation sections in the teams' navboxes. What relevant information does it give to the reader?
 * 4) In some teams' navboxes the Hall of Famers and/or "Ring of Honor" members are listed, which is another problem, because that makes it excessive. Listing the retired numbers would be enough.
 * 5) Some navboxes do not list key personnel and have separate sections for owner(s) or other staff.
 * Ditto. It would be great to standardize what the categories for inclusion (that make up each row heading) should be, as well as how things are displayed and formatted. Agree that things like seasons, hall of famers, etc should stay in their own respective nav boxes. « Gonzo fan2007   (talk)  @ 17:54, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The reason two exists are usually because you might not want the full navbox on some pages so you use the more specific one for that page. I can't think of an example off my head at the moment however. But you certainly would not/should not put both on the same page. However, in general I prefer one larger infobox over a number of smaller ones as putting too many smaller infoboxes on a page leads to excessive clutter. -DJSasso (talk) 18:04, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * On the contrary, both navboxes would generally be on each season page because of WP:BIDIRECTIONAL. In my mind, List of New Orleans Saints seasons is already linked in Template:New Orleans Saints, so enumerating each season in the main team navbox is excessive and should be removed.  Readers can click on the "season" links to get to individual seasons. Template:New Orleans Saints seasons should only be placed on indivudal season articles;  that is the convention in WP:NBA.—Bagumba (talk) 08:48, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Navboxes are meant to ease in navigating related topics and articles. However, if they just become a massive infodump, like some of these ones are, then it becomes a hassle to navigate and therefore should be cleaned up to fix that. I agree with all that you have listed, as well supporting the standardization idea that Gonzo_fan2007 brought up. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 18:04, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Then the question arises how this should be handled? Should there be a vote or a sub-section should be created in this discussion to list every change? I changed to teams' navboxes of the NHL teams in the past and nobody was against it. I then recently changed the navboxes' appearances for the NBA teams (created a discussion and only one user was interested in it and supported the new format), but one other user just reverted the changes at Template:Cleveland Cavaliers (all other NBA teams' navboxes have the new format) and keeps saying that "the navboxes of for major league teams should all look the same" despite then saying that "he does not care how it looks"... – Sabbatino (talk) 10:11, 5 November 2018 (UTC)


 * That's a pretty blatant micharacterization of my comments at the NBA Wikiproject talk page,, and I think you know that. I really don't care what is or is not included in these team templates, with one important exception: broadcasting content. Specifically, broadcast outlets like local radio, local TV, and/or RSNs. Sabbatino, along with at least one other editor at the NBA Wikiproject, supports removing all media content from NBA team templates (with the possible exception of a single piped "Broadcasters" link to  List of (Team name) broadcasters ). And I'm *fine* with that. I just think that, from the perspective of broadcast outlet articles, there should be consistency across the major sports leagues. Consider this: WBZ-FM is the radio flagship for both the New England Patriots and the Boston Celtics. If, per WP:BIDIRECTIONAL, the Boston Celtics template is removed from the WBZ-FM article (as the WBZ-FM link is removed from the Celtics template), then shouldn't the New England Patriots template also be removed? That's my basic concern. I focus primarily on radio content, and it makes little difference whether it's NBA or NFL or MLB or NHL broadcast play-by-play. They are all play-by-play, and ought to be treated consistently in radio station articles. Broader consensus among team templates from all the major leagues can help achieve that. I defer to the relevant Wikiprojects on all other content in these team navboxes; add or remove whatever else you want. I'm simply looking for consistency regarding broadcast content. Levdr1 lp  /  talk  00:41, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Consistency is easier said than done. Just look at the respective projects' navboxes.  I take the approach that if one project figures out how to do it "right", other projects will (hopefully) follow later.—Bagumba (talk) 08:51, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Aaron Hernandez article
Opinions are needed on the following: Talk:Aaron Hernandez. A permalink for it is here. The discussion concerns Hernandez's sexuality and how much detail to include on it, and WP:In-text attribution. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:46, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Minnesota's preseason game summary are keep in keeping categorized
This is silly, why can't they all be kept in categories? PeeJay is justify his selfish rvvs by making me have to explain why it's logical to move them into sub categories. Check out 2012 Seattle Seahawks and subsequent pages, they all are categorized. It seems to me he is just reverting them just for the sake of me not to use BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. GalaxyFighter55 (talk) 01:03, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * That’s not true at all. I reverted you originally (and subsequently) because I disagree with your edits. The BRD thing came later because you refused to discuss your changes in any forum other than edit summaries, which is unacceptable. Anyway, the Vikings pages are also categorised, with all preseason content kept together (overall schedule followed by game summaries), and then the regular season follows the same way. I really don’t understand why you have such an issue with this format, nor why you were so reluctant to start a discussion once I challenged you. I mean, fair play for doing it now, but not before you single-handedly ignited a somewhat pointless edit war. – PeeJay 01:09, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Some preferences are that viewers would rather see the entire schedule more so than the game summary. You wanted to drag this out when all you had to do was just let it go. In the end you're going to "claim" victory because talk pages do little to no progress and you'll just keep your edit. How about doing that to ALL NFL pages if you feel your edit is that righteous? --GalaxyFighter55 (talk) 01:14, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Plus, the game summary gets in the way of that, why can't you understand that?--GalaxyFighter55 (talk) 01:17, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * This is exactly why I reverted your edit. That seems to be the only thing that makes you answer back. But for some reason you refuse to live up to your own "status quo" around here. Seems to me this is your ego instead of a healthly edit debate on the talk.GalaxyFighter55 (talk) 01:36, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I find it really disappointing that, while I've attempted to remain civil throughout this process, you've resorted almost immediately to playing the man, not the ball. Yes, I understand that some people would prefer to have all the schedules grouped together in one section, but I also acknowledge that there are readers who would prefer to read the article chronologically, with all the preseason content grouped together followed by the regular season and then the postseason, with subsections within those for the schedule, the game summaries and the standings. This isn't just a case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT on my part; I disagree with your edits and I believe we should have a discussion about them, not just sit there and sling brief barbs at each other via edit summaries. You accuse me of simply wanting to "win" this discussion, but you're guilty of exactly the same thing. You say you're following the format from the Seattle Seahawks articles, but why couldn't we change the Seahawks articles to match the Vikings? This is why we need to have a discussion, to establish a consensus as to which of us is right. If we can't reach a consensus, you don't just get to make your changes anyway, nor would I presume to make changes to any other articles myself. There are hundreds of NFL season articles on Wikipedia, and I've chosen to focus my attention on the Vikings. I'm sorry if there aren't enough hours in the day for me to monitor all of them, but there just aren't, and I refuse to dedicate any more of my time than I already do to stopping editors like yourself from riding roughshod over the encyclopaedia, making unilateral changes that, in my opinion, make these articles worse for the reader. – PeeJay 01:42, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * It works both way, PeeJay. That Vikings page is literally the ONLY ONE with that format. But whatever, I gave up so I hope you're happy. I'm not wasting my life on it anymore.GalaxyFighter55 (talk) 04:13, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I was never trying to convince you to give up, I'm just stating my case and acting in accordance with Wikipedia's policies. Perhaps you should take some of your own advice and stop trying to play the victim card. – PeeJay 04:20, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I already told you, I'M DONE. Zip. You're acting in the exact same manner here. I'm done with this section. Good day.GalaxyFighter55 (talk) 04:32, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Now, if anybody else would like to make this case here be free, but I personally don't think it's worth it now if we gotta wait for a consensus for this.GalaxyFighter55 (talk) 04:38, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Featured quality source review RFC
Editors in this WikiProject may be interested in the featured quality source review RFC that has been ongoing. It would change the featured article candidate process (FAC) so that source reviews would need to occur prior to any other reviews for FAC. Your comments are appreciated. --IznoRepeat (talk) 21:39, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Question about formatting in record lists
So on a number of NFL-related record/achievement lists (primary example being the list of National Football League career rushing touchdowns leaders), people are adamant about adding colored cells for players who are still active. As adding color really adds nothing besides personal preference, I think we should replace this with just simple bold wikimarkup for active players. Perhaps you could even say the same for the HOF players that get colored in as well, as the majority of these record list would be filled with players that are also in the PFHOF, meaning the ones that aren't are probably more notable to mention. Thoughts? ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 00:59, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. Colouring the cells is unnecessary formatting, whereas bold text is fairly unobtrusive. – PeeJay 10:15, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * There's already a precendent at FL List of National Football League annual receiving yards leaders. Why not follow it? FWIW, I believe it's also consistent with FLs for NBA and baseball projects(??)—Bagumba (talk) 16:32, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the desire to maintain consistency, but just because there is precedent doesn't mean that precedent is correct. In my experience, it's more usual to mark players who are still active with an asterisk and bolding than to add colour to their row. Colours should be reserved for players who have been elected to the HOF or something like that. – PeeJay 19:26, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Right, I'm just questioning if we should be doing this on any list as compared to a more simple method, like bolding or with a simple marked symbol. Is there any actual prior discussion for this, or is it something we just accepted as a standard because its so prevalent? It being used in FLs helps its case, but I'd still like to see actual support for it. ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 19:29, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

David Long
Dave Long (American football, born 1944) was stable at Dave Long (American football) for over 10 years. While trying to figure out how to address the creation of David Long Jr. and David Long (American football), I moved the page. In less than an hour, I tried to move it back. I may have been unclear at WP:AN. I now have a new request in at Requested_moves/Technical_requests. Feel free to weigh in as is appropriate.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:28, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Page has been moved back. Feel free to clean up hatnotes and anything else that catches your eye.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:50, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Also if either of the new guys is related to the guy on the 1971 Ohio State Buckeyes football team feel free to help me establish that.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:17, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Stephen Starring article needs help and watchlisters
While checking through contributions of a user, I discovered that the Stephen Starring page had a copy of a news story (warning: autoplay!) posted to it back in January 2014. The IP whose contribs I was looking at removed some unsource negative info earlier this year but I finally removed the whole story, nearly five years later! I can't find any sources that indicate that the charge mentioned in the news story was ever followed up on, so IMO including it is extreme undue weight. To this end, I've removed the unsourced text and added some referenced info, as well as trying to fix the infobox while I was there. I know nothing about American football, so if anybody would like to help out with the article as it now stands, feel free. Graham 87 12:11, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Infobox names
I've renamed to Infobox NFL team season, for clarity.

I suggest we update all instances, then rename Infobox NFL to Infobox NFL season, for the same reason.

This is / would be in keeping with the naming of infoboxes for other sports. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:26, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I would be in favor of this. It appears to make sense. Ejgreen77 (talk) 23:53, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Caption in infobox
and I disagree on the breadth of the image caption in NFL player infoboxes, in particular Jalen Ramsey. In short: should the caption be "[player] in [year of picture]" (as in Jalen Ramsey, Blake Bortles), or "[player] with [team] in [year of picture]" (as in Matt Barkley, Damon Harrison, etc.). I generally favor the latter, in particular when the picture shows the player in a different jersey than his present team. What is the general opinion? --bender235 (talk) 23:15, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * As has pointed out I prefer the "[player] in [year of picture]" format due it being the preferred format in articles outside of the scope of the NFL (at least the ones I deal with). However, I've been going through a few more articles about NFL players and it seems both formats are used pretty much interchangeably. I'd like to see a consensus reached on which format to use. DragonFury (talk) 23:25, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I prefer the second option. It seems obvious to us, but remember that we're supposed to be writing for a general audience, and not everybody will know what uniform belongs to what team. Like would you guys happen to know every single KBO League team just from their uniform? ~ <b style="color: #660000;">Dissident93</b> (<b style="color: #D18719;">talk</b>) 23:29, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * If in uniform, I prefer mentioning the team. I believe this is consistent with WP:CAPTION, since it provides context for the picture and addresses the uniform being shown. Typically, I prefer the team's city (unless ambiguous) being piped to the team article, as a non-fan reading will likely be more familiar with the city than the team's nickname.—Bagumba (talk) 08:53, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Linking in schedule section of season articles
Hey, i'm in a little disagreement with. As we link each stadium/network/player just once, i removed the links in the schedule section from the opponents, that the teams play twice against (the second game). An Example. He revered me without a given reason and i even wrote him on his talkpage but got no answer, so i went here to seek more opinions. Kante4 (talk) 12:44, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think it matters enough for anyone to start edit warring over. Personally, I don't see a problem with linking twice in the same table, but I don't have a problem with anyone removing duplicate links per WP:OVERLINK. – PeeJay 13:38, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Gees guys, do you have a vendetta against me? All I'm doing is just keeping the pages consistent. There's nothing wrong with that.--GalaxyFighter55 (talk) 23:28, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Why do we link to each only once but not the teams? Talk about consistency... That is why i'm here to here more editors. Kante4 (talk) 23:30, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It's been like that for years. Is there really any problem with linking a team twice? With a one link on a home stadium I understand, but this is too much. Trust me, I don't like getting into this types of problems, but I want order to come first is all. At least to pages under the same preference of one league.--GalaxyFighter55 (talk) 23:33, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * But it does make much sense to delink everything which is used more than once BUT the teams you face twice. Kante4 (talk) 19:02, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
 * To help solve this, I've had a look at some Wikipedia policies and found something relevant in MOS:REPEATLINK. The text reads (with my bolding added): "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but if helpful for readers, a link may be repeated in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence after the lead." Since it's not always obvious where each instance of a link will occur, I think it's sensible to leave all the links to other teams' seasons in place in schedule tables, so they can click it where they find it rather than having to search for the first instance. No need to remove links. Thanks. – PeeJay 16:49, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
 * That is an answer and argument i can live with and makes sense. Kante4 (talk) 20:47, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Category for Replacement Players
Was there ever a category related to NFL replacement players? If not I'm considering creating one given that there are many articles on players who appeared in the NFL solely as replacements during the 1987 strike. Best, GPL93 (talk) 02:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea to me. It probably would be defining for most all of them. Ejgreen77 (talk) 06:01, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
 * A category for replacement officials might be an idea worth exploring, too. Ejgreen77 (talk) 02:14, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree. I have already created the replacement players category and added 60 pages, although there are obviously a bunch more to be tagged. Best, GPL93 (talk) 13:53, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

NFL team season link template
Hey all,

As a sometime editor of NFL articles (mostly in relation to playoff scenarios), I find linking the season articles to be a bit arduous, so I've created a NFL team season template to allow for easily dropping the links in. It's currently a skeleton template and is currently only set for the current 32 in their respective locations (so, no San Diego Chargers, for example); could I please have assistance in filling it out? :) Sceptre (talk) 18:05, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure this is necessary. If this template is to be implemented, I hope its documentation will encourage editors to subst the template into the article when edits are saved. – PeeJay 21:23, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Category:National Football League replacement players
There is a new cat of Category:National Football League replacement players, which is being actively populated.

WP:CATDEFINING states A central concept used in categorising articles is that of the defining characteristics of a subject of the article. A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define[1] the subject as having—such as nationality or notable profession (in the case of people), type of location or region (in the case of places), etc. Do we think 1987 NFL strike participation is a defining characteristic of these players? UW Dawgs (talk) 01:40, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Oops. I now see there is discussion immediately above. Regardless, don't want anyone wasting effort if there isn't support for this cat, so will leave this discussion section intact. UW Dawgs (talk) 01:42, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It's Not that they participated in the strike, its that they were brought in solely as replacements for the striking players until the strike was resolved. Because of this, most players only appeared in the games that occurred during the three week strike and were then released once the labor dispute was resolved. Therefore, many of the articles tagged are for players who only meet WP:NGRIDIRON because they appeared in these games. I would think this is a pretty defining characteristic for someone's career. Best, GPL93 (talk) 01:50, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

I differ with the previous point, because the names that were already in place in the category and the ones that Im including are not just for the persons that played until the strike was resolved. There are multiple players that their first opportunity were the strike games and then went to have more years of playing time, there were also multiple veteran players that the strike games was an opportunity to get back into the league and to continue after the strike was done. If you don't include those cases, I would recommend closing the category.Jazz3111 (talk) 16:26, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, I apologize as I think I might have tried to over-simplify my argument for why having played in an NFL game as a replacement player is a defining part of there career. Regardless of if they played afterwards, had previously played, or only appeared in an NFL game during that three-week stretch the crux of why it is defining is because they all appeared in NFL games that they otherwise wouldn't have if not for the strike. Best, GPL93 (talk) 17:47, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Jim Taylor RM
Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Jim_Taylor_(American_football), regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, —Bagumba (talk) 06:23, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Massive amounts of uncited trivia being added
Anyone have any idea what to do about these edits: Special:Contributions/LaDanian1000000? It looks like every single one of his several dozen edits today is adding a sentence of trivia to the end of a 2018 season for an NFL player, completely uncited. I'm not clear the random fact mentioned is worth having in an article, and the thought of trying to fact-check every one of his edits makes me cringe.

He's been warned before to cite his changes, which makes it pretty clear that just leaving a message on his talk page isn't going to work. Suggestions? <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 01:44, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I've noticed these edits by this user as well, but I feel they are in good faith. Many of these edits are just game-by-game stat lines for a player - somewhat helpful, but also not necessary. Several edits seemed to check out, but I'd agree the coarse prose and lack of sources needed improvement. It's not shocking given these edits are made within one minute of each other. I'd be reluctant to open an ANI case or seek administrative discipline without having someone actually send the user a non-template warning message as to what they are doing wrong. --  StarScream1007  ►Talk  03:39, 19 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Issue escalating warnings for unsourced edits. If it continues past a final warning, request a block.—Bagumba (talk) 04:06, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Since other people have noticed and found the edits wanting (about half of them have already been reverted), I'll revert the rest, and I left a message to that effect on the editor's talk page. Regards, <b style="color:green">Tarl N.</b> ( discuss ) 04:35, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

The Alliance of American Football and Notability
Seeing that the league's kickoff is less than a month away. Do we have any new notability standards for players coaches who will be appearing in the league or no? Just wondering. Best, GPL93 (talk) 17:37, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Revised logos for first 4 Super Bowls
Per Sportslogos.net, it seems the wrong logos have been used for the first 4 Super Bowls up to this point. The versions used here on Wikipedia should probably be replaced with the newly identified versions. Y2Kcrazyjoker4 (talk &bull; contributions) 12:14, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Edelman surprised a young girl with Super Bowl tickets after he learned she was bullied for playing football
Hi, Can you please share any feedback you may have about placing this news item into the Julian Edelman article? Please post any feedback at this section of the articles talk page. Vwanweb (talk) 23:27, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Redundant naboxes?
Just a question, but if we have a link to every season in the team specific navboxes, why do we have a completely separate templates for each team in Category:National Football League team season templates?UCO2009bluejay (talk) 19:10, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Let me add the MLB and NBA templates don't have every season listed in both types of navbox?UCO2009bluejay (talk) 19:12, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think this has been addressed before. I think we should remove them from the main team navboxes and use a specific navbox for each of their seasons. – PeeJay 19:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * In addition, the NHL pages do not have it either. There are two templates for each team – main and seasons' navboxes. It should be fixed, because now it does not help it and just stuffs the pages with two unneeded navboxes. – Sabbatino (talk) 06:56, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

WP 1.0 Bot Beta
Hello! Your WikiProject has been selected to participate in the WP 1.0 Bot rewrite beta. This means that, starting in the next few days or weeks, your assessment tables will be updated using code in the new bot, codenamed Lucky. You can read more about this change on the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team page. Thanks! audiodude (talk) 06:46, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Player physical characteristics
Is there a definitive go to source that is generally used for player physical characteristics such as weight, height, etc.? The reason I'm asking is because of some changes being made to Michael Strahan and also because of WP:THQ. It appears that has been going around making changes to player/athlete height in some articles (not just NFL players), which might need a little more discussing. Height seems to be one of those things where it's quite possible to find different details given in varous sources; for example, NBA player heights can seem to vary widely from what's reported in "official" sources to what's reported in other media sources. Moreover, some sources may round up or down because the exact height is not extremely relevant to the particular article, or they might make a distinction between "listed height" and "real height". So, I'm just curious as to whether this WikiProject has any guidance on this matter. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:37, 1 March 2019 (UTC)