Talk:Tennessee Volunteers football

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peer review Tennessee Volunteers football has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.
football
College football Portal

Tennessee Volunteers football is part of WikiProject College football, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to college football on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Assessment Comments
Tennessee
Portal
Tennessee Volunteers football is within the scope of WikiProject Tennessee, an open collaborative effort to coordinate work for and sustain comprehensive coverage of Tennessee and related subjects in the Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, and even become a member.
[Watch Project Articles] • [Project Page] • [Project Talk] • [Template Usage]
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the Project's quality scale.
Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the Project's importance scale.
Please explain ratings on the ratings summary page.

Contents

[edit] Missing sections

I've created a page on the Vols and added as much info I can find, but the article is missing info in the overview and history sections. -DavisLee 22:15, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Two corrections to bowl games: 1. Should be Cotton Bowl instead of Orange Bowl in '69. 2. Last Gator Bowl should be '94 instead of '95. 209.214.104.60 17:55, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] National Championships

1938: Tennessee was declared champions in 8 polls. TCU was second with 4. This is enough to consider Tennessee national champions. 1940: Minnesota was declared champions in all but 4 polls. Tennessee was declared champions in two of those other four. This was not even close. Tennessee can't even legitimately claim a co-national championship. 1950: Tennessee and Oklahoma were declared champions in five polls each. Co-national champions. 1951: Maryland was declared national champions in five polls. Tennessee was declare champions in four. This is close enough for them to be co-national champions. 1967: Tennessee was declared champions in only one poll. USC had 13. No legitimate claim here. 1998: This is obvious. Tennessee was declared national champions in all but one poll.

In conclusion, Tennessee has no legitimate claim in 1940 and 1967. Does anyone have a reasonable disagreement with this? Dlong 19:48, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Winning in one or two minor polls does not warrant inclusion. In 1994, Penn State and Nebraska both had undefeated seasons. The polls were split down the middle between the two; nevertheless, the consensus is a national title for Nebraska, because they won in the major polls. What's more, you will notice that one of the minor polls actually (and inexplicably) picked Florida State for the national title. One cannot go by the decision of a few minor polls. -Patstuart(talk)(contribs) 19:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
http://www.ncaa.org/champadmin/ia_football_past_champs.html Patstuart(talk)(contribs) 19:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I am glad that some people have gone to the trouble of going back and despite every bit of evidence provided, still continue to denie that Tennessee does not have six national titles. The NCAA does not crown a national champion the polls do. There is no rule stating that a school has to be picked by a certain number of publications to be the national champion. The fact is, the NCAA considers all six years I have mentioned (1938, 1940, 1950, 1951, 1967, 1998) national title years. If someone is mad because they went and bought a publication that says four, then I am sorry you wasted your money. The fact is the NCAA recognize all six years. This is not a debate the titles are there read the links I have provided. The fact is you can edit this article as much as you want but in the end the truth is there are six titles. Blame the NCAA not me. I am simply trying to tell the truth not copy down something written in an overpriced book. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.83.20.147 (talk • contribs) 15:56, 4 December 2006 (UTC).

You don't see Ohio State claiming the 1998 national championship, or Florida State claiming the 1996 national championship. This is no different. Dlong 21:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Again, get your nose out of the book. Check the NCAA website. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.83.20.147 (talk • contribs) 08:30, 5 December 2006 (UTC).

Sign your comments. And until you address my points, this discussion is over. I've already checked with several other editors, and they all agree with me. It's not like you can edit the page anymore anyway. Dlong 15:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
This probably isn't or won't be the only instance this will occur. Schools probably claim a different number than the NCAA recognizes plenty of times. Perhaps the best way to deal with it is to include both ideas (aka, NPOV). Something like: "The NCAA officially recognizes Tennessee with 4 national championships in 19xx, 19xx, 19xx and 19xx. However, Tennessee claims 6 with the additional years of 19xx and 19xx. In 19xx, the yyyyyyy poll and in 19xx the zzzzzzz poll voted Tennessee the national champion. These polls are not commonly referred or claimed and the general consensus is that Tennessee has just 4 national championships." I know, literary works of art. (copied to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football) --MECU≈talk 17:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I like this general idea, but I have two concerns: (1) I don't think the NCAA officially recognizes ANY football championships. They may list them, and refer to them, but I don't think they really recognize or sanction them. (2) for the purposes of team infoboxes and tables listing multiple teams, I think the WikiProject College Football should adopt and stick with a standard of which polls we will use. Beyond that, I think it is fine to include prose in each team article that explains discrepencies and counter-claims (with sources of course). (copied to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football) Johntex\talk 18:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The official site of the current Tennessee Volunteer head coach Phillip Fulmer at (www.phillipfulmer.com) says that Tennessee has 6 national championships. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Treymcneil (talk • contribs)

[edit] National Championships Mediation

Hi. I agreed to mediate this case on behalf of the Cabal (not that I'm saying the Cabal exists). The question at hand is what number of national championships to report for the Vols. In an effort to make this go quickly and smoothly (so we can actually watch the bowl games) I've taken the liberty of doing some preliminary research. Here's what I've found.

[edit] NCAA's Stance

I found this on the NCAA's page where you can check how many championships your school has won:

"The NCAA does not conduct a championship for Division I-A football. Instead, these teams participate in a national championship system developed by the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) organization." [1]

Simply said, the NCAA does not recognize champions in football. This seems pretty clear to me, and I hope nobody wishes to argue this point.

[edit] BCS, AP, Etc.

Right below the above statement, a link is given to a very handy page that lists all poll picks (BCS, AP, USA/ESPN, etc) going back to 1869. Here's the link to that: click me!. Looking through this list, I compiled the following nice reference guide:

  • Times Tennessee was clear favorite (i.e. got BCS or equivalent pick) : 4 (1938, 1950, 1951, 1998)
  • Times Tennessee was picked by anyone : 7 (1938, 1940, 1950, 1951, 1956, 1967, 1998)

From my view, including all the above information (albeit in a different format with different wording) is the best way to go. However, I am but a lowly mediator, and my word is not law. However, the above is nice because it is easily verified, not biased, and very complete.

[edit] Other Schools

I also took a minute looking at a couple of articles for other big football schools.

  • Florida State claims two titles (1993 and 1999). This number refers to the two times FSU was a clear favorite. It has been picked by at least one poll 5 other times (1980, 1987, 1992, 1994, 1996).
  • LSU claims two championships (using the above criteria) but also mentions the 4 other years where some polling agency picked the Tigers. Please read the championships section in the LSU article since it closely resembles my vision for the Vols article.

As we can see from the above two cases, there is no set in stone method for recording championships on WP. As I said above, my preference is to give more rather than less.

[edit] Discuss

Please use this section to discuss my above proposal/factfinding. If you agree that we should inlcude the the complete info I compiled above, please state this somewhere in your comment using bold face. For example, I agree to go with the format suggested above. Alright folks, have at it! →Bobby← 15:24, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

  • I agree with listing the championships using the method shown above.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.83.20.147 (talk • contribs) 07:15, 2006 December 12
  • I partially agree. As I explain above, I think the infobox should contain information only as standardized by the college football WikiProject. That would mean leaving out the years that Tennessee was not the champion in one of the major polls of the day (for instance UPI, AP). I support a full explanation in the text of the article. Johntex\talk 15:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe that the championships should be listed using the format listed above or the championship section should just be removed so as not to incite further arguments.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.83.20.147 (talk • contribs) 07:59, 2006 December 12

That proposal would not solve anything. People would want to argue (and rightly so) why we don't mention any championships. Johntex\talk 16:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Then the championships should be listed as stated above. Mention the first four (1938, 1950, 1951, 1998) and then mention all seven (1938, 1940, 1950, 1951, 1956, 1967, 1998).—Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.83.20.147 (talk • contribs) 08:11, 2006 December 12

Saying it more loudly is not making your argument more persuasive. Neither is your continued refusal to sign your posts with ~~~~. Please sign your posts. Please understand that we have project-wide standards. It is not a good idea to just add in every conceivable championship that you would like to claim for your team. Those other years that are only supported by minor polls can be fully detailed in the prose of the article. In short, we will mention them, in the prose. Johntex\talk 16:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Mostly Disagree - I hate to be a wet towel on the situation, but a listing from a minor poll which had little consensus to it is not national championship, and should not be listed in the infobox. It probably shouldn't be mentioend at all, but if it is, the LSU page is a good model, but the caveat ought to be quite clear, probably clearer than at the LSU page. Teams with much more support than any of those 3 seasons have not listed national championships on their page at all (e.g., Penn State football, 1994), Patstuarttalk|edits 16:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - Alright. Given the above discussion it appears we have two issues to contend with: what format to use in the header, and what format to use in the infobox. I think PatStuart has a fair point about the total inclusion of all years. Our primary goal should be the construction of a highly informative and factual article. As such, we want to avoid any confusion caused by inadaquately explaining the criteria used for each year. For example, I would find it very misleading to read a statement in the Oklahoma article declaring that the Sooners won the national championship in 2003, since I distinctly recall reading many articles which listed LSU as champions. However, if mention was made in the Sooner article that Berryman named Oklahoma the national champion, even though all other polls opted for LSU, I would actually know more than I would after reading an article that omitted this bit of trivia. As such, I pose the following question: Does everyone agree that is is acceptable to post all years I mention above, provided we make it abundently clear when the Vols were not the consensual champion? →Bobby← 20:09, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I am happy to work with that idea so long as it is only in the prose, where it can adequately be eplained, and NOT in the infobox. Also, we have to be careful about the wording so as not to inject POV. Johntex\talk 21:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I mostly disagree; I think we should perhaps mention all years in the article itself, but for the teambox, we should leave it to consensus or consensus split national championships. Whatever we decide, it should be standard across all team articles. Perhaps this should be decided at WikiProject: College Football, so that all pages conform to a certain standard? Dlong 05:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Mostly agree - I'm along with Johntex on this one; as long as it's made quite clear that these are minor polls, and it's written in prose in the article, I don't see a problem with that. Dlong, am I mistaken, or are you saying the same thing as I and John and Bobby are? -Patstuarttalk|edits 16:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, sorry if I was unclear. I just wanted to mention that whatever is decided should be standard across all articles for consistency. Dlong 16:58, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Allow me to just thank you all for the very cordial interactions. Let's leave the ip editor a bit of time to gather his/her thoughts on the matter before pursuing the proposed course of action. If we don't hear from him by next Monday, I'd suggest making the edits. If he/she comes back and challanges them, we can open an RfC on the article to try and get larger consensus. Hopefully it won't come to this and we can all have a wikistress free holiday season! →Bobby← 15:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you, Bobby. Johntex\talk 01:53, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Mediation Result - Since there has been no objection to the compromise reached above, let's make the changes to the article. It seems like Johntex, Patstuart, and Dlong can do this without further mediation. If an issue comes up in the future, please let me know via my talk page right away. I will do whatever I can in that instance to avoid another time consuming content dispute. Thank you all, and happy holidays. →Bobby← 17:37, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why merge 2006 season page?

Is there a reason the merge tag was placed at the top of the 2006 Tennessee Volunteers football team article? -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 21:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Nope, and I think we should remove it... CJC47 21:16, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
That's what I thought. Just checking before I went ahead and removed it. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 21:24, 12 January 2007 (UTC)