Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Al McClellan

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep per consensus. Non-admin closure. Warrah (talk) 04:01, 13 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Al McClellan[edit]

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This article fails to meet the requirements of WP:BIO. The sources currently quoted fail to address notability and being appointed to head coach of a college is not of itself a demonstration of notability. Using Google search [1] I find an obituary but again this does not contain any new information to demonstrate sufficient notability for a biography article. A merge of any unique information to the college page may be suitable. Ash (talk) 12:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Basketball-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 14:52, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep. In the United States, college basketball is big business, although perhaps not to the same degree that college (American) football is, and there may already be articles on most of the leading American college basketball and college football coaches - not quite inherent notability, but something close to it. Al McClellan is from an earlier period, but even then basketball coaches were fairly important people. The Los Angeles Times ran a UPI obituary of him, which suggests that his reputation was more than purely local. I checked the Library of Congress catalog at http://catalog.loc.gov , thinking that he might have written a book, but I didn't find any listings for him as an author. And I have some questions that I am unlikely to find answers for: Was he notable as an athlete before he became a coach? Was he also an academic? He died in a veterans hospital. When and where did he serve in the military? What else did he do? - Eastmain (talk) 17:27, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Notability is always a little harder to demonstrate for those that died a couple of decades ago or more due to a lack of on-line sources (I also find no mention of him in Google Books even in sports books by others). If no other significant achievements are highlighted in his obituaries then it is unlikely that any will pop up later. Certainly if his military service was notable it would be mentioned in any decent obituary. Generally I have difficulty believing in a case for considering all American college basketball coaches as notable by default unless you can point to a prior consensus on the matter.—Ash (talk) 17:45, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I wouldn't say that all college basketball coaches are notable, but Boston College and Providence College are both reasonably well-known Division I programs who frequently appear in end-of-season tournaments, so I'd be OK with having comprehensive coverage of all their coaches. McClellan's obituary ran in the LA Times, which suggests some level of nationwide recognition. And I'd be very surprised if there weren't other sources available offline - only a fraction of newspaper articles from his era are listed at Google News. Zagalejo^^^ 19:22, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It depends on the college. Boston College is a major school. DGG ( talk ) 04:09, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.