Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1973 San Diego Toreros football team

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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. Clear keep consensus post RS from Cbl62 - no need to prolong. (non-admin closure) Britishfinance (talk) 23:25, 5 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

1973 San Diego Toreros football team[edit]

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1973 San Diego Toreros football team (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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The page possibly fails WP:GNG and a check on Google sees only results for the San Diego State and not the San Diego Toreros. HawkAussie (talk) 23:07, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. HawkAussie (talk) 23:07, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of American football-related deletion discussions. HawkAussie (talk) 23:07, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. HawkAussie (talk) 23:07, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - unremarkable Division III team's season. Eagles 24/7 (C) 23:16, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm seeing similar coverage for the 1973 Sweetwater High School football team in the San Diego area (including this and this among others), so if you guys want to create a page for a similar level of football feel free. As SportingFlyer said, it is pretty common for low-level (and not notable) sports clubs to receive significant local coverage (per WP:ROUTINE and WP:GEOSCOPE) and I can't support the inclusion of a non-notable Division III football team season. San Diego may very well be Division I now, but it wasn't at the time and notability is not inherited. Eagles 24/7 (C) 13:28, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment WP:ROUTINE and WP:GEOSCOPE are a part of Wikipedia:Notability (events). The article in question is about a team. Additionally, the coverage cited includes feature articles which is far surpasses the routine guideline. And since the team competed nationally at their level, that also places it far outside the "geoscope" guideline.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:50, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • They may have competed nationally, albeit at the lowest possible level governed by the NCAA, but there is no coverage of the team outside of the southern California region. As the coverage is mostly related to routine events the team participated in, those guidelines still apply here. Eagles 24/7 (C) 16:00, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Eagles247: I agree with you that unremarkable D3 seasons don't warrant stand-alone articles and that we need standards to limit the proliferation of such articles (otherwise we could eventually be faced with 50,000 sub-stubs on D2, D3, and NAIA football seasons). Compare Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2018 Olivet Comets football team. However, the 1973 Toreros are not in that unremarkable category. Further, two game stories in the local small-town Chula Vista newspaper is not remotely comparable to the statewide coverage received by the 1973 Toreros, including articles in the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Examiner. Cbl62 (talk) 16:03, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Those are fair points. How about the 1973 Temple City High School football team? Here, here, here, here, etc. Eagles 24/7 (C) 16:12, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think we've yet to allow a season article for a high school football team, but a winning streak from 1969 to 1973 ... that's worthy of coverage somewhere, maybe at Temple City High School#Athletics. My view is that the football projects should make the editorial judgment that we aren't going to have season articles on high school football teams. And college seasons below Division I should be limited to something extraordinary ... like a national championship or perhaps (as in this case) a final four appearance. I do not want to see us opening the flood gates to tens of thousands of stubs on ordinary D2, D3 and NAIA seasons (like 2018 Olivet) that have minimal content and that cannot be effectively monitored by our volunteers to protect from vandalism. Cbl62 (talk) 17:36, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I believe everyone in this discussion would agree that high school football teams should not have season articles. But the point I'm trying to make is, what's the difference between the 1973 Temple City HS football team and the 1973 San Diego Toreros football team in terms of notability? Both are amateur football clubs in which their players did not receive compensation in the form of athletic scholarships or salaries (Division III athletes do not receive scholarships), and both likely meet your threshold of significant coverage for WP:GNG. There is no article for the 1973 NCAA Division III football playoffs (or any season's Division III playoffs for that matter), so I'm not sure a presumed notability threshold should be earning a spot in the final four of a playoff series that isn't notable by itself. Eagles 24/7 (C) 17:59, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Eagles247: We largely agree. Regardless of whether a season can be said to arguably pass WP:GNG, the football projects have the right and ability to make editorial judgments on which levels of football seasons should and shouldn't be covered by season articles. That's what I would like to see happen. My original thought was that season articles for D3 should be limited to national championship teams -- however, I don't think consensus supports my original view. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2018 Saint John's Johnnies football team. So, my backup position is to try to build consensus that nothing below the final four in D3 should have season articles. Having consensus even at that slightly looser level would ameliorate the risk of people creating stub articles on thousands of ordinary D3 seasons supported by the kind of highly local, small-town coverage that many high school teams also receive. In my view, some consensus-drive, bright-line cutoff is better than none. Cbl62 (talk) 19:32, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, I think this is still best left to WP:GNG, but I think that's where the primary source of the disagreement is - you pinged me to change my vote on the grounds the team's season had been covered by the San Francisco Examiner and the Los Angeles Times, but looking at those sources brings up a box score, a three-sentence article written only because they played Loyola in Los Angeles, and a two-sentence article written only because they played St Mary's nearby San Francisco. The two good sources, in my opinion, are the Humboldt State feature article (again, written not because San Diego's season was particularly notable, but because Humboldt State were playing a specific opponent) and the Chula Vista article (which lends notability to the team, but not necessarily the season.) I expect this to be kept and don't really feel strongly about it since I'm enjoying the discussion and since the article's less terrible than most and they were one of the top four teams in their division, but even after the WP:HEY the article's prose is mostly sourced to the team's own media guide. I also respect the research that's been put in, I just disagree any sports coverage automatically implies notability in the Wikipedia context (even as a user who has improved a couple sports articles using pretty much exclusively local sources). SportingFlyer T·C 13:35, 1 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete entirely unsourced, no prejudice on recreation if better sources can be found. SportingFlyer T·C 23:36, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@SportingFlyer: Significant coverage has been added to the article from multiple, reliable sources, including two of the USA's largest newspapers: Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Examiner. Will you now reconsider your "delete" vote? Cbl62 (talk) 11:48, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 00:05, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I am skeptical about season articles about routine Division III team seasons. However, this one is different for several reasons. First, San Diego is now a Division I team (elevated in 1993) and there is great interest in providing full coverage for Division I teams. Second, the 1973 team made the final four of the D3 playoffs (maybe that's a reasonable cutoff for D3 teams?) Third, and even though archives of The San Diego Union-Tribune for 1973 are not readily available on-line, a quick search turns up a good deal of significant coverage in other reliable sources, sufficient IMO to pass WP:GNG. E.g.,this, this, this, this, this. Cbl62 (talk) 00:28, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Cbl62. @SportingFlyer: as I argued elsewhere, lack of sourcing in an article on its face is not reason to delete. Sourcing can usually be found. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:32, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Jweiss11: There are many poorly sourced season articles on this website. When I !voted delete, there were no references at all. I really question whether these sorts of articles are necessary, especially because if we go off of which sources are available alone, you could write these for high school sports seasons and technically still pass WP:GNG, but the article's certainly in a much better state than it was. SportingFlyer T·C 03:51, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@SportingFlyer: I'm aware that you voted delete before the addition of sources and expansion, but your vote's rationale was illegitimate nonetheless. The point is that lack of sourcing in an article—and toward which no one has yet put much effort—says almost nothing about the notability of the subject. What matters is all available sourcing that's out there that could be added to the article. I understand your concern about the specter of creating an article for every single college football team season and your argument about high school football, although I think consistent sourcing in higher status, notable newspapers is going to fall off for most high school programs. One-off AfDs are not the solution. We need have a general discussion about universal standards at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:16, 31 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Jweiss11: I am not going to assume a season article without sources for an amateur team which doesn't even play in its top division should be kept because sources might exist. Some of these articles are no more than two or three sentence long game recaps. Most of the notable coverage comes from a very small town which happens to have a university football team and a newspaper which isn't even the main rag for its metro area. Keep in mind I'm a member of an amateur club which gets local and occasionally statewide coverage - the clubhouse is full of article clippings about how the team won the division in such and such a year, or big games the club has played in, and a season article on the club would be justifiably snow deleted - so just because coverage exists doesn't mean it's notable enough for an article. SportingFlyer T·C 10:06, 31 October 2019 (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.
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