Talk:Canada All-Stars

vs. All-England

@Jweiss11 and Cbl62: I'm starting this article on the Canada All-Stars, one of the earliest college football teams that played several games against Harvard in 1875 and 1876. The only verifiable games I've found were against Harvard, but this source, which is a reprint of a speech given by someone at Yale, mentions that "And then there's football. All Canada beat all England, Harvard beat all Canada..." I have been unable to verify this game against "All-England". Do you think its worth counting in this article and in Template:1876 college football records? BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:45, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 15:48, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that college football positions at the time of the Canada All-Stars included rushers, tenders, and half-tenders? Source: The Boston Globe
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Mason Morelli

Moved to mainspace by BeanieFan11 (talk). Self-nominated at 18:35, 9 February 2024 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Canada All-Stars; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• I'm not sure about this hook. It seems rather technical or specialist, and a person who isn't familiar with gridiron football might not get what the interesting part here is supposed to be. Perhaps alternative hooks can be proposed? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 01:46, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
  • @Narutolovehinata5: That was the best hook that came to mind (as soon as I read about it I thought, "what the hell are tenders and half-tenders"? I think just the names themselves sound kind of interesting) - but maybe we could do something like ALT1: ... that a team of Canadian All-Stars twice played against the U.S. college football national champion and came within one point of winning each game? BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:29, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

That's definitely a better hook than the original proposal. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 13:11, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Full review needed. Z1720 (talk) 18:35, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

• Taking a proper look at this now. The article was made on time and a QPQ has been provided. No close paraphrasing was detected. The original hook, for reasons I brought up earlier, is probably unsuitable. The second hook, looking at the article, may seem interesting at first... but as it turns out they lost 0-1 each time, since the football played then was not the football that is known now. At the very least, ALT1 does seem a bit misleading since it makes the margin more impressive than it seemed. Other issues include the fact that the term "national champions" does not appear in the article and in fact does not even indicate that Harvard was the "national champion" at the time, and how the hook says they played twice when in fact the article states that the team faced Harvard three times in the span of two seasons. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 10:39, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
  • @Narutolovehinata5: For the "national champion" part, it says Harvard went undefeated with four wins in four games and became the college football champions for the 1875–76 season, with a ref saying "national champion". We could change it to U.S. college football champion and exclude the "national" part. For how many times they played, it technically is still correct that they played the U.S. national champion twice, as Harvard was champion for the 1875-76 season (when they played twice), whereas they weren't for the 1876 season (when they played once). Even if the game was different then, I still think saying "came within one point of winning each game" is correct as that is still what happened. Thoughts? BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:55, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Technically correct, but also a bit misleading and also somewhat hard to get from the article. So while I understand the sentiment, the article doesn't directly support the hook facts, at least not in an easy-to-get sense. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 01:47, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure I understand. The article mentions that each game was lost by a score of 0–1 (i.e. one point) – the fact that the scoring rules were different back then doesn't change the fact (not sure what communicating it in "an easy-to-get sense" would be?). I also note that there seems to plenty of hooks that could be considered "misleading" in some way – though again, I don't quite see how this falls under that since it still is correct that that is what the scores where. BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:01, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry my previous response wasn't clearer. When I brought up the "hard to understand" part I was referring more to the champions aspect, not the score thing. That's a different issue. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 02:17, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Hmmm. The article does say Harvard went undefeated with four wins in four games and became the college football champions for the 1875–76 season – can you think of way that would make it less "hard to understand"? BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:33, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I must have missed that! I was looking for all mentions of "champions" in the article and somehow overlooked that. Though that still doesn't resolve the other remaining issue (two games but they actually played Harvard thrice in total). I think that can be resolved by adding the year or season to make it specific that they played Harvard twice that year (I understand that Harvard were not the champions the following season, but this is just for clarity's sake). Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 03:28, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: So, something like these?

ALT2 ... that in 1875–76 season, a team of Canadian All-Stars twice played against the U.S. college football national champion and came within one point of winning each game?

ALT3 ... that in one year, a team of Canadian All-Stars twice played against the U.S. college football national champion and came within one point of winning each game?

ALT4 ... that in one season, a team of Canadian All-Stars twice played against the U.S. college football national champion and came within one point of winning each game?

BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:29, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

• Thanks! Those proposals work. I'm still not really sold on the context given here (i.e. they came within one point, which is true, but the games were low scoring), but I feel that it might be better for another, uninvolved, editor to take a look at this and see if the context issue isn't an issue at all. I won't object to this angle if it is approved by another editor. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 10:27, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

ALTs 2-4 check out; my preference is for ALT3. Let's roll.--Launchballer 16:44, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Topic

@BeanieFan11: The topic of the article is the team, not the seasons - that's why the season links at the bottom of those boxes don't work. The coach and conference should be in the lead template, and the records are already there. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:14, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

• I guess I see what you mean. I'll self-revert. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:20, 30 March 2024 (UTC)