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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. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 01:07, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

John Lyman (American football)

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John Lyman (American football) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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No evidence that he meets WP:BIO or WP:NSPORTS. No reliable sources beyond the database listing in the article could be found. Fram (talk) 14:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. Fram (talk) 14:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of American football-related deletion discussions. Fram (talk) 14:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Nebraska-related deletion discussions. Fram (talk) 14:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, neither the NCAA nor Division I existed in 1894, so those measures do not provide effective criteria for the sport's early era. Cbl62 (talk) 13:46, 26 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, nobody is arguing that all college coaches are notable. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 22:50, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Passes WP:GNG. He was a head college football coach from 1894--NCAA Division I didn't exist until 1973, which is 79 years later.--Paul McDonald (talk) 04:15, 26 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The college football project, in its appropriate mission of developing encyclopedic coverage of the sport, has undertaken to create and improve biographic articles on the head coaches of notable college football programs. See WP:CFBCOACH. While it may not be today, Doane in 1894 was a notable program. This is evidenced by its playing games against major opponents such as Kansas and Nebraska. Indeed, Lyman's 1894 Doane team defeated Nebraska, 12-0. On top of this, Lyman was reported to have played for Walter Camp (the Father of American football) for three years at Yale -- during a time when Yale dominated the game as consensus national champion in 1891 and 1892. It is difficult to find newspaper coverage from Nebraska in 1894 without going to hard copy volumes or microfilm in academic libraries. Some is found on Newspapers.com, and I have added a bit of that to the article. Deleting this article would undermine the project's effort at encyclopedic coverage of the sport's earliest years and is IMO unwarranted. Cbl62 (talk) 13:39, 26 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • A project's effort, no matter how noble, doesn't trump the general guidelines and consensus (just like a project notability essay, no matter how widely supported within that project, has no real bearing on the AfD result). Your source claims that Lyman played for Yale for three years, without specifying the years or whether it was with Camp. He isn't listed in the rosters for 1892 or 1888 (the only Camp years we seem to have a roster for on enwiki), and he isn't mentioned in the articles on the intermediate years. Fram (talk) 15:12, 26 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, it is far easier to find newspaper sources for football players and coaches from the modern age. Sources for the early 1890s are difficult to uncover. Here, however, we do have reliable sources indicating he played football for Yale, one source indicating he played three years for the Yale team. He coached Doane in 1894 and played for a Salt Lake City team in 1893. That places his time at Yale sometime between 1888 and 1891. These were the years that Camp was head coach at Yale. Unfortunately, I do not have easy access to Yale rosters to specify precisely which of these years Lyman played. I will undertake some further searches when time permits, but I think it would be an error to delete this particular biography. Cbl62 (talk) 16:16, 26 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but what you are posting here is pure WP:OR, taking some crumbs from newspapers and trying to write a coherent story by filling in the blanks. If you don't have a source for the years or the coach, then it shouldn't be in the article like that. Fram (talk) 08:16, 27 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The years of coaching are confirmed, it's the exact years that he played at Yale that are not known at this time--and they are not in the article. I do not see any original research.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:24, 27 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Article: "he played for three years under Walter Camp on Yale's championship football teams. " Source: "Mr. Lyman played for three years on the Yale team", without any mention of which years (which would enable us to determine the coach), or under which coach. I'll correct the article to only have the known facts (the bits I remove may be correct, but we don't know). Fram (talk) 14:07, 27 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That looks like a sensible edit, no objection.--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:14, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Black Kite (talk) 21:48, 28 March 2020 (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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