Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College basketball

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On 10 August 2024, it was proposed that this page be moved from Wikipedia:WikiProject College Basketball to Wikipedia:WikiProject College basketball. The result of the discussion was moved.

Good article reassessment for E'Twaun Moore

E'Twaun Moore has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 17:30, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for Evan Turner

Evan Turner has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 04:10, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Parade High School All-Americans categories up for CfD

The categories Category:Parade High School All-Americans (boys' basketball) and Category:Parade High School All-Americans (girls' basketball) are up for deletion. If you have an opinion one way or another, feel free to participate in the discussion here: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 November 29#Category:Parade High School All-Americans. Rikster2 (talk) 02:07, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Numerous CfD discussion on small college sports categories

Just flagging that several small categories for college sports programs, players and coaches are being added to CfD and those interested in college basketball may want to take part if they have an opinion either way. Examples including CBB include UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs and Bard Raptors, but seemingly more are being put up every day. One key question is what is the threshold for number of target articles when creating a category. Rikster2 (talk) 19:19, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Standardizing Presentation of Unofficial Retroactive Championships (Helms & Premo-Porretta)

I am opening this discussion to seek consensus on standardizing how college basketball articles (including team pages and navigation templates) present the unofficial retroactive national championship designations awarded by the Helms Athletic Foundation and the Premo-Porretta Power Poll (PPPP).

Currently, there is wide inconsistency, and many articles violate core Wikipedia policies by giving undue weight to these historical poll results.

The Problem (Undue Weight & Misrepresentation)

In dozens of articles, these historical selections are presented misleadingly:

Infobox Placement: PPPP and/or Helms titles are often listed in the main team infobox (the sidebar) under a parameter like `NCAAchampion3` or simply "National Championships." This placement treats the unofficial result as equivalent in status to a title won via a contemporary, official NCAA Tournament.
Unqualified Language: Picture captions and article prose often refer to these teams simply as "National Champions" without adequately qualifying the title as "unofficial," "retroactive," or the result of a "private poll/selector."

This presentation violates WP:NPOV (Neutral Point of View) and WP:UNDUE (Undue Weight) because the NCAA does not officially recognize either the Helms or Premo-Porretta selections as official NCAA national championships. Helms designations are listed in the NCAA’s annual basketball record book (NCAA Annual Record Book) to supplement the lack of AP polling, but the NCAA only recognizes champions that have won the NCAA tournament (NCAA's List of Champions).

The practice is further complicated by schools inconsistently hanging banners for Helms designations (e.g., Pitt and Syracuse do but Kentucky doesn't) and the total absence of banners for Premo-Porretta findings. Given that before the NCAA tournament, teams rarely traveled out of their region, the term “national champion” is often inaccurate in those times.

The Proposal for Standardization

I propose that the community adopt the following standardized approach for all articles referencing these titles:

1. Removal from Infobox/Navbox: Remove all Premo-Porretta and Helms claims from the main team infobox and navbox. The infobox and navbox should be reserved for titles won via contemporary, officially sanctioned events (NCAA, NIT, AP/Coaches Polls after their establishment).

2. Relocation & Dedicated Section: Move the information to a dedicated section in the article's main body, preferably titled: 'Historical Honors and Retroactive Selections' (or similar, within the History section).

3. Mandatory Qualifying Language: The wording should include, at a minimum, the following points to ensure neutrality and accuracy:

The title is "unofficial" and "retroactive."
The source is a "private poll/selector" (e.g., Helms or PPPP).
The designation "is not officially recognized as an NCAA national championship."

This approach preserves the historical fact of the designation while adhering to strict policy guidelines on presenting unofficial claims.

I was in the process of clarifying the language of the unofficial retroactive national championship designations on various pages and infoboxes, but it was brought to my attention that it might be better to have open discussion so we all can agree on a system that best reflects actual official designations.

I welcome feedback and look forward to reaching a consensus on this situation. Hinklehomie (talk) 08:27, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether you are aware that major revisions were made to {{Template:Infobox college basketball team}} earlier this year. The revisions reflected the input of several regular participants here. Agreement on every point was not universal, but the final result of the modifications appear acceptable to the vast majority. I coded the revisions. The impetus of the project was a desire expressed for less clutter in the infoboxes. Teams like Kentucky and North Carolina had large amounts of data in the infobox on page load. The solution was to collapse data in sections of the infobox. In some cases, data entered no longer displays. For some teams, appearances in the second round have no relevance. For others, they represent the furthest the team has ever advanced. So, if there is an entry in the template for Sweet 16 appearances, the infobox will no longer display second-round appearances.

Prior to the revisions, Helms and PPPP championship selections appeared directly below NCAA championships. So, for a team that had a Helms championship but never got deeper into the NCAA tournament than the Final Four, the Helms championship appeared on top. There was consensus that this was not appropriate. Revisions were made to the template to make these championships appear below any NCAA or AIAW tournament results.

I don't agree that the current presentation gives undue weight to these retroactive championships or is misleading in any way. For example, the infobox at North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball is clear that their 1924 Helms championship is something different from their NCAA tournament titles.

Can you provide examples of articles in which the presentation in the infobox is misleading? Perhaps, it can be adjusted by modifying the template coding.

You seem to imply that only the NCAA can confer the title national champion of college basketball. I disagree. The NCAA confers the title NCAA tournament champion. The legitimacy the NCAA has gained is what makes that the equivalent of the national champion of college basketball. In 1938, the NCAA did not hold a tournament. Temple won the 1938 NIT. News media at the time expressed opinions that Temple was the best team in the country and had proven so on the court. The Helms Foundation retroactively selected Temple as its national champion and PPPP ranked Temple as the best team. What is the justification for contending that there can be no 1938 national champion, because there was no 1938 NCAA tournament? I don't think the NCAA is in charge of Wikipedia to the extent it can override reliable secondary sources that would call Temple the 1938 champion.

Similarly, what should be done about seasons before the NCAA existed? It seems illogical to conclude the NCAA's power reaches back to before its own existence to block any recognition of a national champion.

The Helms Foundation and PPPP selections tell us much about the early history of college basketball. Erasing them from the infoboxes trivializes that history. It also fails WP:NPOV, because Wikipedia effectively surrenders to the NCAA as the sole determiner of national champions for all time, even before its own existence.

I agree with one point you made. Picture captions and article prose should not refer to a pre-tournament era team as a national champions without explaining what that means and how it was determined. I think a link to the Helms Athletic Foundation or PPPP article, as appropriate, should suffice, since these would make it obvious how the championship was won. I haven't noticed articles that create the ambiguity you identified.

I don't think that whether a school hangs a banner has any bearing on what should be in Wikipedia articles, unless the article contains a discussion of what banners hang in a team's home arena.

While it is correct that teams in the pre-tournament era did not travel nearly as much as they do now, this makes the task of choosing a national champion in those years more difficult, but it does not deligitimize the choice made. Helms chose Minnesota as the 1919 national champion, and PPPP ranked Navy as the top team. It isn't provable whether either is right or wrong. Those are simply the selections they made, and identifying them as such should be enough. If I analyzed all the games played that season, I might choose a third team as national champion. That would not change the Helms or PPPP selections or make either of them correct or incorrect. The point is that it should be plainly obvious that a Helms champion is based on a judgement call, the PPPP's top-ranked team is based on the application of metrics, and neither is the result of winning a national tournament.

I disagree with the mandatory qualifying language you propose. It is unnecessay to say the championships are unofficial, because I haven't seen an implication in any article that they are official. Further, there is no official national champion of college basketball. There is an NCAA tournament champion, and there is a general consensus in society that such winner is the national champion. If the Power 5 conferences break away and start their own tournament, general consensus would likely shift, even if the NCAA constinued conducting a tournament with all the teams left behind.

Anyone following the link to the Helms or PPPP articles would be able to conclude that the championships were retroactively conferred. Mandatory language in every article stating such would create unnecessary clutter and would not improve the encyclopedia.

Helms and PPPP are clearly not the NCAA. Mandatory language indicating they are private polls/selectors would be redundant.

Since there is no implication that Helms or PPPP championships are official NCAA titles, mandatory language stating the championships are not officially recognized as NCAA national championships is redundant and unnecessary.

I don't know what you mean by this: This approach preserves the historical fact of the designation while adhering to strict policy guidelines on presenting unofficial claims. Please explain this more thoroughly. Taxman1913 (talk) 22:24, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

National championships in men's college basketball existed for 40+ years prior to the inaugural NCAA tournament in 1939. The NCAA championship was also not given credence as the sole determiner of the national championship until at least 1955. So I am overall very opposed to removing or downplaying recognition of non-NCAA national champions. National championships exist outside of the NCAA's tournament championship.

Some discussion of the circumstance of each award is warranted, but not to the level you've been adding in your edits. I largely agree with Taxman's reply above. Since there is no implication that Helms or PPPP championships are official NCAA titles, mandatory language stating the championships are not officially recognized as NCAA national championships is redundant and unnecessary. Our policies and guidelines are independent of the NCAA. We do not need to compare everything to the NCAA championship. Doing so would be a WP:NPOV issue.

That said, I do agree that there is potentially an WP:UNDUE weight issue with the Premo-Porretta Power Poll specifically. When editing that article recently, I was surprised to find almost zero significant coverage of the PPPP. The Helms Athletic Foundation titles were a fairly well respected and publicized award that has continued to be published in the NCAA records book, claimed by schools, etc. Not so for the PPPP. The poll was published in two books, but otherwise has gone almost completely unnoticed. No schools claim it. I could only find a single article, written in 2025(!) and thus likely partially citogenesis, that examined it at all. Wikipedia is one of the only websites that promotes it. It's a mystery to me why this ranking has been given such outsized prominence here.

Other polls, rankings, and selections existed such as the Converse-Dunkel Basketball Forecast, early NIT national championships, AP Poll post-tournament No. 1 in 1953 and 1954, United Press trophy starting in 1956, Veteran Athletes of Philadelphia trophy, etc. etc. All of these seem more important to the history of college basketball than the PPPP.

Our current outsized/exclusive deference to Helms and PPPP leads to infoboxes like the following across team/season. Readers will be forgiven for assuming that these teams earned only "retroactive Helms and PPPP national championships". In reality they were contemporary national championships earned by winning a tournament/playoff:

I see that some teams have been given more specific infoboxes for their contemporary awards. This is good but causes clutter and repeated years in multiple sections:

My preference would be to remove the special treatment currently given to Helms and PPPP as the two main non-NCAA national championships each with dedicated rows in the infobox. I'd instead have a single row in the infobox such as "Non-NCAA national championships" that listed all "other" national championships across all other selectors. Circumstances and award(s) for each year could then be explained in prose and footnotes. Could also or alternately have a field such as "Other claimed national championships" that did the same thing, but only listed the years claimed by the school. This is similar to the approach taken in football infoboxes. PK-WIKI (talk) 08:10, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I support PK-WIKI's view on this, which transitively supports Taxman1913's viewpoint. The specific suggestion by PK-WIKI I really like is to consolidate the Helms and PPPP championships as "Other claimed national championships" as the catch-all infobox section. The reason I don't lean toward "Non-NCAA national championships" is due to the ambiguity that might cause with NIT championships, especially in the early years when NIT was the de facto national championship. I understand the NIT operates within the NCAA but I can only see future confusion and debates about the meaning. In short, the Helms and PPPP absolutely deserve weight in the programs' navboxes, infoboxes, categories, etc. but I also agree that a more broad classification of them as "other claimed" natty's could probably serve a better purpose. SportsGuy789 (talk) 15:57, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, the parameters for the Helms and PPPP titles each produce a section title that says "Pre-tournament Helms (or PPPP) champions". That does not prevent people from using the parameter to make entries for years in which there was already an NCAA tournament, like the 1939 Helms championship for LIU Sharks men's basketball. In the last revision of the infobox template, I considered whether there was a way to block such entries, which misuse the parameter, from being made. The only thing I could come up with was deprecating the current parameters entirely and requiring a separate entry for each Helms championship. That way, they could be tested to not allow a year later than 1938 to display. That would be messy and cause some infoboxes to be wrecked, which was something most discussion participants wanted to avoid.

The opposite side of the issue with the LIU article is that contemporary sources generally recognized NIT champion LIU and not NCAA champion Oregon as the true best team in the country and worthy of the title national champion. There is currently no pathway to express that in the infobox. By restricting the Helms and PPPP parameters to years before 1939 only (even though editors have ignored the restrictions) Wikipedia is violating WP:NPOV by conceding that for such seasons, only an NCAA champion can be a national champion, which is demonstrably untrue.

I propose a section called Non-NCAA national championships with the various tournaments and selectors listed underneath. Over the past few months PK-WIKI has done extraordinary work on National championships in men's college basketball. Although the list may appear lengthy, very few articles will have multiple entries. The list I propose is

Olympic Gold Medal (Hiram in 1904)
Intercollegiate national championship (Chicago in 1908, Penn in 1920)
AAU tournament championship (Utah in 1916, NYU in 1920, Butler in 1924, Washburn in 1925)
National Intercollegiate tournament (Wabash in 1922)
American Legion Rose Bowl (LSU in 1935)
Pre-NCAA tournament National Invitation Tournament (Temple in 1938)
American Red Cross War Benefit Games (Wyoming in 1943, Utah in 1944, Oklahoma State in 1945)
Olympic Trials (Kentucky in 1948, Kansas in 1952)
Converse-Dunkel Basketball Forecast (1939–1948)
Premo Power Poll (1893–1896)
Premo-Porretta Power Poll (1896–1948)
Helms Athletic Foundation (1901–1948)
Associated Press poll (1949–1970)
Coaches poll (1951–1970)

The first six on the list are championships that were won on the court prior to the existence of the NCAA tournament. While we can speculate about whether the best teams were truly participating, we can also engage in the same speculation about the 2025 NCAA tournament.

I'm not in favor of including any NIT other than the 1938 edition. I fully understand that the NIT was either on par with or superior to the NCAA tournament in the early years. However, if NITs later than 1938 were to be included, it is impossible to tell where the cut-off should be. Should it be 1970, since that was the last season an NCAA member was permitted to decline an NCAA tournament invitation and play in the NIT? That rule allowed the NCAA to wrest away any claim any other tournament might have, since it was clear that the best teams were NCAA members. However, by 1970, there was no longer a dispute about whether the NIT or NCAA tournament champion was the true national champion. Should it be 1945? It was that season in which the NCAA tournament champion defeated the NIT champion for the third straight year in the American Red Cross War Benefit Games. Did that not solidify the NCAA tournament's position? Not really. Unbeaten Army didn't play in either tournament in 1944, due to responsibilities connected with the ongoing World War II. It is certainly possible that, had they been able to play, they might have preferred the NIT. Had that happened, maybe they would have won the NIT and the War Benefit Game. While debate continued to rage into the 1950s, we do not see a selector from 1951 onward or a matchup involving both tournament champions that favors the NIT. Therefore, the best way to communicate that an NIT champion has a claim to the national championship is by showing that the team was named a Dunkel, Helms or PPPP champion. Any NIT championship can be displayed in the infobox using the free_tournament_label and free_tournament_data parameters the template provides as seen in Xavier Musketeers men's basketball. If the LIU infobox shows that it is 1939 Dunkel, Helms and PPPP champion right below the team's NCAA tournament result and 1939 NIT champion at the bottom, I see that as sufficient to display what the team did in the 1938–39 season.

I believe the winners of the Red Cross War Benefit Games erased any argument as to which team was the true national champion in those three years, something which was not considered a settled matter at the time. Afterall, had there been no dispute, the matchups would not have been compelling, and they likely would have found another way to raise money for the war. Therefore, these results are important enough to include in the infobox.

Similarly, the 1948 and 1952 Olympic Trials included both the NIT and NCAA champions, and the results remove any doubt that might have existed as to which team was the true national champion.

I do not favor including the 1951 National Campus Basketball Tournament as a non-NCAA national championship. The tournament was played only once, and there is no selector that has chosen its winner as the national champion. I do think it is important enough for Syracuse Orange men's basketball to include it at the bottom of the infobox using the free_tournament_label and free_tournament_data parameters.

The next three I've included are mathematically derived with Dunkel being contemporanous. Although the Dunkel rating was apparently derived by one person, it got contemporaneous newspaper coverage. The PPP and PPPP ratings were retroactively computed. I agree with PK-WIKI's point that there is likely some citogensis connected with these ratings. However, they were printed in the 1995 Encyclopedia of College Basketball by Mike Douchant, and Wikipedia played no role in that. ESPN has been including them in its College Basketball Encyclopedia since 2009. It is difficult to imagine that citations in Wikipedia played a significant role in that. The Wikipedia article about the PPPP was created in 2015. Since the rankings appear in reliable secondary sources, I believe they should be included in Wikipedia.

The Helms Athletic Fourndation selections are judgement calls made by a single individual. Nevertheless, the NCAA recognizes Helms as a legitimate selector. Therefore, I believe it should be included.

Once the 1948–49 season arrives, I believe that the AP poll and later the coaches poll become determinative and degrade the usefulness of Dunkel, Helms or PPPP selections. The AP poll reflects the opinions of an array of sports journalists and was contemporaneous. This makes it superior to a designation based on the judgement of a single individual, a mathematical formula derived by a single individual, and a mathematical formula derived by two individuals and retroactively applied. If we continue past the advent of the AP poll with Dunkel or PPPP selections, we must consider whether a team that fails to win the 2026 NCAA tournament but finishes first in either the KenPom ratings or ESPN Basketball Power Index has a valid claim to the national championship.

I suggest cutting off the AP and coaches polls after the 1969–70 season, the final season in which a team could decline an NCAA tournament invitation and play in the NIT. It becomes indisputable after that point that the best team that participated in the postseason played in the NCAA tournament.

I can work on the coding to make this happen in the template's sandbox, but I prefer delaying the start of that, until there are more opinions voiced here. Taxman1913 (talk) 19:43, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would prefer a single set of years, not multiple subsections that contain the same repeated year if multiple awards were earned for the same year. Not sure which you are proposing. Awarding organizations for each year explained by footnotes, links, and prose.

Also, making a strict list of valid selectors like this is verging into WP:OR territory. We have a list of "Major selectors" + their valid years for college football because the NCAA has published that list. Not so for college basketball, except perhaps for Helms alone.

For example, I think it's likely that the Litkenhous Ratings may have been published for college basketball at some point. We don't currently have that information, but I would hate for us to make a custom list of selectors now only for more to be needed in the future. That's the current problem we have (with only Helms/PPPP on the list) and I don't want to attempt to fix the problem by adding a new approved subset of selectors. There are also many contemporary claims such as 1898–99 Yale Bulldogs men's basketball team and 1901–02 Minnesota Golden Gophers men's basketball team that are not really based on any selecting organization.

There needs to be a way to denote 1939+ NIT-based national championship claims based on WP:DUE weight for that significant coverage.

I think I mostly support the "Claims" subsection as SportsGuy noted above, rather than a complete list of "all selections". This will naturally remove non-deserving/non-claimed NIT titles, etc., without us needing to add arbitrary year limits that can be disputed. Better fits the WP:ABOUTSELF claims from each school and cuts out the unknown/forgotten/WP:UNDUE selections that even the school itself does not recognize. Those non-claimed titles can be covered in prose, but kept out of the infobox. PK-WIKI (talk) 01:13, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with PK-WIKI again on the above points. SportsGuy789 (talk)

I would prefer a single set of years, not multiple subsections that contain the same repeated year if multiple awards were earned for the same year. I certainly see the merits of that presentation. It would require a different approach to coding than I had contemplated. There would need to be a parameter for each season. The end result is shifting of infobox clutter from teams that won multiple championships only once to teams that won the same championship multiple times. For example, under the approach I described above, Army would have three listings in its box, all for 1944. Your suggestion would show only 1944 with the three championships. In contrast, my suggestion would result in Yale's box containing PPPP and showing 1896, 1897, 1899 and 1900. Your suggestion would list each of the four seasons with PPPP next to them, thus quadrupling the clutter in Yale's box. We would have to go through each team to determine which approach wins the clutter war. Since the coding for your approach would be far more detailed, and the number of test cases required to determine each parameter is working would expand exponentially, my opinion remains that the layout I suggested is preferable, primarily for the simplicity of its implementation and secondarily for its unknown result of more or less clutter in the infobox. We don't really know whether the juice is worth the squeeze.

I just noticed I failed to include Veteran Athletes of Philadelphia as a selector in my previous post. I meant to do so. I would place that after Helms and before the AP.

I completely disagree that making a strict list of valid selectors like this is verging into WP:OR territory. Rather, the existence of these selectors is verifiable by reliable secondary sources. None of us are old enough to remember how the 1906 season came to an end, and it is certainly possible there was a contemporanous selector that season widely reported in the press. If such a selector is found, it should be added to the template. I don't see this as a strict list of valid selectors at all. We're not saying anything about whether the selectors are valid, and we should not do so, because that would be WP:OR. Instead, we are relying on secondary sources and producing a comprehensive list of selectors that have been reported. Picking and choosing which ones survive to the template and which ones we don't like is abslutely not the way to go. National championships in men's college basketball does not express any opinion on the validity of any of the championships shown there, and the article should not venture to do so. It simply lists championships that are verifiable in reliable secondary sources. The template should do the same. Just like the unknown 1906 selector I mentioned above, I am sure that selection would be added to the national championships article, if it is ever uncovered. The template is similarly dynamic. I would expect any editor who uncovered such a thing to come right to this talk page and post something like, "The template doesn't allow me to list the 1906 Philadelphia Inquirer championship in the team's infobox." If I am still alive, and I see that, I'll add it to the template.

I seached newspapers.com for the terms "litkenhaus" and "basketball" in March and April of every year from 1939 through 1959. No college basketball ratings were found. So, if there were Litkenhaus college basketball ratings released during those years, we do not presently have a reliable secondary source that verifies them. Nevertheless, if a reliable secondary source is found in the future, the Litkenhaus ratings should absolutely be added to the template. Interestingly, a handful of articles about high school basketball turned up in the search. Either Dr. Litkenhaus was active in rating high school teams, or he made his formula available to others who could input the data and produce the ratings. One article said, "Dr. Litkenhaus was not impressed..." That may mean he was directly involved, or they could be using Dr. Litkenhaus as a metaphor for his formula.

I excluded the 1899 Yale and 1902 and 1903 Minnesota claims, because they are self-serving. What the secondary sources reported in all three of those cases was that the school claims it is the national champion. Anyone could make such a statement to a reporter and get it printed in a newspaper. These claims are completely meaningless without being accompanied by any sort of respected independent determinor reaching the same conclusion. A team cannot simply say, "We are the 1899 national champions, because we think we are," and wish it into reality.

Taking claims of national champions into account ignores what is reported in reliable secondary sources and allows the teams themselves to determine what Wikipedia says about them in articles about them. Although the 1899–1903 claims are not self-published, they are self-serving and exceptional, and there is at least reasonable doubt as to their authenticity. We don't know what the outcome of a tournament would be or what results a poll or formulaic analysis would be, aside from, for those seasons, the Helms and PPPP champions.

Moving forward with that idea, should Long Island's claim that it is the legitimate 1939 national champion impact whether it says so in the infobox? The answer to that question should have nothing to do with whether we agree with them. That would be WP:OR. Any claim made by the school is self-serving. What truly makes them a 1939 national champion is that they were recognized by Dunkel, Helms and PPPP, three selectors that are verifiable by reliable secondary sources, and the school not claiming any of those doesn't affect the veracity of the recognition.

I wholeheartedly disagree with the way claimed or unclaimed national championships are handled in the football infoboxes. Whether a school claims a national championship or not should have nothing whatsoever to do with whether it is shown in the infobox. The only determining factor should be reliable secondary sources. Any desire to model the way the football infoboxes are handled is a pathway to ignoring reliable secondary sources.

My earlier comment addressed how NITs from 1939 forward can be handled within the framework I described, and I provided an example in which it has already been implemented. So, I assume There needs to be a way to denote 1939+ NIT-based national championship claims based on WP:DUE weight for that significant coverage. is a point of emphasis. I just added the 1939 NIT and PPPP championships to LIU Sharks men's basketball. Obviously, the Helms and PPPP championships shown are wrong given the section title says "pre-tournament". But if the template modifications currently being discussed are made, the two sections would be collapsed into one that is titled Non-NCAA national championships, and the data will appear below as either "Dunkel 1939, Helms 1939, PPPP 1939" or "1939 Dunkel, Helms, PPPP".

Analagizing this discussion with the recent one regarding Clayton Kershaw in which PK-WIKI and I both participated, should there be a different outcome in CK having 2024 World Series champion in the infobox of his article, if he had been publicly quoted as saying, "This 2025 World Series title is so meaningful to me. I didn't really feel like part of the team last season. I was around the team, but I hardly pitched, and I wasn't on any postseason roster. They gave me a ring, which I truly appreciate, but I never wear it and probably never will. I don't feel like I truly earned it."? I don't think so. Such a statement would be a rejection on CK's part of any claim to being a 2024 World Series champion. PK-WIKI was among those who emphasized the need to include 2024 World Series champion in CK's infobox during the lengthy discussion at Talk:Clayton Kershaw. While that discussion involved a WP:BLP, the principle here is exactly the same. Either a team was or was not named a Helms, PPPP, Dunkel or any other champion as reported by reliable secondary sources. Whether they claim it or not does not change the was or the was not determination. Taxman1913 (talk) 16:58, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Taxman, while we appreciate your thoroughness, every time you respond it's paragraphs on paragraphs. Editors typically don't try to pore through thousands of kilobytes of replies to enter a conversation. I bet no unique editors want to jump in because the blocks of text are already overwhelming. Please for the sake of everyone else try to button up your points. You are verbose. For the record, I respect the great work you do on Wikipedia. It's just that these sorts of text dumps prohibit progress. SportsGuy789 (talk) 17:47, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You are verbose. I know. Taxman1913 (talk) 18:20, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I think we are in agreement that selectors for any given year should be considered on their individual merits. This should be a freeform list that easily accepts new entries and doesn't pigeonhole them to any current list of selectors or years.

Litkenhous Ratings for college basketball were published in The Wichita Eagle in the 1950s, at least. Help appreciated in finding any final rankings, hopefully post-tournament.

Like it or not, schools claiming titles reflects the reality of the situation and is well-established by reliable sources as a valid mechanism for discussing "mythical" national championships. Teams CAN and DID claim a year and wish it into reality. Disagree they are unduly self-serving or exceptional... it's an accepted-by-reliable-sources practice in situations when there was not a better alternative. Teams also ignore "bad" selections, and as a result reliable sources also ignore those selections or treat them as a footnote.

What truly makes them a 1939 national champion is that they were recognized by Dunkel, Helms and PPPP... I disagree. What truly makes them a national champion is that they won the NIT and were widely proclaimed as a/the national champion in the immediate aftermath. Winning the NIT should be the main focus of the claim and our display here, per the reliable sources that link that accomplishment with their national championship. Pinning their national championship on fairly unnoticed selectors that occurred years or decades later is approaching WP:UNDUE and WP:SYNTH.

Likewise, the AAU champions should focus on the AAU tournament even if they also received a PPPP selection in 2009. Kansas and North Carolina should focus on the Helms selections, as I believe that is what the school is using to make the claim.

That's not to say that other selectors should go completely unmentioned, but I don't think it's very important to have prominent display of PPPP (for example) championships if there's a main tournament or selector that better solidifies the argument. (This applies to the NCAA tournament as well, and is how we cover it today by mostly hiding display of Helms and PPPP rankings for NCAA winners.) PK-WIKI (talk) 17:51, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I think we are in agreement that selectors for any given year should be considered on their individual merits. Terrific.

This should be a freeform list that easily accepts new entries and doesn't pigeonhole them to any current list of selectors or years. How about an "other" parameter for each year allowing editors to enter anything they want? The known selectors would be built in, so that the presentation in the infobox is consistent. It also eliminates potential spelling errors like Hellms, Primo-Perretta, etc. Since I believe we are in agreement that championship won on the court merit more prominence than retroactive selections, this would also prevent editors from listing a PPPP championship ahead of an AAU championship or some similar action.

Since I searched March and April over an 11-year span for Linkenhaus ratings and found absolutely nothing, I don't think there's anything that can be done to find them, until newspapers.com adds more newspapers.

Like it or not, schools claiming titles reflects the reality of the situation and is well-established by reliable sources as a valid mechanism for discussing "mythical" national championships. Teams CAN and DID claim a year and wish it into reality. Disagree they are unduly self-serving or exceptional... it's an accepted-by-reliable-sources practice in situations when there was not a better alternative. It has nothing to do with what I or anyone else likes. The article you cited is careful to separate claimed national championships from declared national championships. It is a selector independent of the school that legitimizes any claim. We are simply not going to agree whether such claims are self-serving or exceptional. So, we'll need to just move past that point to make progress. The only claim unsupported by an independent selector is Williams in 1905. So, other than that, we reach the same end result, even if we take different paths.

Winning the NIT should be the main focus of the claim and our display here, per the reliable sources that link that accomplishment with their national championship. Ii will be possible to use the open-ended "other" parameter described above to describe the 1939 LIU teams as "consensus national champion" or similar verbiage, as long as that can be supported by reliable secondary sources, and I have no doubt it can be. Alternatively, the template could be designed to produce "Consensus national champion" in the infobox from 1939 through 1970, given the existence of two tournaments, neither of which demonstrated superiority every year. That may be preferable.

Pinning their national championship on fairly unnoticed selectors that occurred years or decades later is approaching WP:UNDUE and WP:SYNTH. We're not going to agree on this either. First, Dunkel named LIU the 1939 national champion, and that was a contemporary selector that is supported by reliable secondary sources and certainly not "fairly unnoticed". Your judgement that Helms and PPPP are "fairly unnoticed" and appproach WP:UNDUE is itself problematic for WP:UNDUE, because you are cherrypicking which selectors to dismiss and ignoring reliable secondary sources. Your mention of WP:SYNTH is misplaced. I said that a self-serving, extraordinary claim does not make a team a national champion. The championship is confirmed by a selector. As I have already been clear, it doesn't matter whether the team claimed the championship or not. I'm not synthesizing at all; I'm saying the claims are worthless.

Likewise, the AAU champions should focus on the AAU tournament even if they also received a PPPP selection in 2009. You can see from what I wrote in my earlier comment that the AAU title would appear first for these teams. So, we are in agreement here.

That's not to say that other selectors should go completely unmentioned, but I don't think it's very important to have prominent display of PPPP (for example) championships if there's a main tournament or selector that better solidifies the argument. We agree here as well. A championship won on the court should be more prominent than a PPPP championship, and that is the display my proposed revisions to the infobox template envision. Taxman1913 (talk) 19:55, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you everyone for the extensive feedback and debate. I appreciate the deep dive into policy and historical context. My initial concern regarding UNDUE weight remains, but I think now that a structured, tiered system that clarifies the status of these awards rather than total removal. If we adopt a three-tier standardization for displaying national championships in all college basketball infoboxes, I believe that would balance historical accuracy, verifiable selection, and policy adherence. I chose the proposed names for the tiers to be similarly descriptive and fit within typical infobox width constraints, but I am open to alternative suggestions as with anything else.

Tier 1: NCAA Tournament National Championships

-Titles won via the contemporary, official NCAA tournament

--Maintains the status of the indisputable, official modern championship

Tier 2: Helms National Championships (Pre-1939)

-Titles selected by Helms for seasons before the inaugural 1939 NCAA Tournament

--Gives historical recognition to the most widely-cited pre-NCAA selector, as currently reflected in the infoboxes of each historical season articles (e.g., the 1919–20 season page). This avoids trivializing a selection that the NCAA itself publishes and that pre-tournament season articles currently reflect.

Tier 3: Other Historical National Championship Claims

-All other verifiable national championships/selections, regardless of year (e.g. NIT, AAU, AP/Coaches pre-1970, any post-1939 Helms claims)

--Consolidates all other verifiable claims into a single section, using the "Claimed" model preferred by some editors (including myself, as current college football infoboxes list national titles as claimed national titles), while ensuring the selector(s) and year are clearly listed and paired (e.g. 1920 AAU).

Furthermore, to align with UNDUE and address the concerns raised about PPPP, I think it should not be included in the infobox as a "championship selection." My reasoning is based on the difference between a contemporaneous, authoritative selector and a subjective, retroactive ranking:

the PPPP was a retroactive calculation published decades later, which held zero authoritative claim to the national championship at the time the games were played. This differs significantly from selectors like the AP Poll, which were contemporaneous and widely recognized by media and teams. The original 1995 book states on page 17: "Premo does not claim that his polls are definitive. They are simply his opinion." A self-described "opinion" ranking system that originated in the 1990s, retroactively applied, does not confer a "championship" title equivalent to the Helms Foundation (a historical institution) or a tournament winner. In a similar but different fashion, we do not claim that the team listed at the top of the end-of-year KenPom[1] list has earned a national championship. Listing the PPPP in Tier 3 would give it undue weight; any relevant PPPP information should be kept in the article prose and not in the infobox.

The clarity of a three-tier system, especially the distinction between Tier 1 and Tier 2/3, should be sufficient to satisfy NPOV. I believe this tiered proposal — honoring the status of pre-1939 Helms, consolidating all other claims, and explicitly excluding PPPP as a championship selector — provides a neutral, verifiable, and clean solution for standardizing articles. Hinklehomie (talk) 14:43, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Honklehomie, do you mean to include the words "Tier 1", "Tier 2" and "Tier 3" in the infobox titles? If so, I strongly disagree with this. This makes it impossible for there to be a tier 1 champion before 1939. Also, within 1939 itself, for instance, Oregon was the NCAA champion, but NIT champion Long Island was contemporaneously widely recognized as the true national champion. I think our assignment of tier numbers to different championships would encroach upon WP:OR. We have no reliable secondary source that allows us to do so.

Even if we were to have tiers, I disagree that the Helms Foundation champions merit recognition over the winners of the 1908 and 1920 intercollegiate championships, the AAU tournaments and, at the very least, the 1938 NIT. These were all won on the court under the conditions that existed at the time.

My views on the "claimed" approach are expressed above in detail, and no one has offered reasoning as to why this would not coonstitute prioritizing a primary source, i.e the team itself, over a reliable secondary source that reported the championship.

The statement that the PPPP is not definitive is simply honesty on the part of Premo and Porretta. The same can be said of any selector, including the AP poll and the coaches poll. They cannot both be definitive, if they select different champions. At the very least, we know the PPPP selections were made by a formula created by two individuals. In contrast, the Helms Foundation was far from a historical institution. The selections were made by Bill Schroeder alone, and no one is quite sure how he did it. If the retroactive nature of the PPPP selections somehow disqualifies them, then the same problem would have to exist with the Helms selections. The 1920 through 1942 Helms champions were named in 1943. The 1901 through 1919 Helms champions were named in 1957. Frankly, there are excellent arguments that the PPPP selections are of higher quality than the Helms selections, because they considered analytics, and Premo and Porretta uncovered many game results that had been lost to time, making the data included more complete than what was available to Helms. The relative quality doesn't really matter. Both are reported in reliable secondary sources, and it isn't Wikipedia's place to exclude one that is disliked by editors. Taxman1913 (talk) 15:25, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your input. I am happy to clarify my proposal and address your concerns, as I believe we are very close to a consensus that respects both historical fact and policy. I did not intend for including "Tier 1" and the others in the infobox titles, only as a way of showing order in the infobox.

I acknowledge and thoroughly agree that the Helms selections were also often retroactive and made by one person, just as the original 1995 PPP list was. However, the distinction between the PPPP and other selectors like Helms remains vital:

-Helms: Gained a level of authoritative status by being adopted and published in the NCAA Record Book. This confers Due Weight for historical prominence. Furthermore, like I previously stated, this reflects current presentation of infoboxes of historical season articles such as the 1919-1920 season.

-PPPP: The source itself calls it an opinion-based analytical ranking. My argument is not about the quality of the formula, but the purpose and recognition—it is fundamentally a ranking, not an award or title selection. Championships (awards) belong in the infobox; rankings belong in the prose.

I agree that policy prioritizes reliable secondary sources over a primary source (the school's own claim). However, the "Other Historical National Championship Claims" heading serves two vital functions that adhere to policy:

-Organizational Clarity: By using "Claims," the section immediately informs the reader that these titles are those the program itself recognizes, which is the necessary standard used in analogous college sports (e.g., College Football's historical title listings). This established convention maintains consistency across articles.

-Addressing Undue Weight: Focusing on what is "claimed" is a practical way to manage the massive amount of historical data. As the history is filled with over a dozen minor, forgotten selectors (many with little contemporaneous media coverage), relying solely on "verifiability" would lead to a cluttered infobox filled with rankings that even historians largely ignore. The "Claimed" heading uses ABOUTSELF to filter the most historically relevant titles, thereby upholding UNDUE weight.

The goal is not to use the school as the source for the championship, but to use the school's action as the filter for determining historical importance and due weight for the infobox presentation. The underlying championship must still be verifiable by a secondary source.

Finally, regarding your assertion that PPPP may be of "higher quality" due to analytics: If PPPP's exact methodology and formula are available in a Reliable Source to demonstrate its superiority to the single-voter Helms system, then that source must be provided. Otherwise, we must rely on the published material, which explicitly states the poll is "simply his opinion." We cannot prioritize an unverified claim about analytics over the source's own limiting statement when determining Due Weight for the infobox. Hinklehomie (talk) 15:56, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Helms: Gained a level of authoritative status by being adopted and published in the NCAA Record Book. If this is a factor, the inverse applies to all the other national championships we discussed, including the 1938 and 1939 NITs.

this reflects current presentation of infoboxes of historical season articles such as the 1919-1920 season. This is essentially an argument that WP:OTHERCONTENT warns against.

PPPP: The source itself calls it an opinion-based analytical ranking. If Bill Schroeder were alive today, would he dare call the Helms Foundation selections unequivocally determinitive? Just because he didn't say so, what makes the Helms selections rise above those made by PPPP? Is silence truly so golden?

Championships (awards) belong in the infobox; rankings belong in the prose. Are the AP and coaches poll champions also rankings that should be restricted to the prose? Does the awarding of a trophy distinguish these from PPPP? I don't know whether there was a Dunkel trophy. However, these were contemporaneous mathematical rankings. If there was no trophy, does that diqualify Dunkel from presentation in the infobox?

By using "Claims," the section immediately informs the reader that these titles are those the program itself recognizes Unless accompanied by a section for unclaimed national championships, it also hides from users who do not look elsewhere any championships awarded that the school does not claim. That is tantamount to saying only a recognized selection + school acknowledgement = national championship. That appears to violate WP:SYNTH.

which is the necessary standard used in analogous college sports (e.g., College Football's historical title listings). This established convention maintains consistency across articles. This is also an WP:OTHERCONTENT argument. Further, WP:NPOVHOW insists that sourced content not be removed from the encyclopedia. The PPPP top-rated teams can easily be sourced. If someone uses the other parameter I mentioned to PK-WIKI to enter them, even if there is no parameter dedicated to them, what would be the justification to remove them?

At WP:V, we are advised If reliable sources disagree with each other, then maintain a neutral point of view and present what the various sources say, giving each side its due weight. Making an editorial decision to ignore PPPP top rankings assigns them no weight at all. This is better achieved by following the advice at WP:BALANCE.

As I mentioned earlier, a school making a claim to a national championship is certainly saying something self-serving and exceptional. What could be more self-serving than saying, "We were the champs!"? Perhaps it could be supassed by, "We were the best team ever!" WP:ABOUTSELF tells us not to cite this as a source. Similarly, it should not be a factor in deciding what is included and what is excluded.

The goal is not to use the school as the source for the championship, but to use the school's action as the filter for determining historical importance and due weight for the infobox presentation. Making such a decision is WP:SYNTH.

Finally, regarding your assertion that PPPP may be of "higher quality" due to analytics... I was merely asserting that it may be of higher quality. Even if the formula was publicly available, we would never truly know the answer to that question, because we don't know the methodology used by Helms, and, more importantly, we don't know what the results of actual championship games played on the court would be. Taxman1913 (talk) 20:50, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have more to say on the subject, but a couple things to start:

In contrast, the Helms Foundation was far from 'a historical institution'. This is not true; it was a pretty important sports organization / hall of fame in the mid-century period. This is well-covered by the cited sources at the Helms Athletic Foundation article, including multiple dedicated Sports Illustrated articles etc. and tons of coverage of annual awards. You may think "one person's opinion" is not authoritative with a modern lens, but the Helms Athletic Foundation was pretty important and unique at the time across many sports. It's also printed in the NCAA records books for both football and basketball, and multiple teams in both sports specifically use the Helms national championship (only) to claim a year. All of that is what makes the Helms selections rise above those made by PPPP.
Re: PPPP, why are we calling them "national championships" at all? This is probably WP:OR or WP:UNDUE in and of itself. Neither the 1995 Encyclopedia or 2009 ESPN book make that statement. There's barely any other significant coverage of the power poll. The 2025 The Tuscaloosa News article was written, likely, with the help of Wikipedia already calling them "national champions" for 10 years perhaps based on original research. Do any schools claim a PPPP No. 1 ranking as a "national championship"? Any other significant coverage of the ranking at all? Who besides Wikipedia thinks it is a national championship?
Schools claims are a very important part of this discussion, and this is extremely well covered by reliable sources. There is tons of past discussion on this in the WP:CFB archives. I agree with @Hinklehomie: Addressing Undue Weight: Focusing on what is "claimed" is a practical way to manage the massive amount of historical data. As the history is filled with over a dozen minor, forgotten selectors (many with little contemporaneous media coverage), relying solely on "verifiability" would lead to a cluttered infobox filled with rankings that even historians largely ignore. The "Claimed" heading uses ABOUTSELF to filter the most historically relevant titles, thereby upholding UNDUE weight. and this is exactly how the WP:CFB, a more mature wikiproject that has had this exact discussion before, treats/filters/displays national titles.

PK-WIKI (talk) 21:38, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aside from whatever changes end up getting made to the infobox template, Hinklehomie has made a large number of edits recently with respect to Helms and PPPP championships across many CBB articles. In general, these edits make overt statements regarding the NCAA's recognition of these championships and their status as "unofficial". Some may find these edits improvements to the articles, while others may disagree. I propose we poll here to determine the opinion of the project as to whether these edits should be reverted. Taxman1913 (talk) 13:00, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Revert: The removal of PPPP championships in a large number of articles denies this information, which comes from reliable secondary sources, to readers. The overt statements about Helms championships being "unofficial" are redundant, since none of the articles make claims that they are equivalent to NCAA championships, and there is no such thing as an official national champion, only an official NCAA champion. Taxman1913 (talk) 13:04, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the timeline, my edits were completed several days before I realized this should be open to more discussion and made this post, as I was attempting to correct what I perceived to be clear cases of NPOV and UNDUE violations under the existing inconsistent consensus. However, I believe the motion to mass-revert is largely moot because the three-tier proposal I just posted resolves the core issues you raised. Instead of reverting, we should adopt the new framework:

Keep: My edits should not be reverted because they aimed for encyclopedic accuracy, and my proposal provides the definitive framework for addressing these points. My edits clarifying Helms as retroactive are factually correct and prevent reader confusion with contemporary titles. My action to qualify/remove PPPP was justified because the PPPP is a subjective ranking system, not a championship selector, as evidenced by the source, making its inclusion as a "championship" a clear case of UNDUE weight.

I believe we should pause the discussion on any reversion and focus on the infobox framework. Hinklehomie (talk) 14:57, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hinklehomie, I mean this in the kindest way. If I said it to you during a phone call, it would sound far less harsh than it ight appear in text. I know you've been around for less than two years. If you encounter something on Wikipedia with which you disagree that affects hundreds of pages, please seek consensus before making such a large number of edits. Most people here want the encyclopedia to be the best it can be, but it isn't possible for everyone to agree on everything. So, whatever concern you have can be raised with the Wikiproject that curates the articles in question. If the number of articles is large, there is probably an associated project. I have no doubt you want this discussion to result in an improvement to the college basketball team articles. Taxman1913 (talk) 15:39, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the kind words. To reiterate, I didn't think to open this up with a formal WikiProject discussion first which would have been the correct order of operation, and so that was why this all unfolded in the order it did Hinklehomie (talk) 16:04, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should revert the edits that draw comparison between the NCAA championships and other national championships, say one is an "unofficial" national championship, etc. on discussed above and my original comment here.

Some discussion of the circumstances of each award is warranted, but not the direct comparison to the NCAA award as was added in many cases. Much of that already existed in these articles. Explanations can/should be added where needed in a WP:NPOV way.

More discussion on the PPPP should continue above; leave status quo for now during ongoing discussion. PK-WIKI (talk) 21:46, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion about WikiProject banner templates

For WikiProjects that participate in rating articles, the banners for talk pages usually say something like:

"This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale."

There is a proposal to change the default wording on the banners to say "priority" instead of "importance". This could affect the template for your group. Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Proposal to update wording on WikiProject banners. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 19:40, 6 December 2025 (UTC) (on behalf of the WikiProject Council)[reply]

Numbers or letters for team designation

When discussion All-American and All-conference teams I have three questions

in prose do we say first or 1st team?
when it is an adjective, as in "He was a first- or 1st-team All-American", is it hyphenated?
when it is a noun, as in "He was selected to the first or 1st team", is it unhyphenated?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:11, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:ORDINAL advises first through ninth and then 10th onward.

When used as a compound modifier, first-team should by hyphenated as in "first-team All-American" or "regular-season champion". When it is a noun, as in "Abe was selected as an All-American to the first team" or "The Wildcats were champions of the regular season", it is not hyphenated. Taxman1913 (talk) 23:51, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW at the NBA project, the style guide illustrates the use of letters in the infobox for 1-9 (i.e. first, second, third) and numbers for larger numbers (i.e. 25th, 35th, 50th, 75th anniversary teams) which aligns with MOS:ORDINAL mentioned by Taxman1913. I can't find a similar style guide for this project, but the MOS should prevail at any rate. Left guide (talk) 00:23, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]