Talk:USFL draft

Proposed merge of USFL Territorial Draft with USFL Collegiate Draft

Very similar topics, does not seem warranted to have separate articles for the two types of drafts the original USFL had. The articles do not meet any of the criteria at WP:NOTMERGE to prevent a merger. The drafts were also so indistinct that in 1983, 1984, and 1985, they were both held on the same day. Eagles 24/7 (C) 00:53, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

• Merge – Sportsfangnome (talk) 16:38, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

  Y Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 10:55, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

During & after page protection

Seeing as the page has bee protected. Now would be a good time, for any editor (who thinks "Draft" should be changed to "draft") to open an RM. The result of such an RM, would end the page name dispute. Including the 1983 USFL Draft, 1984 USFL Draft, 1985 USFL Draft & 1986 USFL Draft in the RM, would be preferable. GoodDay (talk) 05:43, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Would recommend the 1983 to 1986 USFL Territorial Draft pages, too. They're currently inconsistent among themselves. GoodDay (talk) 05:56, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 13 February 2024

• USFL Draft → USFL draft
• 1983 USFL Draft → 1983 USFL draft
• 1983 USFL Territorial Draft → 1983 USFL territorial draft
• 1984 USFL Draft → 1984 USFL draft
• 1985 USFL Draft → 1985 USFL draft
• 1985 USFL Territorial Draft → 1985 USFL territorial draft
• 1986 USFL Draft → 1986 USFL draft
• 1986 USFL Territorial Draft → 1986 USFL territorial draft
• 2022 USFL Draft → 2022 USFL draft
• 2023 USFL Draft → 2023 USFL draft

– Lowercase dominates in sources for the older (1980s) USFL drafts (the 1984 USFL territorial draft is not in the list because it's already lowercase). For the modern (2022, 2023) drafts, it's a different USFL, needing specific attention; these look like majority capped in news, but not nearly consistently capped, so per the criterion in MOS:CAPS, these also should use lowercase. I've put them into one RM discussion so they can be discussed together; some editors have argued that they should be consistent, and others that they are independent questions; both viewpoints are worth discussing. Dicklyon (talk) 10:33, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - Looking at the infobox image at the 2022 & 2023 pages-in-question? Draft is used. Per that & consistency, I suggest we stick with capitalization. GoodDay (talk) 16:30, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

  It looks to me like those infobox images of promotional logos are using "INAUGURAL USFL DRAFT 2022" and "USFL COLLEGE DRAFT 2023" (in all-caps with some overlaid U.S.-flag-themed color and decoration) rather than some variant of "Draft". Anyhow, isn't Wikipedia trying to look to independent sources rather than self-published promotional ones? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:05, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

  Also, those are not in sentences. Policy WP:NCCAPS says (my bold):

  For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even mid-sentence.

  I take your statement that you would no longer weigh in on capitalization questions is no longer operative. I understand your tendency to overlook P&G in favor of "consistency", but what are you aiming to be consistent with here? Dicklyon (talk) 20:46, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

• Kommentar Some relevant guidelines are MOS:CAPS:

  Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.

  Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization):

  Outside Wikipedia, and within certain specific fields (such as medicine), the usage of all-capital terms may be a proper way to feature new or important items. However these cases are typically examples of buzzwords, which by capitalization are (improperly) given special emphasis.

  —Bagumba (talk) 16:33, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support per nom and consistency with other similar event articles, including those reflecting recent consensus discussion outcomes. Per Bagumba's quotes, Wikipedia doesn't use SIGCAPS, preferring to capitalize only what is "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:43, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. For the modern league at least, but we should be consistent. From my research it appears the substantial majority of sources use capitalization; a google search of "usfl draft" reveals 11/14 of the first 14 sources use uppercase. BeanieFan11 (talk) 22:13, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

  If you argue that we should be consistent then shouldn't the larger historical period of 1983–1986 be included for analysis, not just limited to the more limited "modern league" (2022–2023)? Or are you neutral on 1983–1986? —Bagumba (talk) 02:16, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  Given the statistics discussion below, I have my doubts about that 11/14 assertion, and of course, what pops up first from Google isn't necessarily what we should be paying attention to (such as non-independent and unreliable sources). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 03:19, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

• Comment The page USFL Draft currently only covers the 1983–1986 incarnation of the league, for those who might argue for separate treatment for 2022–2023.—Bagumba (talk) 02:18, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support USFL draft, oppose all others as composition titles for specific events. Variation in usage is explained by the event titles also being descriptive terms, and you need to use context to determine. For a specific event in a title, it is necessarily a composition title. SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:54, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  @SmokeyJoe: By "composition title" do you mean Wikipedia:Article titles § Descriptive title? Thanks in advance. —Bagumba (talk) 05:12, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  No. I mean that there is a culturally deep. sports-politico theatre called the “1983 USFL Draft”. It’s comparable to “Big Brother 25”. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:46, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  @SmokeyJoe: If you search for "1983 USFL Draft" in books, you find mostly lowercase. So per MOS:CAPS, we should use lowercase, your desire to promote terms for specific events to proper names notwithstanding, right? Dicklyon (talk) 06:24, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  Not proper names, no. I have studied User:SMcCandlish‘s Wikipedia:Proper names and proper nouns, once or twice a year since it appeared, and to the extent I understand it, it tells me that theatre productions don’t have proper names, they have composition titles, which are not the same. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:52, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  SmokeyJoe, your entire argument is drastically wrongheaded on multiple levels. Due to length, I'll address that all below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:18, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support "USFL draft", oppose others per SmokeyJoe. The main article change can be justified as as general descriptor by virtue of there being a multitude of types of USFL drafts between the 80s and 2020s; the individual drafts are events in which "Draft" is a proper title. The Kip 05:43, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  The policy WP:LOWERCASE says:

  Titles are written in sentence case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text

  If we are not capitalizing "USFL draft", why would we have "1985 USFL Draft", when the policy gives preference to lowercase? —Bagumba (talk) 07:33, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  Well, we would if his theory was correct and sources treated this "event" name as a proper name. But they don't, so lowercase. I'd check the cited sources, but there are none; just a pair of broken ELs. Dicklyon (talk) 08:47, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  I replaced the ELs at 1985 USFL Draft with archive links. They're just database listings, with the term in a title, so nothing to be gleaned.—Bagumba (talk) 09:16, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  SmokeyJoe is simply flat-out incorrect that these are "composition titles"; not a single word in MOS:TITLES would support such a notion. He's just making up weird claims out of nowhere at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:18, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

• Kommentar – I'm actually stunned by the opposition, as I had mentioned I expected this to be unopposed after having already debunked BeanieFan11's silly observations on the modern ones elsewhere, and given the overwhelming majority lowercase usage in sources for the older ones. So is this just another case of sports fans like to cap their stuff, and guidelines be damned? Do we really have to waste time on such things yet again? Dicklyon (talk) 09:06, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  I'm a sports fan and mainly edit sports articles. I think just looking at my day-to-day reading, it can seem like it's "always" capped. So even I was suprised when it was pointed out that ESPN.com actually uses lowercase "NFL draft" (but that's immaterial to this RM, it only matters how sources treat "USFL [d]/[D]raft"). Then the MOS can be hard for non-regulars to grasp. So I try to place relevant excerpts for reference. —Bagumba (talk) 09:33, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  I am not a sports fan. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:53, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support. Not consistently capitalized in sources, so "Draft" fails MOS:CAPS (its lead, and MOS:SPORTCAPS and MOS:SIGCAPS in particular), and WP:NCCAPS. We just had an RfC (concluding for lower case) about essentially the same thing, at WP:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles; while it was about a different league, every single one of the principles applies here as well.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:18, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support This is clearly a case where sources are capping for significance, which we don't do per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) and MOS:SIGNIFCAPS. There is a lot of actual evidence presented and some close examination of this. The evidence is fairly clear that draft is not consistently being capitalised in either the contemporary context or the earlier context. Where others might argue otherwise, I can see that this has been effectively rebutted. Per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS draft should not be capitalised in these article titles. There is an argument/opinion that the specific annual events should retain capitalisation because they are specific events. A descriptive event that occurs in a particular year is nonetheless intrinsically a descriptive and common name - the USFL draft that occurred in X year. When the prevailing WP:P&G and evidence tells us to use USFL draft to collectively describe these annual events, there is no reasonable argument to capitalise draft in the title of the specific events. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:47, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support all per consistency. I haven't examined sources for all of those years. However, even if a few of those years did have uppercase more than lowercase, it's not like sportswriters are intentionally choosing to capitalize 2023 USFL Draft, or whatever, one way or the other. The USFL draft is obscure. I doubt they're putting much thought into it at all. I searched "2023 USFL Draft" on Google and it looks like some sources do have "2023 USFL draft" in the bodies of the articles, even if it's not the majority. The style of player pages would look odd if we had 2023 NFL draft, and 2023 USFL Draft in the same article, which is how it is in some articles right now. I understand both sides of the capitalization debate though. I'm used to both "d" and "D". ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 13:57, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support per WP:MOSCAPS and being consistent with our guidelines. Let'srun (talk) 22:37, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Some observations from sources

1980s drafts

Book n-grams show only the lowercase draft, so uppercase is in the minority. Dicklyon (talk) 20:50, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

2022, 2023 drafts

No book n-grams these years, but lots of news coverage. These news outlets use lowercase:

• Saturday Blitz
• Detroit Free Press
• StarTribune
• WTAE
• KSL Sports
• The Sporting News (oops, my bad, this one is uppercase per observation by Bagumba)
• m live
• KSNT
• KENS
• KLKN TV
• InForum
• The Detroit News
• USA Today
• The Toledo Blade
• Pats Pulpit
• AtoZsports
• Chiefs Wire
• Fox Sports
• Chattanooga Times Free Press
• ESPN

Dicklyon (talk) 04:15, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

And then the uppercase (list by BeanieFan11, parenthetical observations by Dicklyon):

• Fox Sports ("The 2023 USFL College Draft is complete!" but no USFL Draft in a sentence)
• CBS Sports (uppercase in sentences)
• Sportskeeda (lowercase: "In the USFL draft held last season, 280 players were chosen..." and "What is the difference between the NFL draft and the USFL draft?")
• Sporting News (uppercase in sentences)
• Sports Illustrated (no mention of USFL draft)
• Pro Football Newsroom (no USFL draft, but "The USFL held their 2023 Collegiate Draft")
• HBCU Gameday (lowercase: "Players selected in the USFL draft will be...")
  • Just about all college football teams, e.g. CSU Pueblo, Northern Iowa, Lafayette, Wingate, Saint Francis, Maryland (but several of these have no uses in sentences, so provide no evidense)
• Pro Football Network (lowercase: "...players can request USFL draft eligibility...", "...the order for the USFL draft is set in stone.")
• Football Database (uppercase: "The 2022 USFL Draft was held...")
• USFL News Hub (lowercase: "...players can request USFL draft eligibility...")
• On3 (uppercase in sentences)
• American Football International (uppercase in sentences)
• Mountain West Wire (USA Today) (lowercase: "...players were selected from the USFL draft pool...", "The second day of the USFL draft will cover..."; but not consistent: "the first day of the USFL Draft")
• WVTM (lowercase: "The inaugural USFL draft kicked off...", "...take part in USFL draft for..."; but not consistent: "Day two of the USFL Draft resumed...")
• Sports Talk Philly (none in sentence context, but "...particularly the league 'draft,' ", "...eligible for the fancy titled draft...")
• 247Sports (uppercase in sentences)
• Saturday Down South (uppercase in sentences)
• KTSM (uppercase in sentences)
• DBusiness Magazine (lowercase: "...players can request USFL draft eligibility...")
• FanSided (no use in sentence, but "inaugural College Draft" and "round of the draft")
• WRUF (uppercase in sentences)
• KSL Sports (lowercase: "...was selected in the first round of the USFL draft by..."
• Fox 5 Atlanta (uppercase in sentences)
• MLive (uppercase in sentence)
• The Athletic (paywalled)
• HBCU Sports (lowercase: "the sixth round of the 2023 USFL draft," "players to be taken in the USFL draft")
• Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (lowercase in headline, uppercase in sentence!)
• The Appalachian (no use in sentence, so no info)
• WBRC (no use in sentence, but "...held its Player Draft lottery", making up a new proper name?)
• NBC (lowercase: "The USFL draft will span over...", "The USFL draft will work similarly...")
• YPSI 11 (no use in sentence, but "The USFL had its college draft...")
• DraftKings (uppercase in sentence)
• WBOY (no use in sentence, but "The 8-team league held its draft — officially known as the 2022 USFL Player Selection Meeting")
• Watauga Online (no use in sentence, but "the league's 2023 draft")
• The Commercial Appeal (lowercase in headline, uppercase in sentence!)
• Bleacher Report (no use in sentence, but lowercase "draft")
• WLBT (no use in sentence, but "their inaugural draft" and such)
• Detroit News (uppercase in sentence)
• HERO Sports (no use in sentence, but "inaugural USFL Player Draft")
• WVTM (lowercase: "The inaugural USFL draft kicked off...")
• Rivals.com (uppercase in sentence)
• MassLive (no use in sentence)
• Clarion Ledger (uppercase in sentence)
• The Chanticleer (uppercase in sentence)
• The NFL (no use in sentence)

BeanieFan11 (talk)

I haven't studied all of those, but please note that you listed some publications in both your lowercase and uppercase lists (e.g. Fox Sports) and some are variations from the same organization (the Fox 5 article says it's Fox Sports). And if you look inside of some of the sources you say are using upper case, you'll find lowercase examples, e.g. "How does the USFL draft work?" in the Sporting News article and "The inaugural USFL draft ..." as the opening sentence in one of the WVTM13 articles. You have WVTM13 listed twice, by the way. Most of the TV stations are affiliates of the same networks found elsewhere in your lists. USFL News Hub (which doesn't look independent) is actually using lowercase for the phrase, and the phrase appears only in one place in it. Clarion Ledger is a USA Today affiliate. You've got Pro Football Network in the wrong list – its using only lowercase ("players can request USFL draft eligibility once they are two years out of high school" and "This means that the order for the USFL draft is set in stone."). You've got HBCU Gameday in the wrong list ("Players selected in the USFL draft will be given the opportunity..."). You've got Sportskeeda in the wrong list – it's lowercasing except in the headline ("In the USFL draft held last season, 280 players were chosen" and "What is the difference between the NFL draft and the USFL draft?" and "The USFL draft will not involve any trades"). DBusiness is only lowercase outside of the headline ("players can request USFL draft eligibility once they are two years out of high school"). Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has lowercase in its headline. The linked Sports Illustrated article doesn't contain either version of the phrase at all. Many of the ones in your uppercase list only contain the phrase in their headline, and many publications use title case for headlines. Overall, it looks like a rather mixed bag. To me it looks like your own links are convincing for lowercase. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 01:03, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

You've got Sportskeeda in the wrong list...: It should just be outright removed as unreliable (WP:SPORTSKEEDA).—Bagumba (talk) 04:06, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. I've started to annotate the so-called "uppercase" list above. I've found of the first 7, 2 use "USFL Draft" in sentences, and 2 use "USFL draft". The other 3 don't use the term either way, at least not in sentence context, but do cap a lot of stuff. I'll do more later. Dicklyon (talk) 04:31, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I noticed Sporting News listed on both the upper and lower list, but the entry on the lowecase list seems to actually be uppercase [1] (" They will be able to pick and choose their targets during the 2022 USFL Draft and build rosters...") —Bagumba (talk) 05:30, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, looks like I mess that one up. Thanks for the catch. I've annotated it. Dicklyon (talk) 05:45, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I've put bold lowercase in items where BeanieFan11 clearly messed up. I think he is clearly making the case for us that these terms are not consistently capitalized in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 05:25, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I had said before that I thought this was majority uppercase in sources, but now I'm not so sure. In any case, it's nowhere near the "consistently capitalized" criterion of MOS:CAPS, or the "would always occur capitalized, even mid-sentence" of WP:NCCAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 06:18, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

• Figured all my comments would be BLUDGEONED to hell. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:55, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

  Your comments are being analyzed. You're free to note errors, if any. Note that per the policy WP:BATTLEGROUND:

  Editors in large disputes should work in good faith to find broad principles of agreement between different viewpoints.

  —Bagumba (talk) 20:12, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Further discussion

SmokeyJoe's !vote is problematic in multiple ways, is contrary to the guidelines (both those it is trying to rely on and those it is trying to sidestep), and doesn't even correctly interpret the essay it cites.

• First off, regarding "a culturally deep, sports-politico theatre called the '1983 USFL Draft'. It's comparable to Big Brother 25": That's a confused argument twice over. The fact that it's significant to a lot of people is utterly irrelevant to what WP will and will not capitalize. This argument is precisely the one that MOS:SIGCAPS says not to make, namely capitalizing to signify something as "important". WP only capitalizes that which is capitalized across almost all independent source material (see lead of MOS:CAPS). And the USFL draft (in general or in a specific year) is in no way comparable to a TV show or a season thereof, which is capitalized per MOS:TITLES as the title of a published work, and which is also a trademark (at least in the base form Big Brother). To put it another way, a much, much more significant piece of upcoming American political theater is the 2024 US presidential election, but it is not "The 2020 US Presidential Election". One cannot just capitalize stuff (on WP, anyway) simply because you think something's meaningful, impactful, important, noteworthy, popular, etc.
• The sotto voce implication that a specific year's USFL draft "must" be a proper name even if the USFL draft as whole is not cannot be supported by any facts or reasoning, and is contradicted by lots of it. E.g., we write "Game of Thrones season 5", not "Game of Thrones Season 5"; we write "Janet Jackson's fifth album", not "Janet Jackson's Fifth Album"; we write "European theater of World War II" not "European Theater of World War II"; we write "the early decades of the Industrial Revolution", not "the Early Decades of the Industrial Revolution"; we write "a Siamese cat" and "a seal-point Siamese cat", not "a Seal-Point Siamese cat"; etc., etc. There are writers and publishers out in the world who like to capitalize many things like that, but WP is not among them. Simply being more specific does not magically create proper names, and tends to have the opposite effect. "Buckingham Palace" may be a proper name but "first toilet in the second bathroom on the third floor of Buckingham Palace" is not.
• SmokeyJoe mentioned my WP:PNPN essay, but his argument pattern is not consistent with what it points out; he is making an argument that has nothing to do with the linguistics of names and conventions of capitalization, but rather one of the variant philosophy-of-names arguments, about signification and specificity, and graft together a chimera argument, fusing such a notion to completely unrelated matters of capitalization conventions, which actually have no connection of any kind to any philsophy-of-names positions. I guess my essay is a failure, since commingling philosophy notions of what "proper name" means with linguistics matters like capitalization conventions in a language is what every word of that essay urges against doing.
• SJ also seens to not quite understand what a "composition title" is, i.e. a title of a published or creative work; we define precisely what those are (for WP capitalization purposes, anyway) at MOS:TITLES, and neither sporting events nor organizational processes (both of which the USFL draft is, in one sense or another) qualify under any of those definitions. Trying to use "theater" in the sense of "public spectacle" and shoehorn that unrelated meaning into a rule about theatrical stage productions is the fallacy of equivocation. It's exactly like arguing that because a shirt is an article of clothing, and MOS:TITLES says to capitalize titles of articles (in the sense of written works), that "shirt" and especially the more specific "polo shirt" must be titles of articles and thus capitalized. Finally, titles of published or creative works are proper names (just a type that usually takes additional stylization, either italics or quotation marks, unless it's an incipit), but "USFL draft" is nothing like anything on that list of creative of published works.

SJ's !vote is one of the strangest I've ever seen at any RM, honestly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:18, 14 February 2024 (UTC)