Talk:Charleston Cougars

Requested move 8 March 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Elli (talk | contribs) 10:26, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

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• College of Charleston Cougars → Charleston Cougars
• College of Charleston Cougars men's basketball → Charleston Cougars men's basketball
• College of Charleston Cougars women's basketball → Charleston Cougars women's basketball
• College of Charleston Cougars baseball → Charleston Cougars baseball
• College of Charleston Cougars sailing → Charleston Cougars sailing
• Template:College of Charleston Cougars men's basketball navbox → Template:Charleston Cougars men's basketball navbox
• Template:College of Charleston Cougars women's basketball navbox → Template:Charleston Cougars women's basketball navbox

– Yahoo! Sports, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, ESPN, the Associated Press and USA Today all refer to them as just the "Charleston Cougars." I think that's a pretty strong consensus that it's the WP:COMMONNAME now, so let's get these (and all other subpages associated with Charleston Cougars athletics) moved to that name. Tom Danson (talk) 12:37, 8 March 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. Adumbrativus (talk) 19:58, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Many sources use "College of Charleston Cougars" as well: CBS Sports; The Post and Courier; The Philadelphia Inquirer; Sports Illustrated. Lots of books use the longer name also. Other sources use both - often with the longer name on first reference, and the shorter name thereafter: Bleacher Report; College of Charleston; The Washington Post. This kind of split argues for the status quo. Dohn joe (talk) 18:27, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  1. CBS Sports is rather inconsistent; on team pages it says "College of Charleston," on scoreboards and standings pages it just says "Charleston."

  2. The Post and Courier is the local newspaper, so it uses "College of" to disambiguate from other schools in the city (such as Charleston Southern, The Citadel, etc.)

  3. The Philadelphia Inquirer seems a random choice for a newspaper to list.

  4. The SI artcle you quoted was a specific article for the University of Kentucky, and the graphic brackets it liks to list them as "Charleston".

  5. Most of the books you quoted predate the CofC rebranding their athletic programs as "Charleston" in 2013.

  If anything, such a split argues that we use the school's official branding as the "tie-breaker," and its official branding is as the "Charleston Cougars," as you can see from a good sampling of headlines on the official site. (it lists "College of Charleston" only when referring to the university itself). Tom Danson (talk) 21:17, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  The college uses both. Search for the college's athletics program, and it will preview as "The official athletics website for the College of Charleston Cougars." Dohn joe (talk) 20:13, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  It's actually fairly common for athletic programs to use the full name of the institution in references like that - Syracuse, for example, previews as Syracuse University Orange, when that's obvously not the common athletic reference. fuzzy510 (talk) 20:04, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  Comment - The graphic bracket in that SI link is from ESPN.com, but the SI.com team page does call them just "Charleston." fuzzy510 (talk) 04:10, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support - I've been against this for a while, because I was stuck in my mind thinking that it was still College of Charleston, but there's enough evidence here to show that I was wrong, and seeing them as just "Charleston" on the selection show today (hosted by CBS, the only major media outlet listed here as maybe still using "College of Charleston") put it completely over the edge. There's clearly enough references that have moved on from "College of Charleston" that we should do the same as well. -fuzzy510 (talk) 05:29, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

• OpposeThe College of Charleston is a unique name and part of the identity of CofC. “Charleston” and “Charleston Cougars” is fine when brevity is necessary. But the name of the college, and it’s affiliated athletics teams, is College of Charleston. Smydauf (talk) 02:53, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

The name of the institution has never been part of the naming criteria for these articles. It's Ohio State Buckeyes, not "Ohio State University Buckeyes." -fuzzy510 (talk) 18:18, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support per WP:CONCISE, WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONSISTENT. This is actually how we format similar article titles: Florida Gators, not "University of Florida Gators"; North Carolina Tar Heels, not "University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Tar Heels". Rreagan007 (talk) 22:02, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

  This one's a bit more unusual, because of how frequent "College of Charleston" is used even in an informal context. O.N.R. ^(talk) 00:34, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

  Comment - You know I support this, but just to play devil's advocate, there are some collegiate teams which use their University or College designation in their names, such as the Boston College Eagles, Boston University Terriers and Colorado College Tigers to name a few. The question is which name is more prevalently used, and if both are equally used, how do we decide what the name is called; my reasoning is that their logo and athletics identity just say "Charleston" now. Tom Danson (talk) 00:36, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Boston College and Boston University don't have much choice as the two schools need to be distinguished from each other. Colorado College has to do it to differentiate itself from the University of Colorado, which goes by Colorado, and as a smaller Division III school, Colorado College is at a disadvantage for claiming the simpler "Colorado" name. College of Charleston is the only Division I school with the Charleston name (discounting Charleston Southern which uses its directional qualifier). The "Charleston" version has been CofC's preferred branding for a decade now and has gradually permeated into news coverage to become the common name in my opinion.

It's worth noting that there is a University of Charleston in West Virginia which is Division II. It too tends to go by just "Charleston" as in Charleston Golden Eagles, so there is some potential for confusion, but it's significantly reduced by the two schools being in different divisions and I think sufficiently addressed with a hatnote as already exists on the Golden Eagles page. WildCowboy (talk) 03:39, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Considering the presence of two Miamis and two (three if you count Marymount) Loyolas in Division I, I don't think University of Charleston is much of an issue at this time. If the University of Charleston moves up to Division I, and sources start to revert *back* to College of Charleston, we can always revisit. fuzzy510 (talk) 08:47, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support per my comments immediately above. WildCowboy (talk) 03:39, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support move to Charleston. SportsGuy789 (talk) 22:33, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.