Talk:List of college football career coaching wins leaders

Joe Paterno

Joe Pa's record just got reduced today. All wins from 1998-2011? Gone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.78.136.227 (talk) 13:17, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

I see Paterno's win total has been reduced to 298. Since this is a list which recites the number of games actually won by a football coach, it seems to me that Paterno's count should be restored to the number of games he actually won (409), with a parenthetical that 111 of these wins are not recognized in the NCAA record book. Otherwise, this list is simply a re-publication of the NCAA Record Book, and there would be no point to having this separate list on Wikipedia. Alternatively, this list could be re-captioned as a list of "officially recognized" NCAA wins -- but I again I question why then have a "separate" list here which is simply a re-publication of the NCAA Record Book. Ultimately people who seek information here are interested in actual history and facts -- and the actual history and facts are that Paterno won 409 games, and that the NCAA subsequently vacated 111 of those wins. I think complete accuracy should be the goal here. As currently presented, the information is not thoroughly accurate. One would have to look carefully at the notes to obtain a thorough understanding of the actual facts. I think it would be preferable if all relevant information was cited in the list ----

Joe Paterno should have an asterisk next to his name mentioning his 111 additional wins that are no longer recognized by the NCAA.

First of all, please sign your edits so we may all see who were are discussing this issue with. Secondly, while I was a Joe Pa fan, his wins were vacated by the NCAA, and with a majority consensus of all concerned, for good reason. This is not a case of steroid use or equipment changes. This was for something much more serious and no record book is going to reflect the additional 111 wins now that they have been vacated. Thirdly, a reference to his 111 vacated wins is already included in his bio page. Scrooster (talk) 17:34, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Division I only? Yea or Nay?

From the information in the list, it appears that any college coach would be considered, but from the footnotes it appears that only Division I schools coaching records are considered? Which is it now, and which should it be?--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:08, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Footnote 4 was not completely clear to begin with, and the comments added with respect to Ault made it even more confusing. The intention was to include all coaches with 200 wins regardless of division and to highlight those with 200 wins at the Division I level (or historic equivalent) with peach shading. I have clarified fn. 4 as follows:

The list includes coaches with 200 wins regardless of division. Coaches with 200 wins at a Division I school (or historic equivalents) are designated with the referenced peach shading. The referenced shading has also been used for coaches with historic programs that were among the elite programs of their era. For example, Amos Alonzo Stagg's wins with the University of Chicago are included.

Does that sound reasonable? Cbl62 (talk) 16:25, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

• Agree looks good to me.--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:03, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: I'm the person who added the information on Ault to the footnote. Someone who's not up on his or her college football history, seeing that Ault has over 200 wins at a single school that's now in Division I, might be confused as to why he's not highlighted. Ault has 206 wins at Nevada, but only has 190 Division I wins because Nevada was a D-II school in his first two seasons (1976 and 1977). Nevada became a charter member of Division I-AA at its creation in 1978 and joined I-A (now FBS) in 1992. How should his situation be distinguished from those coaches who do have 200 D-I wins? — Dale Arnett (talk) 03:33, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

• I decided to give Ault his own footnote. Will this work? Revert away if you don't like it.  :) — Dale Arnett (talk) 19:30, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

• I think that's the best solution. Cbl62 (talk) 07:40, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Rank (left column)

For me, the ranking in the left column is a great tool until it's time to edit and add in a new member. For example, I see that Ted Kessinger is not in this list with 219 wins in 28 seasons... which puts him right between #35 Ron Harms and #36 Ron Randleman. Easy to put in table? Not really, because everyone from Randleman on down needs to have their rank increased by 1 (Kessinger becomes #36, Randlemen gets bumped to #37, and so forth). Is there an easy way to edit this information, and if not can we remove it?--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:12, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I think the ranking is a good tool also. There may be a way to do it automatically, but that's beyond my know-how. I went ahead and added Kessinger. Where two or more coaches have the same win total, I give them the same rank but have put the one with the highest win total. Thus, the three coaches with 219 wins all rank 34th, but I have listed Kessinger first because he has the highest win percentage. Cbl62 (talk) 20:53, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that if you sort on another column and then try to sort again using the Rank column it "left" justifies the sort, meaning you see 1,10,11....2,20,21... consider adding a 0 before each single digit value or updating the sort filter for all Wiki articles to automatically do this. ----

I fixed this using Template:Number table sorting. Jweiss11 (talk) 08:32, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Mike Van Diest from Carroll College, MT. Should be on the coaches list with 200 wins. Mike Coached from 199-2018 and has a record of 203-54 for a winning percentage of .789 all with Carroll College. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.5.171.249 (talk) 17:31, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Brainstorming: Modifications to Consider

I understand that this table contains sensitive data that is difficult to manage if updated in a piecemeal fashion. So, here are a few ideas. Accept one/all/none. What do you think of:

• using a different color to highlight the active coaches; and/or
• locking the table to restrict editing to only a select group of users; and/or
• adding a new "updated through" column to the table so each coach's edits are readily apparent to all; and/or
• revising existing columns to show beginning of the year W-L-T, adding columns for the current year W-L-T and total W-L-T, showing a WinPct only for the total; and/or
• putting together a team of users responsible for updating a select group of coaches - to divide the workload; and/or
• updating only a limited number of times per year, perhaps annually after the bowl season is finished for all teams.

Jlhcpa (talk) 01:14, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

We're already using a color to highlight Division I coaches. If we add a second color for active coaches, would we need a third for active D-I coaches? Semi-protecting lists like this to prevent IP editors from gumming up the works doesn't sounds that a bad idea, but I'm not sure we'd have the justification for such a protection. I don't like the idea of an "updated through" column. The list should be updated uniformly for all coaches. We shouldn't make a habit of exceptions like the current one for Kevin Donley. I don't think we'd want to report "beginning of the year" and current year records as along as it's clear what date the list is updated through. Adding those extra columns would make the list more cumbersome, harder to read, and potentially confusing, and we'd be diluting fresh data with stale data. I don't like the idea of restricting updates to the end of the year. It's reasonable that lists like this one be updated as often as the end of each weekend of play.

As for putting together a team for updates, that sounds like a good idea, but we may I think we'll need some discussion about the best way to go about it. This fall I built out List of college football coaches with a .750 winning percentage, a list analogous to this one, and have been updating it pretty regularly. My process has been to go through the active coaches on that list, confirm and update their records on their biography articles, and then come back to the list a make one update in a single or small number of edits. Many of the D-II, D-III, and NAIA guys didn't their own articles and so those had to be created. I haven't managed to update the winning percentage list quite every week, but it's updated through November 21 right now. I have run into some issues IP editors making updates for only some of the high profile Division I guys on the list, seemingly without regard for notation or the overall integrity of the list. User:Cbl62 is responsible for the bulk of the building of this list and he had been updating it pretty regularly earlier in the season. He also built List of winningest college football teams, which presents even more of management challenge than the coach lists. Jweiss11 (talk) 03:24, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Potential Error in Win Percentage Calculation

The current calculator for winning percentage does not seem to include the number of ties in the calculation. Using Joe Paterno's new post-sanction values, the current formula gives an incorrect value of 0.685. Compare this result to properly including ties in the total games played to give a correct Winning Percentage of 0.682. Small difference, but records and numbers are what they are. (or maybe I misunderstand how the Wiki-calculation works)The Good Doctor Fry (talk) 15:55, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

For the purposes of winning percentages, ties are considered to be half a win. This is standard procedure across all American sports. The formula here is correct. Jweiss11 (talk) 12:05, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Kevin Donley - No 2016 Updates?

Has the winning table been updated at all for 2016 results? I believe the record shown for Kevin Donley is his record as it existed at the end of the 2015 season.Jlhcpa (talk) 21:34, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

@Jlhcpa: I recently updated the lists here through games played on October 15, although pieces of the lead section are still out of date. We have a chronic problem with this article wherein IP editors tend to fly by, updating records for one coach they happen to care about and undermine the integrity of the entire list. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:32, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

@Jweiss11: I see that updates have now been made. And I agree, this is a tough article to keep update if drive-bys stop in and change some, but not all the coaches. Thanks for your efforts. Jlhcpa (talk) 15:17, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Active Coaches Nearing 200 wins

If you wanted to expand it past 185 because of a few coaches joining the 200 after the 2017 season, you could go down to 175 and it would then include (from FBS), Urban Meyer (175+), Paul Johnson (181+)

Pop Warner win total

Pop Warner on multiple sites (including his own wiki page linked from this list) is listed with 319 wins. Here he is listed with 336. Mike6062 (talk) 13:20, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

The discrepancy is explained in the first note on the Pop Warner article. "The NCAA credits Warner with a career football coaching record of 319–106–32. The College Football Data Warehouse gives him one fewer win with the Carlisle Indians in 1908 for a career record of 318–106–32.[1] Neither includes the five seasons at Iowa State (1895–1899) during which time Warner co-coached the Cyclones to a record of 18–8 while he simultaneously coached at three other schools." Perhaps we should list the 319–106–32 record here though. Jweiss11 (talk) 14:57, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Paterno vacated wins that were restored three years later

I removed content from the "Leaders by category" section that seemed excessive. It summarizes who the current top five coaches in wins are, and for Joe Paterno's part it mentions his 111 wins that were vacated by the NCAA in 2012 that were later reinstated following a lawsuit settlement in 2015. This was reverted by Jweiss11 with an explanation that it "is pretty relevant as it temporarily impacted the top of this list". In my opinion, in the scope of a historical look at the winningest college football coaches, this information is not relevant and trivial. Had the wins remained vacated, I would agree that it merits inclusion. Eagles 24/7 (C) 19:32, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

This was a pretty serious changing of the ordering of this list, due to a highly notable episode, that persisted for some time. Certainly worthy of mention somewhere here. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:36, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Updates

Since the 2020 NCAA FBS season is done, I'm pretty sure some updates to coaches such as Mack Brown and Nick Saban are in order.

Notability

@BeanieFan11: can you point me to coverage of college football coaches with 200 wins? I'm not finding any and WP:NOTESAL says that the group has to be notable (aka it has to have significant coverage as a group). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:55, 8 February 2023 (UTC)