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"Mid-major" is an unofficial term coined by ESPN and the likes. It is derogatory to those schools in the non-BCS conferences. Actually, I'd like to see all the conferences listed, regardless of BCS/non-BCS "status". X96lee1517:48, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
While I disagree that the term itself is derogatory, I can see your point about it not being official and I will admit that I mis-spoke in that edit summary. However, since the people who would make it official (the NCAA) delegate even the responsibility of picking a national champion to the media, they become the de facto authority on the matter. I looked at the WP page on Mid-major and at the discussion there as well, hoping to find some guidance on the proper use of the term. The article itself seems to support my usage (Notre Dame being grouped with the Independents becomes a sticking point) while the discussion is mostly argument over edit-warring concerning basketball.
So, let me change my statement thusly: "Mid-major" is the generally accepted way of referring to all Division I-A football conferences that are not part of the six BCS conferences with the exception of Notre Dame, which has signed its own contract with the BCS.
If you want to use different wording, that's fine, but "non-BCS" is not as descriptive of a title as "Mid-major" is. In my opinion, if you are going to replace "Mid-major" you need to use an term with equal or greater weight as the use of prose in templates is very limited. To get more opinions on this so we can come to a consensus about how to format it, I am going to put a request for comments on the college football wiki-project talk page and we'll see what the others think. z4ns4tsu\talk18:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fine with not using mid-major, but I think BCS should be used. There are, in fact, BCS conferences. We could call the other conferences, Others unless there is a better name someone can think of? I also agree that knowledge of mid-major is probably more known, and introducing the topic, controversial or not, to someone would serve the subject of college football well, since someone is likely to hear the term and may want to learn about it. Anyways, maybe also Other DI-A Conferences"? Perhaps there isn't the need to even define the difference between BCS and non-BCS conference with this template either. Alphabetically perhaps then? --MECU≈talk20:13, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you have to separate, then "BCS" and "Other", but perhaps the BCS conferences are just marked with an asterisk with a *BCS Conference footnote at the bottom. At NCAAFootball.com they don't make any distinction in their conference listing. If you do separate the listings, use the subheader to the side instead of over each listing, for a cleaner look. AUTiger ʃ talk/work01:23, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Cool - I am very happy with the result. I appreciate everyone being so flexible. I'm so used to message boards where I'd be told to, "Go F myself" for suggesting that...lol X96lee1521:01, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
