Standard Notations

This wiki uses several standard notations throughout.

Within conference standings

Team A	10	0	25	5		AP 4/USA 10
Team B*	8	2	23	7
Team C†	6	4	21	9
Team D‡	4	6	19	11
Team E	2	8	17	13
Team F	0	10	15	15
Overall Non-Conference Record	90-30

In the above example, the italics indicate the team was invited to their division's primary tournament. Asterisk indicates the division's secondary tournament, dagger tertiary, and double dagger quaternary. For football, the only notation is italics, indicating an invitation to that division's playoff; non-playoff bowl invitations are not noted in the standings. The following chart shows what each notation indicates, specifically, for basketball.

	NCAA I	NCAA II	NCAA III	NAIA I	NAIA II
italics	NCAA Tournament			NAIA Tournament
*	NIT, WNIT	ECAC Tourneys		n/a
†	CBI, WBI, NCAT, CCAT	n/a
‡	CIT, NCIT	n/a

The right-most column, outside the standings box, indicates the school's ranking in the final post-season poll. This is true for both football and basketball. In Division I basketball and Division I FCS football, AP indicates the Associated Press writer's poll, UPI or USA the UPI or USA Today coaches' poll. In Division I FCS football, NCAA indicates the official NCAA ranking in years when that was in effect; TSN indicates The Sports Network media poll, AFCA indicates the coaches' poll. (We haven't collected poll data for NCAA Divisions II and III or the NAIA yet. When we do, we'll update here as well.)

Within All-Conference teams

An asterisk indicates a first-team selection (or, in the case of specialized teams which a conference only awards once a year, simply being named earns an asterisk). A dagger indicates a second-team selection, and a double-dagger indicates third-team honors. These are to be read left-to-right in reverse time order; thus a player whose name is followed with *†‡ earned first team honors in the current year, second team honors in a previous year, and third team honors in a year prior to the second-team selection. (Years in which a player did not earn a position on an all-conference team are ignored, so the sequence of notations does not imply consecutive seasons.)

In basketball, we ignore position because, quite frankly, many conferences (and even the All-America teams) do. Not so in football, and the following examples only apply to that sport.

When a notation is enclosed within parentheses, it indicates that the player earned a post-season honor at a substantially different position in a prior year without earning that honor at the position listed. Example:

John Smith earned first-team recognition at defensive back in the current season, and second-team recognition two years prior. In both the current and previous year, he was the first-team punt returner. His entry at defensive back would appear as follows:

DB

John Smith*(*)†

Big State

His entry at punt returner, however, would appear this way:

PR

John Smith**(†)

Big State

Bob Jones, on the other hand, was a first-team selection at wide receiver and kick returner in the current season as well. In the previous season, he was a first-team kick returner, but a second-team receiver. His entries would appear as follows:

WR

Bob Jones*†(*)

City U

KR

Bob Jones**

City U

Jones' entry for kick returner in the current year makes no reference to his second-team selection as a defensive back because his first-team selection at kick returner is a higher honor. The parenthetical notation is only placed on the wide receiver entry to indicate that while he's only earned first-team honors at wide receiver once, he is a two-time first-team honoree.

Note that, again, years in which a player isn't honored are simply ignored. As a result, Bill Davis's entry would look exactly the same as John Smith's entry if Davis was a first-team honoree at both positions in the current year, a first-team honoree at punt returner the year prior, and a second-team defensive back two years prior.

In regard to our standard of "substantially different positions", we make the distinction as follows: offense, defense, and special teams are all substantially different from one another, except in cases where a conference is bouncing back and forth between platoon- and non-platoon honors. (For instance, a player who is a first-team "end" in one year, and a first-team "defensive back" the next, is deemed to be at substantially the same position, even though they could have received the first honor for playing defensive end or for what we now know as wide receiver.) This exception applies in any case where a conference shifts from non-platoon honors to platoon honors and begins awarding special team honors as well; if a player is a "back" one year and a punter the next, we cannot assume that their skill at punting wasn't a significant part of their selection the prior year, and reading articles about all-conference and All-America teams in the Old Days will disabuse the reader of any notion that this wasn't somewhat common. (Indeed, in the non-platoon era, a team might well have a player on the field whose primary purpose was to be able to kick the ball if it became necessary.)

Further, within units, a player who shifts from a line position to a skill position -- in other words, from a defensive line position to defensive back or from an interior offensive line position to back or receiver -- is deemed to have made a substantial position change. We do not consider interior offensive (or non-platoon) linemen moving to or from tight end, tight ends moving to or from a skill position, or any defensive player moving to or from linebacker to be "substantial" position changes.

In essence, our intent is to keep the units -- offense, defense, and special teams -- separate in terms of "did this player make the unit", but substantial position changes within units should still be observed as meaningful changes.