Talk:Sam Salz (American football)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: withdrawn by nominator, closed by Bruxton talk 13:55, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

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• ... that a wide receiver on the Texas A&M Aggies football team never played organized football?

• Source: The five-foot-five, 155-pound wideout never played a down of organized football before being invited to join the SEC powerhouse last year

• ALT1: ... that a wide receiver on the Texas A&M Aggies football team may never be able to play in a game because of his religious beliefs? Source: Sabbath runs from sun down on Friday to an hour past sundown on Saturday which means Sam can only compete in Saturday night games for the Aggies.
• ALT2: ... that football player Sam Salz wears the jersey number 39 and a Chabad "A&M” kippah under his football helmet? Source: donning a “Chabad A&M” kippah under his helmet while wearing the number “39” to symbolize the 39 tasks and items that are avoided during Sabbath, known in Hebrew as lamed tet melachot.
• ALT3: ... that by rule Sam Salz could not even try out for the Texas A&M Aggies football team but he is on the team? Source: the rule was that to try out for the team, it was required to play high school football on a varsity level which Salz didn’t do. So, he got creative. Getting on the team There was a field right next to the Aggies’ training facility, and Salz, an obser- vant Jew, went there every daytotrain,asidefromShab- bat. He worked on taking hand-offs, catching, and doing footwork.
• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Cosmic Ray (film)
• Comment: There may be other hooks in there. I avoided the claim of first or only orthodox Jewish football player in NCAA Division I because of verifiability.

Moved to mainspace by Bruxton (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 152 past nominations.

Bruxton (talk) 19:39, 23 June 2024 (UTC).

• This is only a preliminary review for now as the article needs a copyedit when it comes to wording and missing punctuation. However, the article does seem long enough and is adequately sourced and a QPQ has been done. My preferred hook is ALT1, but it doesn't exactly match the article or the source so it might fail at WT:DYK or ERRORS. ALT0 could probably be modified to say he never played organized football before signing up as the current wording might be too vague. ALT2 might need additional context especially for readers from countries where Judaism is not a common religion: my suggestion would be to propose a new hook that explains his 39 jersey and how it related to the Sabbath. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 13:37, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: Thank you for checking out this nomination.. I did some copyediting but it is hard for me to find my own errors so I would appreciate you calling them out. For hook ideas I prefer that someone click the article to discover rather than getting in the weeds with specificity in the hook. For fifth and sixth hook ideas:

ALT4: ... that a wide receiver on the Texas A&M Aggies football team wears number 39 to symbolize the tasks or items which Jews should avoid during the Sabbath?

ALT5: ... that American football player Sam Salz wears number 39 to remind him of "lamed tet melachot"?

Bruxton (talk) 15:10, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

ALT4 sounds good to me. The article is improved but the wording still seems a bit weird (for example, "As a young boy Salz never watched college football because it is played on the Shabbat and he is an observant orthodox Jew." and "He was not invited to join the football team so he practiced by himself within sight of the football team and eventually earned a roster spot.") I don't have access to the NYT source; is 2003 mentioned in that article? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 23:18, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: Excellent. You can archive a link to read text it by putting the url in archive.ph. Here is a link to the NYT article. I got 2003 from "Salz, 21, became obsessed with playing college football at a young age, for reasons he can’t exactly pinpoint." It is a 2024 article and 2024-21 is c. 2003. Regarding the two sentences, I do not see the weirdness to their structurel; if you do please edit them. Bruxton (talk) 23:47, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me not being a native speaker but something feels off about the first sentence to me, but it could just be that it's correct to a native speaker but sounds weird to a non-native one. The second one could probably be rewritten to something like "As he was not invited to join the football team, he practiced by himself within sight of them. He eventually earned a roster spot." Maybe something like that? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 09:03, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: I reordered the first sentence you called out and I used your language for the second sentence. Bruxton (talk) 22:44, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Now that I think about it, ALT4a is quite long. Would it be okay if it got shortened to ALT4a ... that a Texas A&M Aggies football wide receiver wears number 39 to symbolize the tasks or items which Jews should avoid during the Sabbath? "Football" could even be dropped if possible, but given American football's relatively niche popularity outside of North America, just "wide receiver" without context might not make much sense, hence the addition of "football" (or even "college football" if really needed). Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:31, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: I am ok with any change that helps advance this nomination. Bruxton (talk) 01:01, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Cool. I'll think about hook options over the next few days but as long as the copyediting has been completed I can probably complete the review. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 13:31, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay in reviewing. The article meets requirements for newness and length, and I did not find any close paraphrasing. QPQ has been done and verified. All major statements in the article match the sources, and all hooks are mentioned in the article and verified in the sources. There is one statement in the article, however: the "thought to be the only orthodox Jewish football player in NCAA Division I" fact might change in the future, so the mention in the article may need a qualifier. I also note that one of the sources says he's the first known orthodox Jewish college football player, but given the recent brouhaha over "first" hooks it might be the safest option not to go with that. Some variation of ALT4 (I will leave the exact wording to the promoter) is probably the best option here as the most unusual or interesting; my original preference (ALT1) is unsuitable due to not being directly mentioned in the article, as well as not meeting the "unlikely to change" criterion. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 10:35, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: Good catch I attributed the statement Bruxton (talk) 04:21, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I think there should be no more issues here. The only approved option here is some variant of ALT4; I will leave it to the promoter on what wording to use, or whether to mention Salz by name in the hook. I do wonder if a hook that goes "that in 2023, the Atlanta Jewish Times suggested that Sam Salz is the only Orthodox Jewish player in NCAA Division I college football?" or even "that The Times of Israel suggests that Sam Salz may be college football's first known Orthodox Jewish player?", but given both are "first" or "only" hooks and thus are likely to be a whole can of worms, they're only food for thought and the nomination can proceed with ALT4 or some variant. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:36, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

The fact that he's an orthodox jew playing football is the story, so we'd be silly to shy away from mentioning that in the hook. I think we'd be OK with a "first" as long as we qualify it with "believed to be" or something to that effect. The Jewish Times says "Salz is believed to be the only Orthodox Jew to play Division I college football this season (if not, the first-ever)", which seems like an appropriate level of hedging. As for the 39-based hooks, I'm torn between the significance of 39 being lost on most of our readers vs piquing their interest ("what's so special about 39?") RoySmith (talk) 13:18, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Elsewhere, Black Kite said:

"Suggests" and "known" and "may be" are really vague though, aren't they? You would have thought that given the ridiculous amount of statistical trivia about the game, there would be a definitive source.

I'm sure they keep all kinds of statistics about on-field performance, but I wouldn't expect they have data on the religious affiliation of every player. And even if they did, who's to say what an "Orthodox Jew" is? It's kind of a self-identify thing. RoySmith (talk) 19:17, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

The issue here is all the recent brouhahas with "first" or "only" hooks and how much scrutiny they get. If we go with that angle, we want to be sure we're right and not have to have another long discussion about how we promoted a factual error, even if objectively this was the more interesting option. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 01:04, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I have pulled this to make room for a special occasion hook. I have not assessed this article, and will put it back in a different prep set myself.--Launchballer 03:57, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Actually, given the number of date requests at WT:DYK I've put this back in Approved.--Launchballer 12:23, 26 July 2024 (UTC)