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Research dossier · General Reference

1940 Mercer Bears football team

American college football season

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ108456558 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1940 Mercer Bears football team was an American football team that represented Mercer University as a member of the Dixie Conference during the 1940 college football season. In their twelfth year under head coach Lake Russell, the team compiled a 1–7 record.

Mercer was ranked at No. 167 (out of 697 college football teams) in the final rankings under the Litkenhous Difference by Score system for 1940.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “1940 Mercer Bears football team” as american college football season. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mercer, Bears and football.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1940—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Mercer, Bears and football providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “1940 Mercer Bears football team”, the useful work is to connect “american college football season” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q108456558. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1940.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1940 Mercer Bears football team”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1940 Mercer Bears football team primary sources, 1940 Mercer Bears football team archive and Mercer research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1940 Mercer Bears football team”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1940 Mercer Bears football team” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.