CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
EN/FR
Search
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Bill Neill

American football defensive lineman

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ4910320 ↗
Source-derived summary

William M. Neill (born March 15, 1959) is an American former professional football player who was a nose tackle in the National Football League (NFL) for the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers. Neill played college football for the Pittsburgh Panthers before being selected by the Giants in the fifth round of the 1981 NFL draft. He played four seasons in the NFL and retired in 1984.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bill Neill” is american football defensive lineman. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bill, Neill and American, not as a finished interpretation.

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—1959, 1981, 1984—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1959-03-15. For this dossier, Bill, Neill and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american football defensive lineman” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4910320. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1981 and 1984.

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.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bill Neill”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bill Neill primary sources, Bill Neill archive and Bill 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 “Bill Neill”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bill Neill” 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.