Get every head coach ESPN tracks for a college football season, with their name, ESPN ids, and the team they coached that year.
Arguments
- year
(Integer required): Season, 4 digit format (YYYY).
- team_detail
(Logical): when
TRUE(default), the ESPN team catalog (espn_cfb_teams()) is fetched once and friendly team fields are joined in next to theteam_idcolumn. The sibling columnsteam_name,team_abbreviation,team_location,team_display_name,team_short_display_name,team_nickname,team_color,team_alternate_color,team_logo_href,team_logo_dark_hrefare inserted immediately afterteam_id. A catalog failure degrades toNArather than erroring the wrapper. SetFALSEto skip the catalog fetch and the join, reproducing the prior output exactly.
Value
A data frame with one row per coach:
| col_name | types | description |
| season | integer | Season (4-digit year). |
| coach_id | character | ESPN coach id. |
| first_name | character | Coach first name. |
| last_name | character | Coach last name. |
| team_id | character | ESPN id of the team coached that season (parsed from team_ref). |
| team_name | character | Team nickname; team_detail = TRUE only. |
| team_abbreviation | character | Team abbreviation; team_detail = TRUE only. |
| team_location | character | Team location / school name; team_detail = TRUE only. |
| team_display_name | character | Full team display name; team_detail = TRUE only. |
| team_short_display_name | character | Short team display name; team_detail = TRUE only. |
| team_nickname | character | Team nickname label; team_detail = TRUE only. |
| team_color | character | Primary team color; team_detail = TRUE only. |
| team_alternate_color | character | Alternate team color; team_detail = TRUE only. |
| team_logo_href | character | Default team logo URL; team_detail = TRUE only. |
| team_logo_dark_href | character | Dark-variant team logo URL; team_detail = TRUE only. |
| coach_ref | character | $ref URL to the season-scoped coach resource. |
| person_ref | character | $ref URL to the league-wide coach (person) resource. |
| team_ref | character | $ref URL to the per-season team resource. |
Details
Wraps the ESPN core-v2 endpoint
sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/college-football/seasons/{year}/coaches.
The index is $ref-paginated (~268 coaches across three pages); this
wrapper walks every page and dereferences each coach $ref, returning
one row per coach. The coach_id column is the value
espn_cfb_coach() accepts for the full per-coach detail (date of birth,
birthplace, career-record / coach-season counts).
See also
Other ESPN CFB Functions:
espn_cfb_award(),
espn_cfb_awards(),
espn_cfb_clear_cache(),
espn_cfb_coach(),
espn_cfb_coach_record(),
espn_cfb_franchise(),
espn_cfb_franchises(),
espn_cfb_futures(),
espn_cfb_game_broadcasts(),
espn_cfb_game_drive_plays(),
espn_cfb_game_drives(),
espn_cfb_game_leaders(),
espn_cfb_game_odds(),
espn_cfb_game_pbp(),
espn_cfb_game_play(),
espn_cfb_game_player_box(),
espn_cfb_game_player_statistics(),
espn_cfb_game_powerindex(),
espn_cfb_game_predictor(),
espn_cfb_game_probabilities(),
espn_cfb_game_situation(),
espn_cfb_game_status(),
espn_cfb_game_team_leaders(),
espn_cfb_game_team_linescores(),
espn_cfb_game_team_records(),
espn_cfb_game_team_roster(),
espn_cfb_game_team_statistics(),
espn_cfb_game_teams(),
espn_cfb_groups(),
espn_cfb_pbp_v2(),
espn_cfb_player(),
espn_cfb_player_career_stats(),
espn_cfb_player_eventlog(),
espn_cfb_player_gamelog(),
espn_cfb_player_overview(),
espn_cfb_player_seasons(),
espn_cfb_player_splits(),
espn_cfb_player_stats_v3(),
espn_cfb_players(),
espn_cfb_position(),
espn_cfb_positions(),
espn_cfb_powerindex(),
espn_cfb_qbr(),
espn_cfb_rankings(),
espn_cfb_recruits(),
espn_cfb_season_info(),
espn_cfb_season_types(),
espn_cfb_season_weeks(),
espn_cfb_seasons(),
espn_cfb_standings(),
espn_cfb_team(),
espn_cfb_team_ats(),
espn_cfb_team_awards(),
espn_cfb_team_coaches(),
espn_cfb_team_events(),
espn_cfb_team_leaders(),
espn_cfb_team_powerindex(),
espn_cfb_team_ranks(),
espn_cfb_team_record(),
espn_cfb_team_roster(),
espn_cfb_team_schedule(),
espn_cfb_teams(),
espn_cfb_unnest_plays(),
espn_cfb_venue(),
espn_cfb_venues(),
espn_cfb_week_rankings()
Examples
# \donttest{
try(espn_cfb_coaches(year = 2024))
#> ── Coaches index from ESPN ─────────────────────────────────── cfbfastR 2.3.0 ──
#> ℹ Data updated: 2026-06-09 07:55:43 UTC
#> # A tibble: 268 × 18
#> season coach_id first_name last_name team_id team_name team_abbreviation
#> <int> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 2024 5120149 Alex Golesh 58 Bulls USF
#> 2 2024 162030 Alex Mortensen NA NA NA
#> 3 2024 15744 Major Applewhite 6 Jaguars USA
#> 4 2024 4606657 Ryan Silverfield 235 Tigers MEM
#> 5 2024 5119667 Kenny Dillingham 9 Sun Devils ASU
#> 6 2024 4077317 Brent Brennan 12 Wildcats ARIZ
#> 7 2024 5218798 Tim Skipper 278 Bulldogs FRES
#> 8 2024 5345545 Alonzo Carter NA NA NA
#> 9 2024 156919 Sean Lewis 21 Aztecs SDSU
#> 10 2024 559953 Ken Niumatalolo 23 Spartans SJSU
#> # ℹ 258 more rows
#> # ℹ 11 more variables: team_location <chr>, team_display_name <chr>,
#> # team_short_display_name <chr>, team_nickname <chr>, team_color <chr>,
#> # team_alternate_color <chr>, team_logo_href <chr>,
#> # team_logo_dark_href <chr>, coach_ref <chr>, person_ref <chr>,
#> # team_ref <chr>
try(espn_cfb_coaches(year = 2024, team_detail = FALSE))
#> ── Coaches index from ESPN ─────────────────────────────────── cfbfastR 2.3.0 ──
#> ℹ Data updated: 2026-06-09 07:55:48 UTC
#> # A tibble: 268 × 8
#> season coach_id first_name last_name team_id coach_ref person_ref team_ref
#> <int> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 2024 5120149 Alex Golesh 58 http://sp… http://sp… http://…
#> 2 2024 162030 Alex Mortensen NA http://sp… http://sp… NA
#> 3 2024 15744 Major Applewhite 6 http://sp… http://sp… http://…
#> 4 2024 4606657 Ryan Silverfield 235 http://sp… http://sp… http://…
#> 5 2024 5119667 Kenny Dillingham 9 http://sp… http://sp… http://…
#> 6 2024 4077317 Brent Brennan 12 http://sp… http://sp… http://…
#> 7 2024 5218798 Tim Skipper 278 http://sp… http://sp… http://…
#> 8 2024 5345545 Alonzo Carter NA http://sp… http://sp… NA
#> 9 2024 156919 Sean Lewis 21 http://sp… http://sp… http://…
#> 10 2024 559953 Ken Niumatalolo 23 http://sp… http://sp… http://…
#> # ℹ 258 more rows
# }