ESPN College Football Coaches Index

Get every head coach ESPN tracks for a college football season, with their name, ESPN ids, and the team they coached that year.

Usage

espn_cfb_coaches(year = NULL, team_detail = TRUE)

Arguments

year

(Integer required): Season, 4 digit format (YYYY).
Minimum value accepted: 2001

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 the team_id column. The sibling columns team_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_href are inserted immediately after team_id. A catalog failure degrades to NA rather than erroring the wrapper. Set FALSE to 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

if (FALSE) { # interactive()
# One request per coach (about 270 for a season), so this takes a while.
try(espn_cfb_coaches(year = 2024, team_detail = FALSE))
}