Get the catalog of college football franchises ESPN tracks – the stable program identities (~797) that underpin ESPN's team resources.
Value
A data frame with one row per franchise:
| col_name | types | description |
| franchise_id | character | ESPN franchise id (parsed from franchise_ref). |
| franchise_ref | character | $ref URL to the franchise detail resource. |
Details
Wraps the ESPN core-v2 endpoint
sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/college-football/franchises.
A franchise is the stable program identity, distinct from /teams
(which is season-scoped). The index is $ref-paginated and large
(~797 franchises); dereferencing every franchise would be hundreds of
HTTP calls, so this wrapper returns the lightweight index instead –
one row per franchise with the franchise_id parsed from each $ref.
Pass an id to espn_cfb_franchise() to dereference the full detail
record (slug, location, nickname, division, venue, colors, logos).
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_coaches(),
espn_cfb_franchise(),
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_franchises())
#> ── Franchises index from ESPN ──────────────────────────────── cfbfastR 2.3.0 ──
#> ℹ Data updated: 2026-06-09 07:55:49 UTC
#> # A tibble: 800 × 2
#> franchise_id franchise_ref
#> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 2 http://sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/coll…
#> 2 5 http://sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/coll…
#> 3 6 http://sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/coll…
#> 4 7 http://sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/coll…
#> 5 8 http://sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/coll…
#> 6 9 http://sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/coll…
#> 7 11 http://sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/coll…
#> 8 12 http://sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/coll…
#> 9 13 http://sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/coll…
#> 10 16 http://sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/coll…
#> # ℹ 790 more rows
# }