Load college football conference and division lineages from the SportsDataverse data repo

Loads one row per college football group lineage – the FBS / FCS subdivisions, the conferences, and the conference divisions – with the first and last season each had at least one member. A lineage keeps one group_id across renames that keep continuity (Pac-10 to Pac-12 stays cfb:pac-12); a new body gets a new id. Published to the cfb_groups release tag on the sportsdataverse-data repo.

See load_cfb_group_seasons() for per-season names and parents, load_cfb_group_aliases() for the names and ids other sources use, and load_cfb_team_group_seasons() for team membership.

Usage

load_cfb_groups(..., dbConnection = NULL, tablename = NULL)

Arguments

...: Additional arguments passed to an underlying function that writes the data into a database.
dbConnection: A DBIConnection object, as returned by DBI::dbConnect()
tablename: The name of the data table within the database

Value

Returns a cfbfastR_data tibble with one row per group lineage.

col_name	types	description
league	character	League key, always `cfb`.
group_id	character	SDV group id, `cfb:{slug}` (e.g. `cfb:big-ten`, `cfb:fbs`); one id per lineage across renames.
level	character	Group level: `subdivision`, `conference`, or `division`.
first_season	integer	First season (fall year) with at least one member.
last_season	integer	Last season (fall year) with at least one member.
notes	character	Lineage decisions and source caveats.

Author

Saiem Gilani

Examples

# \donttest{
  try(load_cfb_groups())
#> ── college football conference and division lineages from the SportsDataverse da
#> ℹ Data updated: 2026-09-27 11:08:23 UTC
#> # A tibble: 237 × 6
#>    league group_id                     level      first_season last_season notes
#>    <chr>  <chr>                        <chr>             <int>       <int> <chr>
#>  1 cfb    cfb:acc                      conference         1953        2026 CFBD…
#>  2 cfb    cfb:acc-atlantic             division           2005        2022 NA   
#>  3 cfb    cfb:acc-coastal              division           2005        2022 NA   
#>  4 cfb    cfb:american                 conference         2013        2026 Amer…
#>  5 cfb    cfb:american-east            division           2015        2019 NA   
#>  6 cfb    cfb:american-rivers          conference         2014        2026 CFBD…
#>  7 cfb    cfb:american-southwest       conference         2014        2026 CFBD…
#>  8 cfb    cfb:american-west            division           2015        2019 NA   
#>  9 cfb    cfb:american-west-conference conference         1993        1995 Name…
#> 10 cfb    cfb:arkansas-intercollegiate conference         1930        1950 CFBD…
#> # ℹ 227 more rows
# }