Load ESPN college football drives from the SportsDataverse data repo

Loads season-level drive summaries – one row per drive with start/end field position, result, plays, yards, and clock. Published to the espn_cfb_drives release tag on the sportsdataverse-data repo.

Usage

load_espn_cfb_drives(
  seasons = most_recent_cfb_season(),
  ...,
  dbConnection = NULL,
  tablename = NULL
)

Arguments

seasons: A vector of 4-digit years associated with given college football seasons. Published coverage runs 2004 through the most recent season. Pass seasons = TRUE for every published season. (Min: 2004)
...: Additional arguments passed to an underlying function that writes the season 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.

col_name	types	description
drive_id	character
team_id	integer
result	character
display_result	character
short_display_result	character
description	character
yards	integer
offensive_plays	integer
is_score	logical
start_period	integer
start_yard_line	integer
start_clock	character
start_text	character
end_period	integer
end_yard_line	integer
end_clock	character
time_elapsed	character
n_plays	integer	Number of entries in ESPN's raw plays array for the drive, which is generally at least offensive_plays because it also counts penalties and other non-offensive snaps.
game_id	integer
season	integer

Author

Saiem Gilani

Examples

# \donttest{
  try(load_espn_cfb_drives(2004))
#> ── ESPN college football drives from the SportsDataverse data repo ─────────────
#> ℹ Data updated: 2026-09-10 05:49:50 UTC
#> # A tibble: 16,414 × 20
#>    drive_id team_id result display_result short_display_result description yards
#>    <chr>      <int> <chr>  <chr>          <chr>                <chr>       <int>
#>  1 2424102…     259 PUNT   Punt           PUNT                 5 plays, 6…     6
#>  2 2424102…      30 PUNT   Punt           PUNT                 8 plays, 4…    42
#>  3 2424102…     259 INT    Interception   INT                  7 plays, 4…    46
#>  4 2424102…      30 PASSI… Passing TD     PASSING TD           5 plays, 4…    46
#>  5 2424102…     259 KICKO… Kickoff        KICKOFF              NA              0
#>  6 2424102…     259 MADE … Made FG        MADE FG              9 plays, 6…    62
#>  7 2424102…      30 KICKO… Kickoff        KICKOFF              NA              0
#>  8 2424102…      30 MISSE… Missed FG      MISSED FG            11 plays, …    59
#>  9 2424102…     259 PASSI… Passing TD     PASSING TD           10 plays, …    83
#> 10 2424102…      30 KICKO… Kickoff        KICKOFF              NA              0
#> # ℹ 16,404 more rows
#> # ℹ 13 more variables: offensive_plays <int>, is_score <lgl>,
#> #   start_period <int>, start_yard_line <int>, start_clock <chr>,
#> #   start_text <chr>, end_period <int>, end_yard_line <int>, end_clock <chr>,
#> #   time_elapsed <chr>, n_plays <int>, game_id <int>, season <int>
# }