Load ESPN college football game rosters from the SportsDataverse data repo

Loads season-level game rosters – one row per player-game with team, position, and status, keyed by ESPN athlete id. Published to the espn_cfb_game_rosters release tag on the sportsdataverse-data repo.

Usage

load_espn_cfb_game_rosters(
  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
athlete_id	integer
athlete_uid	character
athlete_guid	character
athlete_type	character
first_name	character
last_name	character
full_name	character
athlete_display_name	character
short_name	character
weight	double
display_weight	character
height	double
display_height	character
slug	character
jersey	character
linked	logical
active	logical
alternate_ids_sdr	character
birth_place_city	character
birth_place_state	character
birth_place_country	character
birth_country_alternate_id	character	ESPN's internal alternate identifier for the athlete's birth country, paired with birth_place_country and the flag fields.
birth_country_abbreviation	character
headshot_href	character
headshot_alt	character
hand_type	character
hand_abbreviation	character
hand_display_value	character
flag_href	character	URL of the birth-country flag image hosted on ESPN's CDN under teamlogos/countries.
flag_alt	character	Alt text ESPN attaches to the birth-country flag image, which is the country's name spelled out.
flag_rel	character	Stringified relationship list ESPN ships with the flag image; the only non-null value observed is a single country-flag entry.
experience_years	double
experience_display_value	character
experience_abbreviation	character
status_id	character
status_name	character
status_type	character
status_abbreviation	character
middle_name	character
starter	logical
jersey_right	character
valid	logical
did_not_play	logical
display_name	character
athlete_href	character	ESPN Core v2 API reference URL for the athlete's season record, ending in the athlete id.
position_href	character	ESPN Core v2 API reference URL for the position resource ESPN lists the athlete at.
statistics_href	character	ESPN Core v2 API reference URL for this athlete's stat line in this game, null for the roughly 71 percent of listed players who recorded no stats.
team_id	integer
order	integer
home_away	character
winner	logical
team_guid	character
team_uid	character
team_slug	character
team_location	character
team_name	character
team_nickname	character
team_abbreviation	character
team_display_name	character
team_short_display_name	character
team_color	character
team_alternate_color	character
is_active	logical
is_all_star	logical
team_alternate_ids_sdr	character	The team's Sportradar alternate identifier, which maps one-to-one with team_id.
logo_href	character
logo_dark_href	character
game_id	integer
season	integer
week	integer
age	double
date_of_birth	character
citizenship	character
draft_display_text	character
draft_round	double
draft_year	double
draft_selection	double
draft_team_href	character	API link to the team that drafted the player. Sparse: absent entirely from the 2023 and 2024 assets and populated on only a small share of 2025 rows.

Author

Saiem Gilani

Examples

# \donttest{
  try(load_espn_cfb_game_rosters(2004))
#> ── ESPN college football game rosters from the SportsDataverse data repo ───────
#> ℹ Data updated: 2026-09-10 05:49:51 UTC
#> # A tibble: 43,010 × 72
#>    athlete_id athlete_uid        athlete_guid  athlete_type first_name last_name
#>         <int> <chr>              <chr>         <chr>        <chr>      <chr>    
#>  1     101304 s:20~l:23~a:101304 8eca16e2-da8… football     Kevin      Lewis    
#>  2     116150 s:20~l:23~a:116150 f60e5508-361… football     Eric       Green    
#>  3     116152 s:20~l:23~a:116152 bb556416-79c… football     Vincent    Fuller   
#>  4     116153 s:20~l:23~a:116153 bd2359a6-9d8… football     Richard    Johnson  
#>  5     116157 s:20~l:23~a:116157 3f16ca2f-315… football     Vinnie     Burns    
#>  6     116161 s:20~l:23~a:116161 e93576eb-b89… football     Brandon    Manning  
#>  7     116164 s:20~l:23~a:116164 332f1091-b1e… football     Travis     Conway   
#>  8     116168 s:20~l:23~a:116168 aaa00691-98d… football     Jared      Mazzetta 
#>  9     116171 s:20~l:23~a:116171 f65bc797-f03… football     Jim        Davis    
#> 10     116172 s:20~l:23~a:116172 32948407-a0b… football     James      Anderson 
#> # ℹ 43,000 more rows
#> # ℹ 66 more variables: full_name <chr>, athlete_display_name <chr>,
#> #   short_name <chr>, weight <dbl>, display_weight <chr>, height <dbl>,
#> #   display_height <chr>, age <dbl>, date_of_birth <chr>, slug <chr>,
#> #   jersey <chr>, linked <lgl>, active <lgl>, alternate_ids_sdr <chr>,
#> #   birth_place_city <chr>, birth_place_state <chr>, experience_years <dbl>,
#> #   experience_display_value <chr>, experience_abbreviation <chr>, …
# }