The numbers deserve context.
CF Reference is an independent college football research tool, built to make schedules, rosters, season statistics, and advanced metrics easier to explore.
Where the data comes from
CollegeFootballData
CollegeFootballData supplies the FBS program directory, reported season records, historical game results, player season totals, player search, and advanced efficiency metrics. Requests run on the server with an API key. Availability and request allowances depend on the provider’s access tier.
Visit CollegeFootballData · API documentation · Provider terms
ESPN
ESPN’s publicly accessible college football feeds supply the weekly scoreboard, game details, published polls, team profiles, rosters, team production statistics, and player biographies and career tables. These feeds are supplementary, undocumented integrations. Their availability and response formats can change.
Update times and cached data
Each data section identifies its provider and the time it was retrieved. Current scoreboards and game details have a two-minute server cache. Current team schedules use five minutes, published polls and production statistics use one hour, and CFBD advanced metrics and player season totals use six hours. Team directories and rosters use a daily cache. Some historical resources retain a longer cache.
The game center can refresh an open page every minute. Background refreshes warm the core datasets independently of an open browser. A refresh checks cache freshness before making another provider request. If a provider fails, the most recent available data stays visible with a snapshot label. Retrieval times describe collection, rather than the exact time a provider made a correction.
Profile context and news
Wikipedia biographies are matched against the entity name, sport and available team context. Unverified namesakes and disambiguation pages are excluded. Each adapted summary links to Wikipedia, its revision and the CC BY-SA license. Wikidata supplies supported biographical facts. An administrator can select an exact article when an automatic match is ambiguous.
Related news uses ESPN team and athlete tags. Some articles concern multiple teams. Short headline previews link to the original publisher; CF Reference does not reproduce full articles. The default news cache is 30 minutes and the Wikipedia cache is 24 hours. Scheduled hourly batches refresh tracked profiles, while viewed profiles also refresh after expiry. Coverage and refresh throughput depend on provider availability.
Sitemap last-modified values and the update log follow content fingerprints. A successful source check without a content change does not advance these dates.
What we calculate
Team profile wins, scoring totals, points per game, and scoring margin are calculated from completed games reported by the schedule source. Only those games contribute to these calculations. Official season-record tables come separately from CFBD and may differ after forfeits, corrections, or changes in coverage.
Advanced success rate, PPA and explosiveness come directly from CollegeFootballData. Displayed percentages are the reported rate multiplied by 100. Player season totals are supplied by CFBD; career rows are supplied by ESPN. Missing values are displayed as a dash rather than replaced with zero.
Coverage and corrections
The main program directory and season-statistics explorers focus on FBS programs. Some supplementary profiles and polls include other college football divisions. Historical availability differs across games, rosters, player statistics, and play-based metrics. A roster selected for a historical season can differ from the player’s latest biography.
Use the named source to check a disputed figure. Corrections published by a provider enter the site at the next successful refresh. The site does not add unverified scores, simulate live results, or infer missing player statistics.
An independent resource
CF Reference is independently built and is not affiliated with Sports Reference, CollegeFootballData, ESPN, the NCAA, or individual teams. The reference-site format is familiar, while this site’s presentation and implementation are its own. Team names, logos, and player images identify the relevant entities and remain the property of their respective owners.