Sources & Acknowledgements
The data, the people who built it, and the terms we use it under.
Gridiron Circus is built on other people's work. Every number on this site traces back to one of the sources below, and each is credited the way its author asks.
Data
- CollegeFootballData.com
Teams and conferences, game results, coaching records, recruiting class rankings, team talent composite, SP+ ratings and pregame win probabilities, 1995 to present.
Paid API subscription.
Data provided by CollegeFootballData.com.
- SP+ (Bill Connelly)
Opponent-adjusted team efficiency ratings, used in team strength and season projections.
Accessed through CollegeFootballData.com.
SP+ ratings created by Bill Connelly.
- FEI and F+ (Brian Fremeau, BCF Toys)
Drive-based efficiency ratings (FEI, offense and defense FEI) and combined F+ ratings, 2007 to present.
Published openly on bcftoys.com. Fetched at most weekly with conditional requests that identify this site, and credited here and wherever the ratings appear.
FEI and F+ ratings created by Brian Fremeau.
- 247Sports
Recruiting class rankings and team talent composite, used to set each job's expectations.
Accessed through CollegeFootballData.com.
Recruiting data from 247Sports.
- Wikipedia
Coaching career details and current status (retirements, current positions) used to review firing labels and the free-agent list.
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0. No Wikipedia text is reproduced on this site.
Coaching status checked against Wikipedia.
- National news outlets
Candidate reporting for open jobs on the Carousel page: ESPN, CBS Sports, On3, The Athletic, USA Today, Yahoo Sports, FOX Sports, Sports Illustrated and AP. Each name links to the article it came from.
Names, dates and links only; no article text reproduced.
- News reports
In-season coaching changes and retirement confirmations entered by hand (AP, ESPN, CBS Sports and others). Each entry is noted in the project's manual data files.
Facts only; no text reproduced.
Tools
- Astro · Site framework
- pandas and statsmodels · Data processing and model fitting
- Grenze Gotisch, Newsreader and Libre Franklin · Typefaces, under the SIL Open Font License, via Fontsource
- Cloudflare Pages · Hosting
Corrections
Coaching changes, firing labels, retirements and candidates' current jobs are partly maintained by hand, so mistakes are possible. Corrections are welcome atcorrections@gridironcircus.com. Please include a link to a source.