espn_cfb_recruits: *ESPN College Football Recruits*

In cfbfastR: Access College Football Play by Play Data

ESPN College Football Recruits

Description

Get the ESPN recruiting-class catalog for a college football signing class – one row per recruit, with athlete identity, position, physical measurements, ESPN grade, the overall / position / state / region rankings, the committed school, and the recruit's hometown and high school.

Usage

espn_cfb_recruits(year = NULL, max_results = 100)

Arguments

year	(Integer required): Recruiting class / signing year, 4 digit format (YYYY). Minimum value accepted: 2006
max_results	(Integer default 100): Maximum number of recruits to dereference and return. The index is alphabetical, so this returns the alphabetically-first max_results recruits; raise it to pull more of the class.

Details

Wraps the ESPN core-v2 endpoint sports.core.api.espn.com/v2/sports/football/leagues/college-football/seasons/{year}/recruits. The season index is ⁠$ref⁠-paginated and large (roughly 3,700-4,900 recruits per class), so dereferencing every recruit would be thousands of HTTP calls. ESPN exposes no pre-expanded recruiting endpoint – the site.web.api.espn.com recruiting paths all 404 – so this wrapper caps the walk at max_results recruits (default 100). Raise max_results (e.g. to several hundred or higher) to pull more of the class, at the cost of one extra HTTP call per recruit.

The index is returned by ESPN in athlete-name (alphabetical) order, not ranking order, and the sort query parameter is ignored upstream. The default max_results = 100 therefore returns the alphabetically-first 100 recruits, not the top-100 ranked recruits. To rank the class, pull a larger slice and sort the result on overall_rank (lower is better); note ESPN only publishes an overall_rank for the highly-rated portion of each class, so most recruits carry NA there. position_rank, state_rank, and region_rank are populated more widely. grade is ESPN's 0-100 recruit grade (0 / gradeDisplayValue = "NR" means not rated).

committed_team_id / committed_team_ref are resolved from the recruit's schools array by matching a school whose commitment status equals the recruit's top-level status (e.g. Signed); recruits still uncommitted at fetch time leave both columns NA.

Value

A data frame with one row per recruit:

col_name	types	description
recruit_id	character	ESPN recruit id.
recruiting_class	integer	Recruiting class / signing year.
athlete_id	character	ESPN athlete id.
alternate_athlete_id	character	ESPN alternate athlete id (recruiting feed id).
first_name	character	Recruit first name.
last_name	character	Recruit last name.
full_name	character	Recruit full name.
display_name	character	Recruit display name.
short_name	character	Recruit short name.
position_id	character	ESPN position id.
position_abbreviation	character	Position abbreviation (e.g. OT, WR).
weight	numeric	Listed weight (lbs).
height	numeric	Listed height (inches).
grade	numeric	ESPN recruit grade (0-100; 0 = not rated).
grade_display_value	character	Display-formatted grade (NR when not rated).
overall_rank	integer	Overall recruit ranking (top recruits only; may be NA).
position_rank	integer	Position ranking.
state_rank	integer	State ranking.
region_rank	integer	Region ranking.
status_id	character	ESPN commitment status id.
status	character	Commitment status description (e.g. Signed).
committed_team_id	character	ESPN team id of the committed school (may be NA).
hometown_city	character	Recruit hometown city.
hometown_state	character	Recruit hometown state.
hometown_state_abbreviation	character	Recruit hometown state abbreviation.
high_school_id	character	ESPN high-school id.
high_school_name	character	Recruit high-school name.
recruit_ref	character	⁠$ref⁠ URL to the recruit resource.
athlete_ref	character	Player-card URL for the recruit.
committed_team_ref	character	⁠$ref⁠ URL to the committed team-in-season resource.

See Also

Other ESPN CFB Functions: espn_cfb_award(), espn_cfb_awards(), espn_cfb_clear_cache(), espn_cfb_coach(), espn_cfb_coach_record(), espn_cfb_coaches(), espn_cfb_franchise(), espn_cfb_franchises(), espn_cfb_futures(), espn_cfb_game_broadcasts(), espn_cfb_game_drive_plays(), espn_cfb_game_drives(), espn_cfb_game_leaders(), espn_cfb_game_odds(), espn_cfb_game_pbp(), espn_cfb_game_play(), espn_cfb_game_player_box(), espn_cfb_game_player_statistics(), espn_cfb_game_powerindex(), espn_cfb_game_predictor(), espn_cfb_game_probabilities(), espn_cfb_game_situation(), espn_cfb_game_status(), espn_cfb_game_team_leaders(), espn_cfb_game_team_linescores(), espn_cfb_game_team_records(), espn_cfb_game_team_roster(), espn_cfb_game_team_statistics(), espn_cfb_game_teams(), espn_cfb_groups(), espn_cfb_pbp_v2(), espn_cfb_player(), espn_cfb_player_career_stats(), espn_cfb_player_eventlog(), espn_cfb_player_gamelog(), espn_cfb_player_overview(), espn_cfb_player_seasons(), espn_cfb_player_splits(), espn_cfb_player_stats_v3(), espn_cfb_players(), espn_cfb_position(), espn_cfb_positions(), espn_cfb_powerindex(), espn_cfb_qbr(), espn_cfb_rankings(), espn_cfb_season_info(), espn_cfb_season_types(), espn_cfb_season_weeks(), espn_cfb_seasons(), espn_cfb_standings(), espn_cfb_team(), espn_cfb_team_ats(), espn_cfb_team_awards(), espn_cfb_team_coaches(), espn_cfb_team_events(), espn_cfb_team_leaders(), espn_cfb_team_powerindex(), espn_cfb_team_ranks(), espn_cfb_team_record(), espn_cfb_team_roster(), espn_cfb_team_schedule(), espn_cfb_teams(), espn_cfb_unnest_plays(), espn_cfb_venue(), espn_cfb_venues(), espn_cfb_week_rankings()

Examples

  try(espn_cfb_recruits(year = 2024, max_results = 25))

cfbfastR documentation built on Aug. 24, 2026, 5:13 p.m.