College Football Data API

Name: College Football Data API API
Brand: College Football Data API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecAnalyticsBusiness IntelligenceapiKey53 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Pull NCAA college football games, plays, drives, advanced box scores, betting lines, recruiting, transfer portal, and predictive metrics through 53 read-only endpoints.

Quickstart

Get started with College Football Data API in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"get college football game results"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with College Football Data API API.

Pull game results and scores by season, week, conference, or team via GET /games

Retrieve play-by-play data with EPA and win-probability via GET /plays and /metrics/wp

Fetch drive-level summaries via GET /drives

Get advanced box scores including success rate and explosiveness via GET /game/box/advanced

GET STARTED

Start building with College Football Data API API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

The College Football Data API is a community-built feed of NCAA college football data covering games, plays, drives, advanced box scores, betting lines, recruiting, transfer portal, NFL draft, coaches, ratings, and predictive metrics. The API exposes 53 GET endpoints authenticated with a Bearer-style API key in the Authorization header. It is widely used by analysts, fantasy modellers, and journalists who need machine-readable college football data with deep history.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use College Football Data API API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Fantasy and Pick'em Modelling

Build a college football pick'em or fantasy model by combining historical games (/games), advanced box scores (/game/box/advanced), and PPA metrics (/ppa/games). The API returns multi-season history per call so a modeller can train regressions or gradient-boosted models on schedule strength, explosiveness, and success rate without scraping. Pair with /lines to backtest against the closing Vegas spread.

Pull GET /games?year=2024 plus GET /ppa/games?year=2024 and join them by gameId to produce a per-game features table

Live and Post-Game Reporting

Power a sports newsroom or fan dashboard by fetching scores, drive summaries, and play-by-play after each weekend. /games returns final scores and metadata, /drives returns drive-level outcomes, and /plays returns the full PBP stream. A reporter can generate post-game summaries from the structured payload without watching the broadcast.

After each game, call GET /games?id={gameId}, GET /drives?gameId={gameId}, and GET /plays?gameId={gameId} and synthesise a post-game recap

Recruiting and Transfer Tracking

Track college football roster movement by polling /player/portal for transfer-portal entries, /player/returning for returning production, and /draft/picks for NFL outflow. A site like 247Sports could mirror this data structure or a fan blog could publish weekly transfer roundups without manual scraping. Each endpoint accepts season parameters for historical comparisons.

Call GET /player/portal?season=2025 and group results by destination team to build a top-transfers leaderboard

Betting Analytics

Build a betting analytics dashboard by combining /lines (spreads and totals from multiple books) with /metrics/wp (win probability) and /games (final scores). Backtest a model's edge against the closing line over multiple seasons with a single set of API calls. The endpoint exposes lines from several sportsbooks per game.

Pull GET /lines?year=2024&seasonType=regular and GET /games?year=2024, join by gameId, and compute model edge versus the closing spread

AI Agent College Football Insights via Jentic

Let an AI agent answer college football questions by searching Jentic for the relevant operation (game results, transfer portal, betting lines) and executing it. The API key lives in the Jentic vault so agents never see it. Useful for chat copilots, fantasy assistants, and beat-reporter helpers.

Use Jentic to search 'get college football game results', load the GET /games schema, and execute it with year=2024 and team=Alabama

Key Endpoints

53 endpoints — the college football data api is a community-built feed of ncaa college football data covering games, plays, drives, advanced box scores, betting lines, recruiting, transfer portal, nfl draft, coaches, ratings, and predictive metrics.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/games

Season schedule and final scores

GET

/plays

Play-by-play data

GET

/drives

Drive summaries

GET

/game/box/advanced

Advanced box scores

GET

/lines

Betting lines and spreads

GET

/player/portal

Transfer portal entrants

GET

/draft/picks

NFL Draft picks by college

GET

/games

Season schedule and final scores

GET

/plays

Play-by-play data

GET

/drives

Drive summaries

GET

/game/box/advanced

Advanced box scores

GET

/lines

Betting lines and spreads

GET

/player/portal

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

The College Football Data API key is stored encrypted in the Jentic vault and injected into the Authorization header at execution. The key never enters the agent context.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search by intent (e.g., 'get college football game results') and Jentic returns the matching College Football Data operation with its parameter schema so the agent can call the right endpoint without reading the docs.

Time to first call

Direct integration: half a day to wire up auth and parameter combinations across 53 endpoints. Through Jentic: under 30 minutes — search, load schema, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Alternative

SportsData.io API

Commercial multi-sport feed with NCAA football coverage and SLAs

Choose SportsData.io when you need a commercial SLA, broader sport coverage, and licensed data rights

Alternative

API-Sports

Multi-sport API with affordable tiers and broad coverage

Choose API-Sports when one feed for multiple sports is more important than NCAA depth

Complementary

API-Football

Soccer-focused feed for sites that cover both football codes

Pair with College Football Data when a publication covers both NCAA football and global soccer

FAQs

Specific to using College Football Data API API through Jentic.

What authentication does the College Football Data API use?

The API expects an API key in the Authorization header (formatted as 'Bearer {key}'). Through Jentic the key lives in the encrypted vault and is injected at execution so it never enters the agent prompt. Get a key by registering at the College Football Data developer portal.

Does the College Football Data API include play-by-play data?

Yes. GET /plays returns play-by-play, GET /drives returns drive-level summaries, and GET /play/stats returns per-play stat lines. Pair with GET /metrics/wp for win-probability tracking through the game.

Can I get betting lines for college football games?

Yes. GET /lines returns spreads and totals from multiple sportsbooks per game, parameterised by year, week, and team. Combine with GET /games to attach line data to final scores for backtesting.

What are the rate limits for the College Football Data API?

The OpenAPI spec does not enumerate explicit rate limits; consult the College Football Data developer portal for your tier. Some endpoints (GET /games/weather, GET /live/plays) require Patreon-tier access — the spec marks these explicitly.

Is the College Football Data API free?

The base API is free to use after registering for an API key. Patreon-tier endpoints (live plays, weather) require a paid Patreon subscription. The spec notes that this version is deprecated in favour of APINext.CollegeFootballData.com.

How do I pull transfer portal data through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'list transfer portal players', load the GET /player/portal schema, and execute it with the season parameter (e.g. season=2025). Jentic injects the Authorization header from the vault and returns the entrants ready to render.