Data Scraping 35 years of College Football Player Statistics
The skills the author demoed here can be learned through taking Data Science with Machine Learning bootcamp with NYC Data Science Academy.
Introduction
This serves as the next phase in building my NFL Draft Outcome Prediction Tool. Previously I collected data of 30 years of NFL Draft History and resulting player outcomes. Scraping college football statistics for those players provides more potential predictor variables for NFL Draft Outcomes. The difficult part is data is not available for all positions and some positions do not have as many years of historical statistics available (Source of statistics: http://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/). So the scope of the scraping effort was QB, RB, FB, WR, TE (1980-2017); K, P (1990 to 2017). Here are some of the key findings from my tool:
Data
CFB QB Findings:
· High but not record high College QB Ratings led to the most successful NFL QBs, Every QB
· Drafted from 1985 to 2007 with a QB Rating of 150 or higher started 5 or more years in the NFL.
· No strong correlation between College Passing Yards and NFL Success
· Most Successful QBs averaged between 7 and 9.5 Yard per Attempt
· Most Successful College QBs threw 70-90 TDs in college
· No strong correlation between College Interceptions and Success
· No correlation between College Rushing Yards and Success, but poor Avg. Yards Per Rush does correlate with poor NFL success
CFB RB/FB Findings:
· College RB/FB ended up at 8 different positions when they got to the NFL
· >750 Rushing Attempts in College correlates with poor NFL careers or over 4,000 rushing yards
· Most Successful RBs/FBs average approximately 5 yards per carry
· Rushing TDs do not correlate with NFL success
· No correlation between receptions and success
· Negative correlation between NFL Success and Receiving TDs
CFB WR/TE Findings:
· College WR/TE ended up at 9 different positions when they got to the NFL
· Most successful WRs/TEs played 20-40 games in college
· Most successful WRs/TEs in the NFL had less than 100 total receptions
· Majority of successful WR/TEs had <1250 total receiving yards in college
· Most successful WR/TEs avg. 10-20 yards per catch
· Most successful WR/TEs had <10 receiving TDs in college
· No correlation between scrimmage yards/plays and NFL success
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Marc Fridson
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