Crowdsourcing CFB play-by-play data

[Justin Moore]

[ Resending to a larger audience ]

I finally had a spare ~16 hours, so I've written some code to automatically merge the play-by-play data from CFBStats with the game charting templates Bill uses. For each game it will create a Google doc, fill in what data it can, and then automatically open up the file to a select group of people to edit. It takes about 90 seconds to generate the finished template for one game. I think this might be the best way to crowdsource large amounts of CFB data in a structured way and export it in a usable manner.

The second part of the code (which may take another 16 hours) will be to automatically extract the finished game charting data in CSV form, zip it up, and post the URL somewhere public.

Hopefully this approach will shard out the work (a) into a form where it's easy to collaborate, and (b) in a way that won't overwhelm Google Docs (Bill will appreciate the irony of me making that statement).

If any of you are interested in seeing what I've got so far, let me know and I'll add you to the list of accounts that automatically get added as editors of the spreadsheets.

-j

[Jake T.]

I'd like to see what you've got so far if you don't mind sharing the google doc with me. 

CFBStats seems to redirect now.  I already have the old data, but I was curious if anyone knew of any other play-by-play databases available for the current year.  Is anyone here willing to help crowdsource the data and parse the data from the new NCAA site or share the cost of purchase?