Sports Reference Blog

We wanted to briefly share an enhancement made to the Pro Football Reference Play Index. We have added a "Career Game Number" field to the search form for the Player Game Finder. This new search field allows users to customize their searches for certain periods of a player's career. Please note that this tool can be used back to the 1970 NFL-AFL Merger, but can't be used for 1960-69, even though those seasons are covered by other Player Game Finder tools. Here are a few examples of how this new feature can be used:

• Since the merger, Cam Newton is the only player to throw for 400+ yards in his NFL debut
• Eric Dickerson's 645 yards are the most rushing yards by any player in their first five career games since the merger.
• Randy Moss caught 17 TDs in his first 16 career games, which is the most by any player since 1970.
• Charles Woodson has the most career interceptions after already appearing in 200 career games.

We hope you enjoy this addition. Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback.

In 1950, the Brooklyn Dodgers finished 2 games out of first place in the National League, behind a .400-OBP, 7-WAR season from Jackie Robinson, three players cracking 30 Home Runs (Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, and Duke Snider), and plenty of pitching from workhorses Don Newcombe and Preacher Roe. Looking on from the broadcast booth was a 22-year-old who had been hired by Red Barber to supplement the team's radio and television broadcast team. Read the rest of this entry

If you're an avid user of Pro Football Reference or Basketball Reference, you might be familiar with the Player Comparison tool in the Play Index. We're happy to announce that this popular tool has now been added to the Hockey Reference Play Index, as well.

With the Player Comparison Finder, you can choose anywhere from 2-6 players and compare single seasons, a selection of seasons, or their entire careers.

For instance, you can easily compare the rookie seasons of Alex Ovechkin and Mario Lemieux. Or you can compare their age-20 seasons. You can also compare spans of seasons. For instance, here's Wayne Gretzky's 1st 5 NHL seasons vs Lemieux's 1st 5 seasons.

You can also choose to compare entire careers. And, remember, you can select up to 6 players at a time:

We've reached what's perhaps the most fun sports week of the year, at least from a narrative perspective. That's right, it's the week after the start of the NFL season! With a small amount of information to go by, in a sport that can see wide variance in game-to-game performances, football fans, writers, and even coaches across the nation have no choice but to jump to wild conclusions, many of which are doomed to look foolish just weeks later. Read the rest of this entry

One of the things I pride myself on at Sports Reference is that our sites are fast and not annoying. We want to connect you with the data you want, as quickly as possible, every single time. We spend a lot of time trying to make this happen.

We have another important goal with our site, which is to make money. We have seven full-time employees maintaining our sites on a daily basis, so if we don't generate a significant amount of revenue, things will start to go south for us reasonably quickly. We spend a lot of time thinking about that as well, and for a small-to-medium-sized publisher like us, that means running advertisements on our site.

Unfortunately, sometimes the ads that come through our site cause serious problems for users. This is a constant source of frustration for us, so I wanted to take this moment to explain how this happens. I realize we are 100% responsible for what we put on our pages, and so any ad that is served on our page is ultimately our responsibility and the fault lies with us for any negative impacts from an ad.
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It's going to be almost 90 degrees this weekend and the leaves haven't started changing color at all, so that can only mean one thing: football season is here! When we left off last season, an ascendant Carolina Panthers team struggled in Cam Newton's first Super Bowl against Von Miller and the Denver Broncos. And when we picked up this season, not too much had changed. With Game One in the books and an exciting slate of football ahead this Sunday, let's dig into some of this season's biggest questions.

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There have been 33 grueling Saturdays since the Alabama Crimson Tide defeated the Clemson Tigers in Glendale to claim the 2015 College Football Championship, each emptier than the last. Going to the movies? Hanging out with friends and family? Leaving the house? No thanks.

Fortunately, our nightmare has come to an end and the 2016 college football season finally kicks off this weekend! Technically, it already kicked off last weekend, if you are a fan of the California Golden Bears, Hawaii Warriors, or games played 5,000 miles away from either of those campuses. And while there are a number of juicy storylines to follow, from Nick Saban's quest for his 5th title to Jim Harbaugh's attempt to follow-up his excellent debut season with the Michigan Wolverines, one of the most interesting ones is the race for this year's Heisman Trophy. Read the rest of this entry

I feel awful for Roberto Aguayo. In a decision that could be charitably described as "off-beat," the Tampa Bay Buccaneers took Aguayo, a kicker, with the 59th overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft. Aguayo isn't the first kicker to be taken that high -- as recently as 2005, the New York Jets took Mike Nugent in the second round, while Sebastian Janikowski was drafted in the first round in 2000 -- but between the Internet, the rise of advanced statistics, and the proliferation of fantasy football, we know a lot more about kickers. Mainly, we know it's not worthwhile spending a lot of resources, in terms of salary cap space or draft capital, in order to get one, because you can usually find a decent one pretty easily and results can fluctuate widely from year-to-year because of the small sample size. Read the rest of this entry

Have you heard about Kevin White? The 2nd-year wide receiver for the Chicago Bears who's basically a rookie? The 6'3, 210 lb physical pass catcher who's poised for a breakout in a Chicago offense that needs a second option besides Alshon Jeffery?

If you play fantasy football, the answer is probably yes. That's because just about every fantasy expert has cited Kevin White as one of this year's best fantasy football sleeper picks. The sleeper is a time-honored fantasy tradition; everyone who's played in a fantasy league has a story about a 15th round running back or waiver wire flyer who ended up swinging an entire season. Read the rest of this entry

We like to think of it as slow and incremental, but change tends to happen pretty fast. The game may have been shifting over the last few years, but it's hard not to have whiplash from the events of the last seven days. In rapid succession, Mark Teixeira and Prince Fielder announced their retirement from baseball, while the Yankees cut Alex Rodriguez, in a transaction that also seemed like it could signal the end of A-Rod's career.

In their prime, all three players were superstars who came to define their era. And it's hard not to see this moment as something of a paradigm shift. Over the last few years, there's been a dramatic shift in our understanding of the game, and you'd have a hard time finding three players closer to the center of it than Fielder, Teixeira, and A-Rod. Read the rest of this entry