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The tidy front-end for GAMs, now stable enough that upstream ggplot2 sets its release calendar.
Comparison · Analytics
cfbfastr vs cTMed
A side-by-side editorial comparison of cfbfastr and cTMed — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
cfbfastr vs cTMed: at a glance
What is cfbfastr?
College football's open data client hit v2 — and now reports how many API calls you have left.
cfbfastR retrieves college football data — play-by-play, box scores, betting lines, ratings and recruiting — from the CollegeFootballData API, ESPN endpoints and the sportsdataverse data repository. Version 2.0.0 in September 2025 was the first release in over three years and rebuilt the package against CFBD's v2 API. Every load_cfb_*() function changed its underlying source to comply with CFBD's terms, the play-by-play dataset gained team and game identifiers users previously had to join in themselves, and a batch of new endpoints arrived covering opponent-adjusted metrics, FPI ratings and live scoreboard and play data.
What is cTMed?
Continuous-time mediation effects get standardized centrality, six years into steady patch work
cTMed computes direct, indirect and total effects for continuous-time mediation models, with delta-method, Monte Carlo and bootstrap variants of each. Development is a long run of patch releases from the jeksterslab account, roughly every two months, each adding a function or two. The latest adds standardized centrality measures and allows a diagonal sigma across ten standardized estimators.
cfbfastr vs cTMed: editorial side-by-side
cfbfastr
0.0ANALYTICS
College football's open data client hit v2 — and now reports how many API calls you have left.
◆ Current state
cfbfastR retrieves college football data — play-by-play, box scores, betting lines, ratings and recruiting — from the CollegeFootballData API, ESPN endpoints and the sportsdataverse data repository. Version 2.0.0 in September 2025 was the first release in over three years and rebuilt the package against CFBD's v2 API. Every load_cfb_*() function changed its underlying source to comply with CFBD's terms, the play-by-play dataset gained team and game identifiers users previously had to join in themselves, and a batch of new endpoints arrived covering opponent-adjusted metrics, FPI ratings and live scoreboard and play data.
◆ Where it's heading
The package's direction is now set by the data provider rather than by its own plans, and that provider has moved to metered access — the free tier is capped at 1,000 calls a month, with limits tied to membership level. cfbd_api_key_info() reporting a user's tier and usage is the clearest sign of that shift: quota is now something an analysis has to manage. The long gap before 2.0.0 and its arrival largely through a first-time contributor also indicate a package sustained by community effort rather than steady maintenance.
◆ Prediction
The live scoreboard and play endpoints are the natural place for the next work, since they are the ones that benefit from in-season iteration. Given the release notes warn users to check their pipelines, follow-up fixes for the changed loading functions are likely before anything new lands.
cTMed
2.5ANALYTICS
Continuous-time mediation effects get standardized centrality, six years into steady patch work
◆ Current state
cTMed computes direct, indirect and total effects for continuous-time mediation models, with delta-method, Monte Carlo and bootstrap variants of each. Development is a long run of patch releases from the jeksterslab account, roughly every two months, each adding a function or two. The latest adds standardized centrality measures and allows a diagonal sigma across ten standardized estimators.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is filling out a matrix rather than changing shape: for each effect type there is a delta-method, a Monte Carlo and a bootstrap path, and each release closes another cell. The 2025 releases were largely externally forced — an Armadillo 15.0.x transition at CRAN, a citation addition after the Psychological Methods paper landed — which suggests the statistical core has been settled since the 1.0.6 standardization revision.
◆ Prediction
The diagonal-sigma option has now reached the standardized estimators; extending it to the remaining unstandardized variants is the obvious next cell to fill.
Alternatives to cfbfastr and cTMed
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either cfbfastr or cTMed.
incase
A safer case_when that keeps hardening its guarantees while realigning to tidyverse naming.
reda
A mature recurrent-event toolkit in careful maintenance, shedding weight rather than adding surface.
TidyDensity
A distribution catalogue that grows by one family at a time, and rarely breaks anything.
rnpn
The USA phenology data client rebuilt its entire stack and stopped handing users -9999 as a number.
GeneNMF
GeneNMF rebuilt how it derives meta-programs, changing every result it had produced.
See all cfbfastr alternatives → · See all cTMed alternatives →
Recent activity from cfbfastr and cTMed
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 27d agocTMedStandardized centrality measures and diagonal-sigma support
- 6mo agocTMedMinor method edits
- 10mo agocTMedPackage citation added for the Psychological Methods paper
- 10mo agocTMedArmadillo 15.0.x compatibility for CRAN
- 11mo agocfbfastrRebuilt on CFBD API v2 with metered access and live endpoints ⚡
- 1y agocTMedStandardization reworked around the steady-state covariance matrix
- 1y agocTMedBootstrap centrality estimators and MCPhiSigma()
- 4y agocfbfastrESPN endpoints and repo-backed loaders added
- 4y agocfbfastrAll outputs standardised as tibbles with a custom class
- 4y agocfbfastrCRAN release with option-restoring cleanup
- 4y agocfbfastrMinor fixes to betting and FPI rating functions
- 4y agocfbfastrESPN scoreboard and play-by-play access, with argument cleanup
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between cfbfastr and cTMed?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. cTMed is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is cfbfastr better than cTMed?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. cTMed is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to cfbfastr?
Top cfbfastr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "cfbfastr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/cfbfastr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to cTMed?
Top cTMed alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "cTMed alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/ctmed for the full list with editorial commentary on each.