If you’re a researcher, a writer, or just a sports fan, then I hope you’ll find this site helpful. It’s a list of sites that I’ve built and edited over the years, the result of thousands of hours of online research. The result is what I consider the ultimate list of reference sources for sports research. it’s not intended to be all-inclusive. Rather, it represents what are the best sites out there, in my opinion.
— Sean Lahman (contact me)
Research Groups
Research Organization Websites
- SABR – Society for American Baseball Research
- PFRA – Pro Football Researchers Association
- APBR – Association for Professional Basketball Research
- Society for International Hockey Research
- Canadian Football Research Society
- International Society for Olympic Historians
- International Boxing Research Organization
- The Society for Sports Uniforms Research
- Intercollegiate Football Researchers Association
Message Boards
These are a great place to ask questions and get in touch with researchers
- Hockey Databank – Yahoo message group
- Baseball Databank – Yahoo message group
- Baseball Transactions
- Baseball Necrology
- RetroSQL
- RetroList
Research Tools
Data Sources
- Baseball
- Lahman Database – Access and CSV versions (version 5.7, updated November 2009)
- The Baseball Databank – SQL version
- Retrosheet – play by play files, game logs, schedules
- Transactions Database – updated December, 2009)
- Japanese Baseball Data – Jim Albright
- Football
- The Football Project – Play-by-play data
- Basketball
- Doug Reynolds Basketball database – updated June 2009
- DatabaseBasketball database – (version 2.1 updated September 2009)
- Hockey
- Hockey Databank – Yahoo Group
- Doug Reynolds Hockey Database – (updated June 2009)
- Transaction data – (updated November 2009)
- College Football
Reference Sources
Data from these sites is browsable, but not downloadable.
- Baseball Card Database – Baseball-Almanac.com
- American Soccer History Archives
- Negro Leagues Baseball