About this site

The game, explained as it happens

Next Snap follows a college football game play by play and says what the numbers mean: what a team tends to call here, what is likely next, and what each side has to do to win.

What you get

During a game

A drawn field with the ball on it, the odds that the next play is a run or a pass, what each side is trying to do on this snap, drives, the biggest plays, and talking points you can copy. It updates on its own while the game is on, and a finished game can be replayed one play at a time.

Before a game

Keys to the game: where one team's offense has an edge on the other's defense, who to get the ball to, who to take away, and how the two teams compare, with every number ranked against all of FBS.

All season

What a team calls on every down and distance and how often it works, offense and defense grades, power rankings with strength of schedule, player leaders, and a projected playoff bracket you can change with your own picks.

Any two teams

Put any team from any stored season next to any other, then play the game out a thousand times to see how it tends to go.

Most stat sites show you the numbers. This one tries to tell you what to make of them, and shows the count behind every claim so you can check it.

Data sources

Schedules, scores, play by play, live game feeds and player season totals come from CollegeFootballData.com. This site stores those plays and does its own counting on top of them.

Play by play and scores: pulled after each week's games, so season numbers are as fresh as the last pull.
Live games: read from the live feed every few seconds while a game is on. A live number can trail the broadcast by a little.
Player leaders: each player's official season totals, the same numbers a box score adds up to.
Points added: the value of each play comes from CollegeFootballData's own model. Kicks and returns carry no value in it.
Team colors and conferences: kept by hand for the 2026 season. Colors are close to each school's own, not exact brand values.

No team logos or school marks are used, and nothing here comes from the schools themselves.

How it is worked out

A play that "works": It keeps the offense on schedule: half the distance on first down, 70% of it on second, all of it on third or fourth. A touchdown always counts. A turnover never does.
Run or pass: What was called, where the feed allows. A sack is a pass call. Kneel-downs, spikes, penalties and special teams are left out. A scramble and a designed quarterback run look the same in the feed. On a game page each quarterback run gets a best guess, is left out of the model's score, and can be marked as a designed run or a scramble by whoever is watching.
When the live feed is wrong: A live feed makes mistakes: a score that dips and comes back, a lost fumble labeled as recovered, the wrong team shown with the ball after a turnover, a clock that runs through a timeout. This site checks the feed against the plays themselves, and when they disagree the plays win. When the plays do not settle it, the page shows nothing for that moment instead of a guess.
Garbage time: Plays after a game is decided: a lead of 38 or more in the second quarter, 28 or more in the third, 22 or more in the fourth. Teams stop calling plays the way they normally do then, so grades, rankings, keys and the next-play odds leave those plays out. Game stats and player leaders count every play. The Tendencies page counts every play too, with a "Close-game plays only" switch.
Grades: Points added per play and how often plays work, each compared with what that opponent usually allows or does in its other games, then ranked against every FBS team and turned into a letter. The adjustment is one step deep. Special teams are not graded yet.
Power rankings: The average of a team's offense and defense scores. Strength of schedule is the average score of its opponents. This is the site's own index. It is not the AP poll, the coaches poll or the playoff committee's list.
Next-play odds: How often every team runs in this situation (down, distance, score, field position, time), shifted by how much more or less this team runs than that. It is counting, not a black box. Tested on weeks it had not seen from early in the 2026 season, it called run or pass correctly on about 64% of plays, and nearly 8 times in 10 when it leaned hard.
Advanced numbers: Plain season rates such as runs stuffed, havoc plays and points per drive, each with the team's place among FBS teams. These are not adjusted for opponent, and a team needs enough plays to be ranked.
Projections: Win chances come from the gap between two teams' power scores plus a home edge. Records, the playoff field and the bowls are built from those. Real results replace projected ones as games are played.
What-if games: A simulated game between two teams uses each offense's own tendencies and how its plays went all season against how the other defense's opponents did. Penalties, returns, injuries, weather and home field are left out. It is a what-if, not a forecast.
Small samples: A claim resting on fewer than 15 plays is marked "Small sample". Early in a season, one lopsided game still moves a team a long way.

What this site is not

Not official. It is an independent fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by any university, conference, the NCAA or the College Football Playoff.
Not betting advice. A win chance here comes from this site's own index. It is not a betting line and should not be used as one.
Not a broadcast. There is no video or audio, and a live number can lag or be corrected after the fact.

Corrections

If a number looks wrong, send a note with the page and what you expected. Every one gets read.

Mistakes come from two places. If the play feed logged something wrong, it is fixed here once the feed corrects it and that week is pulled again. If this site counted something wrong, the rule gets fixed and every stored play is counted again.

How this site pays for itself

This site is free and run by one person. The live data and the hosting cost money every month.

There are no ads right now. If that changes, there will be a few plain ads, in the side menu and at the bottom of the page on a computer and at the bottom of the screen on a phone: no pop-ups, no video that plays by itself, and nothing that covers the game.

Privacy

There are no accounts and nothing to sign in to. Your team, your season, dark mode and your game page layout are remembered on your own device. The privacy page lists everything this site keeps and why.

Who makes it

Next Snap is built and run by one college football fan in Oklahoma.

It started as a way to see what one team likes to call, and grew to cover every FBS team. Site is still in early stages so you may encounter some errors. Ideas are welcome: suggest an improvement.

Next Snap just launched. If a page takes a moment to load the first time, give it a few seconds. It speeds right up after that.