The Scenario
You are a sports historian writing a book chapter on the Iron Bowl. You need the complete head-to-head series history between Alabama and Auburn — every game ever played, with year, winner, home team, away team, home score, and away score. The CollegeFootballData.com API covers this going back over a century.
Your publisher wants the manuscript chapter by end of month. The data appendix is due to your editor this week.
The bad version:
- You find the matchup history endpoint, hit it, and get back a JSON array
- You realize there is no "winner" field — you have to derive it from the scores
- You import the JSON into Excel using Power Query and the format needs manual cleanup
- You spend two hours cleaning the data that should have taken ten minutes
- You blow the Tuesday deadline and your editor sends a follow-up email.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI derives the winner column and formats the table as a proper appendix.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Pull every historical game between the two teams in cells A1 and B1 from College Football Data into my Excel workbook with year, teams, and final scores in separate columns.
Or for a direct request:
Fetch the complete matchup history between Alabama and Auburn from College Football Data and write year, winner, home team, away team, home score, and away score into this Excel workbook.
SheetXAI pulls the full series, calculates the winner from the scores, and writes a clean table sorted by year.
What You Get
A complete series history table sorted chronologically:
- Year — every season the two programs played
- Winner — derived from the scores, clearly labeled
- Home team and away team — venue context for every game
- Home score and away score — the final result
The series record is visible at a glance. Add a COUNTIF for each team's wins and you have the all-time series record in a cell.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Series history data has quirks for very old games. SheetXAI handles them.
When some early games have no score data
Games from the early 1900s may have incomplete score records in the API.
In this Excel workbook, flag any row where home score or away score is blank with "Score Unavailable" in a new column called "Data Status." Do not remove those rows — keep them for the complete game log. Mark the winner field as "Unknown" for those rows.
When you want to analyze home vs. away winning percentage for each team
The rivalry has a home-field dynamic worth quantifying.
In a new tab called "Series Summary," calculate Alabama's home win percentage, home loss percentage, away win percentage, and away loss percentage in the Iron Bowl series, and the same for Auburn. Use the data in the main series history tab.
When you want to filter to the modern era
Your chapter focuses on the BCS and CFP era. You want only 1998 to present.
Filter the Iron Bowl series history to games from 1998 onward. Copy those rows to a new tab called "Modern Era" and sort by year descending. Add a cumulative series record column that shows Alabama leads, Auburn leads, or tied after each game.
When you want to pull the series history for every major rivalry simultaneously
Your editor wants a rivalry appendix covering five matchups, not just the Iron Bowl.
Fetch the complete head-to-head series histories for these five rivalries: Alabama vs. Auburn, Ohio State vs. Michigan, Oklahoma vs. Texas, Florida vs. Florida State, and USC vs. UCLA. Write each series into a separate tab named after the matchup. For each, include year, winner, home team, away team, and scores.
The pattern: one matchup is one prompt. Five matchups are five tabs, still one prompt.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and ask it to pull the series history between any two programs. The CollegeFootballData.com integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For more, see how to pull historical poll rankings or the CollegeFootballData.com in Excel overview.