Kickoff Companion

A second screen for college football. Pick your team, start it on a computer at home, and follow the game on any phone or tablet on your Wi-Fi: the live play-by-play a little behind your TV so nothing is spoiled, the box score, win probability, drives, the shot chart, your team's season, the next opponent's game program, and scores from around the country.

Available for free from Myers Labs: https://github.com/Myerslabs/kickoff-companion

What it does

• In Game: the score, every play as it happens, team and player stats, win probability, drives, situational splits and a shot chart of your offense's passes and runs, all held back by a spoiler delay you can sync to your TV with one tap.
• Pre-Game Program: the matchup, weather at the stadium, the TV crew and both coaching staffs, players to watch, the injury report, starting lineups and season stats side by side.
• Season: schedule, results, standings, polls, ratings (SP+, Elo, FPI) and the stat profile behind every rank, each rank one tap from its national list.
• People: roster, leaders, recruiting, a card for every player, and our own stat grades for each position.
• Your teams: one home team themes the app with its colors; with a Tier 2 key you can follow more primary teams and whole conferences or states, and set the score ticker to just your teams.
• Notes: schemes, the injury report, depth charts, the TV crew and coaches come from a prompt the app writes for any AI chat; paste the answer back and the app checks it and saves it.
• Runs at home: a small web server on Windows, macOS or Linux (the Steam Deck too), as one download with nothing to install. Phones and tablets connect by scanning a QR code. No accounts, no cloud, no ads.

What you need

• A computer that stays on during games: Windows 10 or later, macOS, or Linux.
• Phones or tablets on the same Wi-Fi.
• For your own team: a free key from College Football Data (CFBD). Every number in the app comes from CFBD. You can try the whole app first without one: it starts in a demo.

Your data stays with you. Kickoff Companion is free, from Myers Labs. It runs on your computer and talks to CollegeFootballData.com directly: your key, your team and everything you look at stay there, and nothing is sent to Myers Labs. A CFBD key is free. CFBD's paid plans are paid to CFBD, not to us, and they only unlock more data:

Anything a plan does not include stays on its page with a note saying which plan shows it. See CFBD's plans.

Start

The download: nothing to install. On the Releases page, take the archive for your system (a .sha256 file beside each one holds its checksum):

On Windows the program then runs behind a sun icon by the clock: double-click it to open the app, and Quit in its menu stops the server. The first start also brings a Windows Security dialog, "Do you want to allow public and private networks to access this app?", with the Kickoff Companion icon and Myers Labs as the publisher: Allow, so phones on your Wi-Fi can reach it. That is the whole firewall step for the download. The program is the server. Your key, settings, notes and archive live in your app-data folder, which Settings, About, shows with an Open the folder button, so a new version simply replaces the old program folder. A file named portable beside the program keeps them beside it instead.

The one line (uv): with uv installed (one command, below under "From the code"), this starts the server with nothing cloned and nothing else installed:

uvx kickoff-companion

It downloads the package from PyPI the first time and keeps it; uvx kickoff-companion@latest takes the newest version. Your files live in the app-data folder, as for the download. Start at login is not offered this way; the download and the code have it.

From the code (for developers, or any system with uv):

1. Get the code: Code, Download ZIP on this page (then unzip it), or git clone https://github.com/Myerslabs/kickoff-companion.git.

2. Double-click the launcher for your system:

   System	Double-click
   Windows	Kickoff Companion.cmd
   macOS	Kickoff Companion.command
   Linux, Steam Deck	Kickoff Companion.sh

   The first start installs uv, Python and the app's packages for your user (no admin rights, a minute or two, once). macOS may say it cannot open a downloaded file: right-click the launcher, Open, then Open again.

Then, either way:

1. The browser opens the demo: a made-up league with a game already under way, so you can see everything working. Its welcome page explains what a CFBD key does.
2. When you are ready, choose Use my own team on that page (or the banner at the top): paste your CFBD key, pick your team, save. The app restarts with your team. Demo on the menu's Setup page switches back to the demo any time, for showing a friend.
3. On a phone or tablet, scan the QR code in the server window (or on the app's status page). The window that opened is the server: keep it open during the game, close it to stop.

Settings in the app can start the server when you log in, make a Desktop icon, and keep the screen awake. The full guide, including the firewall on each system and the Steam Deck, is docs/05-SETUP.md.

The demo on its own

A fresh install starts in the demo. To run it beside your own install (on its own port, no key, no network), with the made-up league of 136 schools like the Swampwater Tech Mudpuppies:

uv run python -m app --demo

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8650/. uv run python tools/live_sim.py starts it with a game already under way.

For developers

FastAPI and plain JavaScript modules, no front-end build step. Every external answer is validated and cached, with retries, a circuit breaker and a monthly call budget, so the app survives a game day unattended and serves the last good data, labelled stale, when CFBD is down.

The tests and the demo use the made-up league, generated from the shape of CFBD's answers with every name and number invented; no CFBD data is in this repository.

Code signing policy

Free code signing on Windows is provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation. The release workflow builds the program on GitHub's machines from this repository and submits that build for signing; nothing built anywhere else is signed. Until the first signed release ships, Windows still shows its "protected your PC" note on the first start.

• Committers and reviewers: the maintainer, Myerslabs.
• Approvers: the maintainer.
• Privacy: this program does not transfer any information to other networked systems unless specifically requested by the user or the person installing or operating it. From your own computer it fetches only what its documentation names: the data your own CFBD key allows, the public news feeds and weather sources, and the newest release's number from GitHub. Nothing about you leaves the computer.

Credits

Data provided by CollegeFootballData.com. Weather from the U.S. National Weather Service. Fonts: Barlow and Barlow Condensed (SIL Open Font License).

Not affiliated with any school, conference, the NCAA, any broadcaster, or CollegeFootballData.com. See NOTICE.

License

MIT, copyright Myers Labs. See LICENSE.