Alright, so today I wanted to mess around with some NFL data, specifically the 2015 Baltimore Ravens roster. I’ve always been a bit of a data nerd, and I love football, so combining the two seemed like a fun little project.
First, I needed to find the data. I poked around a bit and, you know, just did a basic search. There were a few sites that had it, some official-looking, some not so much. I grabbed the data from what looked like the most reliable source.
Getting My Hands Dirty
Once I had the data, I needed a way to, like, actually see it. I could have just stared at the raw text, but that’s no fun. So, I decided to use, um, a plain old text editor to look at it. Nothing fancy, just wanted to get a feel for the layout.
It was pretty much what you’d expect: player names, positions, numbers, maybe some stats like height and weight. It was all there, just a big ol’ list.
Organizing the Chaos
Next, I wanted to make it a bit easier to read. So I thought, “Hey, let’s put this into a simple list!”. I’m no coding whiz, so I just manually went through and, you know, added some formatting.
I use the tag <ul> to start.
- Joe Flacco, QB
- Justin Forsett, RB
- Steve Smith Sr., WR
- Kamar Aiken, WR
- Crockett Gillmore, TE
- Marshal Yanda, G
- Eugene Monroe, T
- Kelechi Osemele,G
- C.J. Mosley,LB
- Daryl Smith,LB
- Elvis Dumervil,LB
- Terrell Suggs,LB
- Brandon Williams,DT
- Jimmy Smith,CB
- Lardarius Webb,CB
I finish the list with the tag </ul>.
I basically just went through, player by player, and made a simple list. It wasn’t pretty, but it was definitely easier to scan than the wall of text I started with.
Final Thoughts
It wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but it was a fun little exercise. It’s cool to see how you can take some raw data and, with just a little bit of effort, make it more presentable and, you know, easier to understand. I might try to do something more with this later, maybe add some stats or something. But for now, I’m happy with my nicely formatted list of the 2015 Ravens roster. A good, simple project for a lazy afternoon!
