Beyond Averages: Uncovering Within-Person Links Between Sleep and Performance in Division I Collegiate Football Players

A robust body of research links greater sleep duration and quality to improved athletic performance and competitive outcomes. However, many athletes, particularly collegiate football players, struggle to achieve optimal sleep and accurately assess its quality. Despite the known sleep-performance relationship, little is known about how these variables manifest in real time among student-athletes. This study examined daily associations between objectively measured sleep and athletic performance in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I football players. Sixty-five athletes aged 17 to 23 years (<i>M</i> = 19.88, <i>SD</i> = 1.41), representing a range of academic years and position groups, wore sensor-based devices over a three-week period to capture sleep metrics (sleep efficiency, latency, and total sleep time) and performance indicators (maximum acceleration, maximum velocity, and explosive movement). Multilevel modeling revealed no significant between-person effects, suggesting that athletes who slept better on average did not necessarily perform better on average. However, within-person analyses indicated that nights with longer sleep latency (estimate, -.007; 95% BCI, -.013, -.003) or lower sleep efficiency (estimate, .005; 95% BCI, .001, .010) predicted reduced maximum acceleration the next day. Conversely, days with lower maximum acceleration predicted shorter sleep latency (estimate, 6.869; 95% BCI, 3.998, 9.269) and higher sleep efficiency (estimate, -5.289; 95% BCI, -10.170, -1.027) that night. These findings underscore a dynamic, bidirectional relationship between sleep and performance at the daily level and highlight the need for individualized, athlete-centered sleep interventions that extend beyond sleep duration to include routine assessment, comprehensive education, and strategies to mitigate sleep disruptors.