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Growing up a huge Philadelphia sports fan I had always dreamed of playing for the Sixers or the Eagles; but I was never allowed to play football and I don’t think JV basketball was enough for me to declare myself for the draft. I re-oriented my goals to a more physically realistic goal in working for the front office of one of these organizations. I’m sure you’ve all seen or at least have heard of the movie Moneyball. Billy Beane was the first to do it, but now professional sports teams across the globe are using data and statistics to make their teams more efficient and competitive. That’s the dream. Working front office for the Philadelphia 76ers and bringing them back to the Promise Land.
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In 2009 Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski published their book, Soccernomics in the United States. “It puts the game under an analytical microscope using statistics, economics, psychology and intuition to try and transform a dogmatic sport,” (Jack Bell, NY Times). This book points out key strategic moves for acquiring players, defending against penalty kicks, and how to develop your players the best. The book uses economic statistics from the past to extrapolate who will come to dominance in international play in the next 20 years.
Fast Company recently just wrote an article, “Predicting (And Avoiding) Injuries”. In it Brian Kamenetzky details a story of the Toronto Raptors placing devices on their players during practices to track accelerations, elevations, jumping ranges etc. and measures the intensity of each of these. This data allows the training staff to tailor programs specifically to the player and can correct injury causing problems. This data helps see what the naked eye can’t and can help trainers “diffuse a time bomb before it blows.” (Brian Kamenetzky, Fast Company). The result: Toronto was the least injured team in the NBA during the 2013-14 season. But the data isn’t the main component to out competing your opponents, it’s who you have analyzing the data and creating “actionable intelligence” from that. Owners, coaches, and players alike are now utilizing data more often to help them succeed.
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With a math major hopefully I can put myself in a position to be qualified for one of these positions to be able to analyze data to make these organizations more competitive on the field and more efficient off of it. The possibilities are endless from working privately for star athletes, like Lebron James or Kevin Durant (who both recently hired analytics experts to make their game more efficient), to working for front offices to help decide on off-season player moves, to working for independent firms who need to analyze and model trends in professional sports.
One of the most famous (Mathematical) Sports Analysts is Nate Silver. He originally started out projecting the performance and development of professional baseball players in the MLB and has recently launched his blog for ESPN, FiveThirtyEight. On his blog, Silver writes articles about how Alex Rodriguez would have still been a Hall of Fame-r without steroids or the probability of an NFL team clinching a playoff spot based on every game in the NFL during Week 11. He uses statistical manipulation of the stats to uncover what our naked eyes can't see.
Mathematics has an ever growing role in the realm of sports and it wouldn't be the worst case for my two passions to cross paths in a profession one day down the road.
Here is the NY Times article on Soccernomics, I highly recommend this book: http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/soccernomics/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Fast Company: The Next Big Thing in Sports Data: Prediciting (and Avoiding) Injuries: http://www.fastcompany.com/3034655/healthware/the-next-big-thing-in-sports-data-predicting-and-avoiding-injuries
