Weβve all played the utterly unscientific βguess todayβs attendanceβ game at sporting events. A multiple-choice question flashes on the scoreboard. Fans, already several hot dogs and beers in, scream their guesstimates before moving on to the next distraction.
Students in a summer class at the University of Arizona played the game recently, but with a completely different approach. They didnβt attempt to guess the attendance for the Diamondbacksβ weekend series against the Milwaukee Brewers two weeks ago β they used statistical analysis to predict the attendance. One student came within nine fans of nailing it for the series opener.
The UA is offering a class in sports analytics, a booming industry in the world of professional athletics. βMGMT 359 Sports Analytics,β part of the Eller Sports Management Program, provides students with an entry point to the data analysis that has become an essential ingredient in front offices across every major sport.
Ricardo Valerdi, who created the curriculum and is teaching the class, is hopeful it can supply aspiring Billy Beanes with the tools they need to land jobs in sports analytics and similar fields.
βI hope that they have a new appreciation for all the data thatβs out there, that is freely available, that they can access right away to learn about basketball, football, golf,β said Valerdi, who modeled the class after his popular βScience of Baseballβ program. βEven if youβre not an athlete or going into professional sports, you can sharpen your saw with statistical tools that apply to business.β
Valerdi believes his students will βbecome more marketable as a result of this. β¦ There are a lot of jobs in data science and analytics where you can make some good money.β
Jobs were projected to grow at a 30 percent rate for operations research analysts from 2014-24, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median pay for such jobs in 2016 was $79,200.
Youβd be hard-pressed to find an organization in any of the four major American sports that hasnβt invested heavily in analytics in recent years. Youβre at a competitive disadvantage if you donβt.
Valerdi witnessed first-hand how powerful a tool analytics could be. Valerdi was working at MIT and regularly attending Boston Red Sox games as they broke their 86-year curse and won three World Series between 2004 and 2011.
βMoneyball,β the best-selling Michael Lewis book about Beaneβs Oakland Athletics that later was turned into a movie of the same name, came out in 2003.
The Red Sox front office, led by young general manager Theo Epstein, used sabermetrics to help build a championship roster.
Valerdi met a Boston University professor named Andy Andres, whose work combining science, math and baseball inspired Valerdi to launch his own Science of Baseball camps, which several MLB teams have co-opted. When the opportunity arose last fall to launch a sports-analytics class and become the director of the Sports Management Program at Eller, Valerdi β who came to the UA to teach engineering β jumped at it.
Based on the preliminary reaction to the course β which, admittedly, sabermetricians might dismiss as too small a sample size β it wonβt be a one-time offering. Initially open to 25 students, the class swelled to 38.
βIβm enjoying it,β said senior offensive tackle Gerhard de Beer, the student who came within .03 percent of predicting the exact attendance for the June 9 Diamondbacks game. βItβs fascinating.
βI donβt know a lot about baseballβ β de Beer grew up in South Africa β βbut they have statistics dating back to the early 1900s, 1800s even. That is crazy, man. It blew my mind.β
Valerdi broke up the five-week course into nine segments, matching the number of innings in a baseball game. The class is taught online, so Valerdi, with the aid of Ellerβs multimedia department, made short, lighthearted introductory videos for each βinning.β
Students also can hear from experts in the field, such as Wayne L. Winston, an Indiana University professor whose book, βMathletics,β provides primary source material for the course. Sister school Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Syracuse and Cal Baptist are among a small but growing number of universities offering degrees in sports analytics. Arizona offers a minor in sports management.
Thatβs what led de Beer to Valerdiβs class; the well-spoken senior might become a coach someday. For now, one of the most intellectually curious Wildcats is focusing on completing his course work, getting healthy for training camp and figuring out how analytics can be applied to the offensive line.
The ninth inning of the class is a final project of each studentβs choosing. De Beer is considering a deep topic β the average life expectancy of offensive linemen since the discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative disease found in those who have suffered blows to the head β but wants to make sure thereβs enough relevant data available.
βI donβt want to be spitballing around,β de Beer said. βI want to be solid in my research.β
De Beerβs teammate, Josh Pollack, whoβs also taking the class, plays a position whose results are more easily quantifiable. Pollack served as Arizonaβs placekicker and primary punter last season. For his final project, the redshirt junior is planning to examine the effectiveness of different types of punts from various locations on the field.
βYou have the freedom to do what you want,β Pollack said. β(Valerdi) will teach you the skills and give you what you need, and then youβll be able to do it on something you actually find interesting.β
Pollackβs interests extend beyond the field of play. He recently took the LSAT and plans to go to law school.
Forget guessing todayβs attendance; as an attorney, Pollack envisions being able to use data to forecast the outcomes of cases.
βA lot of what happens in the world is statistics-based,β Pollack said, βtrying to predict what the next move is.β
