Sports are—quite simply—relatable. People played them as kids; they’ve watched them on TV; they’ve rooted for their hometown teams.
And, for Daniels College of Business faculty Andrew Urbaczewski and Ryan Elmore, they have boosted their academic careers.
“One of the reasons why I studied statistics in the first place was so I could apply that knowledge to any domain and, thus far, I haven’t found a more exciting domain than sports,” Elmore said. “It’s a great way to learn about programming, statistics and a host of other topics, in addition to getting a deeper knowledge of the sport itself.”
The two faculty in the Department of Business Information and Analytics (BIA) are pushing that knowledge forward in a new textbook, “Introduction to Sports Analytics Using [the programming language] R,” which they published in August. They believe it is the first of its kind: a resource for college classroom teachers and students alike.
“So many of the books we found in press were written for airport reading or the casual observer or maybe someone just trying to do better on their fantasy football team,” Urbaczewski said. “This book is best for individuals who are teaching a class in sports analytics.”
In an interview with the Daniels Newsroom, Elmore and Urbaczewski discussed the book and the burgeoning field of sports analytics.
You say in an overview video of your book that people love sports because they can relate to sports. How do analytics help them relate?
Urbaczewski: In many ways sports have always been about numbers. People for years have sat with friends and argued about who was the best player or the best team or the best league, and they use numbers to back up their arguments. Analytics now lets people who were already using numbers to take them to the next level.
Where does the sports analytics field stand today compared to, say, 15 years ago?
Urbaczewski: Analytics has become much more of a part of the experience of sports, fairly continuously over the last 15 years. New statistics are developed as people try to use numbers to understand players and teams more deeply.
Elmore: One of the biggest changes in the last few years has been the appearance of more advanced analytics during live broadcasts. For example, you will see things like rotations per minute when a golfer hits a ball, Next Gen Stats in the NFL, and how fast a baseball leaves the bat and the angle at which it does so. You can even watch the MLB playoffs on an analytics-focused broadcast if you really want to nerd out.
Why did you write this book?
Urbaczewski: There are several books about sports analytics, but this is the first one that we know of that is a textbook designed for teachers to teach from and students to learn from.
We wrote this book as a response to a need for the Sports Analytics class that Ryan developed as an elective in the BIA program. Ryan had a set of notes that he was using, but it really wasn’t organized in a way for others to understand it at DU, much less professors and students at other universities. I helped Ryan to organize these notes and put it into a format that others can use. This paid immediate dividends when Ryan went on sabbatical in 2023 and Ben Williams took over.
Is sports analytics a distinct skill set from other analytical fields?
Elmore: Sports analytics is unique from other analytics fields because the motivating questions/research topics are driven through the lens of sports, much like biostatistics is the application of statistics to problems in the biological sciences. The tools that you use to answer the motivating questions are largely transferrable from domain to domain.
Urbaczewski: What makes it attractive here is that people are drawn to sports but, while they are learning ways to draft a better fantasy football team, they also learn techniques that can be used to help decision makers better analyze oil production fields, communication networks, health care plans or many other fields.
Elmore: We stress in our classes that few students, if any, will get a job in the sporting industry. However, the tools and techniques that we teach can be applied to finance, marketing, biology, etc.
What are some of the applications or “dilemmas” we can use analytics to address?
Urbaczewski: Our book focuses on several of these. One that has gained traction both on the field and in the analyst’s office is the decision of whether to “go for it” or kick on fourth down in football. Our book shows how to analyze this problem, with some results that may be surprising to the casual fan.
Where do you see the field going in the next five years?
Elmore: I may be an optimist, but I see more leagues making more and more data available. You see it with the NFL hosting the Big Data Bowl as an annual event now, and I think this will spill over into other sports. I would imagine that publicly available player tracking data might be on the horizon as well. This will lead to additional insights into the various sports.