Utah State’s Sports Analytics Club bridges data and athletics
Former Sacramento Kings analyst Colin Montague visited Utah State University’s Sport Analytics Club, where members asked him about industry highs and lows, working with coaches, Kawhi Leonard and AI.
After the meeting, members stuck around to talk sports.
“March Madness is, next to college football, the best time of the year. If you can incorporate any model into that, that’s great,” said Tom Corcoran, member of the club presidency.
Corcoran and other members of the presidency Dillon Johnson and Henry Cronley said they are eager to hear from more industry speakers and hope the club can help students find real-world applications that are more fun than what they’d get in the classroom.
“In school, you get all these tools, and you want to apply it to what you’re actually interested in,” Cronley said.
Corcoran agreed. He said that before joining the club, “I was so sick of doing the same things every class. I wanted to do something fun. And then someone said, ‘Oh yeah, we have this new club: Sports Analytics Club.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, I like sports,’ and it went from there.”
Club leaders hope other students see the same possibilities.
“A lot of the data or coding classes are focused on just one or two areas. I want to show students that there are other areas where their interests might fit better. Instead of just working on trading or accounting algorithms or business-based stuff, you can connect data to something like sports,” Corcoran said.
The club started during the fall 2024 semester. Johnson, a huge hockey fan, said he was introduced to the club when he showed an NHL fantasy analyzer project to a friend.
“I wanted to do something that’s more applicable to the things I enjoy,” he said. Now, he wants to help other students get excited about bringing new projects to the club and “realize that there is more to data than just fintech and marketing.”
Club leaders are currently pursuing new opportunities including partnerships with sports app startups and collaborations with the athletic department. They also plan to tour athletic facilities throughout the state.
Cronley said though the club is still in its beginning stages, he hopes to eventually work with more teams.
“We’ve already done some stuff with some teams on campus, like the football team, which was sweet, but I think it would be cool to also work with some professional teams,” Cronley said.
The club works closely with the university’s Analytic Solutions Center, which manages projects ranging from requests from the football team to Fortune 500 companies. Corcoran said club members have opportunities to work on bigger projects from the ASC.
“The ecosystem is really connected,” he said.
Club members are encouraged to bring their own models, and the club is planning a March Madness event. Helping students with these goals is club adviser Andrew Brim, winner of the 2024 Eldon J. Gardner Teacher of the Year Award, who provides demos and helps guide students through their projects.
This support is what drew students like Johnson to the club. When he started school, Johnson found a lot of the things he learned in the classroom were out of date, which gave him the motivation to pursue his own projects. The real challenge, he found, was replicating what he learned in school.
“How do you start something without help from an assignment? Making it from scratch is a lot harder,” he said. “That’s something that I appreciate about extracurriculars. You’re able to make your own project and have assistance from mentors and other peers that are very good at what they do. You’re not left alone to try by yourself because that’s not the way it works. You work in teams in the workplace, so I think team-based stuff is super important.”
A student takes notes on a presentation given over Zoom during a meeting of the USU Sports Analytics Club in Huntsman Hall on Sept. 18.
Technology is evolving rapidly, and the world of sports analytics is evolving with it, according to Cronley.
“I think the in-game applications are really cool, and they’re so widespread now,” Cronley said. “You can find sports analytics anywhere, and what people are accomplishing with it is really, really interesting.”
Corcoran noted every major sports league in the United States now uses analytics.
“With AI and with people learning how to use AI, it’s just going to get even bigger,” Corcoran said.
Before joining the club, he didn’t realize the extent data was used in sports.
“In football, the NCAA just shut down the multiple transfer portal dates, so there’s only going to be one time period where people can enter the transfer portal and teams can pick them,” Corcoran said. “I think analytics is going to be huge there because they don’t have a second chance to pick a different player.”
Johnson added analytics are becoming a bigger part of the fan experience too.
“When you watch any game, analytics are everywhere, data is everywhere, and they’re always talking about it,” he said. “The more advanced we get, the more we realize that there’s relationships between these things and we want to know why.”
Most members of the club hope to pursue careers in sports analysis, but they emphasized the group is open to anyone.
“Don’t feel like you have to be in some technical major. This is open to anyone that’s interested in sports and open to anyone that wants to learn more. There’s always something new to learn for all of us,” Johnson said.
The club meets every first and third Wednesday in Huntsman Hall 226 at 5 p.m.