Background As someone who grew up playing football, watching football on Saturdays and Sundays, and is a regular fantasy football participant, I’ve been only experienced football as a player and fan. I’ve never gotten the opportunity to experience what it is like to experience football from the business perspective. However, over this past summer, I… Read more »
Graduate Projects
Graduate student capstone project discussion and reflection.
Turning Raw Data Into Action: Building the Datalys Injury Participation Dashboard
In collegiate athletics, the numbers matter, but not just the ones on the scoreboard. Behind the scenes, injury surveillance data plays a critical role in keeping athletes healthy and programs accountable. The Datalys Center, a national leader in sports injury research, manages an expansive injury surveillance program that tracks participation across hundreds of NCAA institutions… Read more »
How Media Presence Can Drive Sponsorship Success
by Brianna Stopher, graduate student Introduction In professional sports, success isn’t just measured on the scoreboard—it’s also built in the conversations happening off the court. For Indy Ignite Volleyball, a professional women’s team based in Indianapolis, the story of their growth is being told in local headlines, digital features, and community buzz. Over the past… Read more »
Leveling the NIL Playing Field: Building IU Indy’s Athlete Value Decision Tool
by Tyler Pollard, graduate student The NIL Challenge for Mid-Majors Since the NCAA’s policy shift in 2021, the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) market has exploded, but not evenly. For Power Five programs, well-funded collectives, national exposure, and television revenue drive high-profile deals. For mid-majors like IU Indianapolis, the challenge is different: build a competitive… Read more »
Every Second Matters: How Analytics in Motorsports Can Find Time on Pit Road
by Nathan Ensley, graduate student The green flag waves. The engines roar. And the chase begins. The difference between victory and defeat is measured in thousandths of a second, and teams do everything to close that gap. In the motorsports world, innovation is key. The innovators in this field have long been the engineers. Engineers… Read more »
Predicting Men’s College Basketball Win Percentage and Close Game Percentage
by Chin-yu Wu, School of Informatics graduate student As a spectator watching a basketball game, I always want to know how close my team is to winning the game when the team is having the lead. On the other hand, when the team is trailing I want to know the probability of coming back under… Read more »
Soccermetrics: Analyzing Division I Men’s Soccer Data in 2023
by Will Emhardt, School of Informatics graduate student The dataset I decided to use for this project was the previous season of Division 1 Soccer, ending in December of 2023. Using college soccer data, I only pulled the list of contests for the 2023 season and then the play-by-play for every contest in 2023. Initially… Read more »
Estimating Win Probabilities of Division I FBS Football Plays
by Elliott Scott, School of Informatics graduate student This report analyzes football game states using college sports data to predict win probabilities for various game situations. The dataset comprises 1.6 million rows of play-by-play data from Division I FBS football games, focusing on play types like punts, field goals, passes, and rushes. Each play type… Read more »
Analyzing Division One Hockey Soccer Performance Metrics
by Mark Ronad, School of Informatics graduate student This summer, I had the unique opportunity to dive deep into the dynamic and ever-evolving world of sports analytics, with a particular focus on Division One hockey and soccer teams. My project, aptly named “Performance Metrics Analysis for Division One Teams,” was an intensive exploration of performance… Read more »
IceScout Pro: Using Collegiate Hockey Data to Establish a Player Scouting Platform
by Anurag Reddeddy, School of Informatics graduate student This project was inspired by my exploration of various ice hockey platforms. While the leaderboards on these platforms were informative, I noticed a lack of detailed player shot maps, on-ice tendencies, and shot conversion rates. IceScout Pro was created to address this gap by presenting these insights… Read more »
