Notes

had known he wanted to get into sports in hs
entered as nueroscience major, but course load was too much so combined psych/econ major, minor in math
tailored college projects to sports
soph year interned unpaid with minor league baseball, another junior intern in minor league bball
in college balanced basketball, frat, courses, intern
summer before senior got intern with 76ers
moved to philly for summer before senior, worked 14-15 hours day with sixers
wrote senior thesis on players in nba: too many stars on a team? not necessarily best way to win champs
after college, applied to basically every english speaking pro team - hundreds, including australian basketball
got maybe 3-4 responses and they all had no room
i'm gonna get rejected a lot in sports and gotta be persistent
then applied to almost every d1, 2, and 3 college
took job in ticket sales at terrible school (forgot name)
grinded and worked a ton for bad team for two years in ticket sales
next job luckily at nba in marketing something
1.5 yrs with nba when mlb told him they're starting analytics department and offered him job
reluctantly accepted cause nba job was good; worked way up in mlb
someone mentioned to him something ab bears (forgot); attached resume to bears job thing
director of analytics at bears for two years
networking 60% of battle, other 40% is resiliency
he still would choose same path he chose over a sports type program in college if he could redo
b/c sports in general so competitive, especially sport analytics
at mit sports conference there are 5,000 people doing moneyball type things
so competitive, not a ton of room for more employees; popularity growing quickly too
he would get some sports with also a business/stats side so not one-dimensional
also, bears have 96 team partners that all have sports departments: miller lite, other businesses
working in "sports" isn't limited to a team front office - leagues, espn type companies, miller lite type too
nba was definitely ahead of nfl with data - players understanding of data and front office use was good at sixers
stats have almost replaced scouting now - as moneyball says
once someone does something a new set of probabilities come out - decision tree
bears only were just started analytics 2.5 yrs ago when he came
recreated trade value chart for draft with bears
was doing this type stuff inititally for bears - if we get sacked how does that decrease probability to win
few months ago got promoted to VP of bus. analytics