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Connor Walsh
April 25, 2021
SAM 600: Strategic Management of Sports Organizations
Executive Summary
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University of Delaware Athletics & Recreation oversees all twenty-one of the

university’s Division I athletic programs including eight men’s varsity teams and twelve

women’s varsity teams. The Delaware Blue Hens are currently members of the Colonial Athletic

Association (CAA) conference at the FCS level of Division I where their major competitors

include James Madison, Towson, and Drexel University. Finding themselves outside of the

Power Five conferences, UD Athletics does not have access to major television contracts and

therefore do not generate a lot of revenue. In fact, 82 percent of their athletic department’s $34

million budget comes from institutional support, which is the second most of any CAA member

behind James Madison (Orledge, Stein, & Emig, 2018). Despite that, the university was recently

able to use donations to finance the construction of their new Whitney Athletic Center. This

facility was designed to house and expand the resources for the department’s support staffs

including nutrition, athletic training, and strength and conditioning in order to truly maximize

athletic performance (Delaware First, 2020). The next step in the university’s efforts to boost

athletic performance is their upcoming creation of a brand-new Sports Science and Analytics

department, which was the focus of the research for this project.

To complete this project I partnered with Christina Rasnake, who is the current Director

of Sports Science and Analytics at the University of Delaware. She is also my former supervisor

from when I was a sports analytics intern there during my senior year of college, so this project

turned out to be almost an extension of my previous experience there. During my time as her

intern, we routinely discussed the potential impact an emphasis on analytics could have on

Delaware’s athletic programs. With increased computational power, new performance

technologies, and more advanced statistical methods, teams have completely changed how they

evaluate performance as well as how they make decisions in areas like player personnel, game
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strategy, and even athletic training. The main impediment in the way of collegiate programs

successfully utilizing analytics is the need to help coaches understand the data being analyzed.

Data analysis in sports is primarily conducted by the analysts themselves, so there is common

miscommunication with coaching staffs on how to properly implement the analysis they are

being given (Lin, Yang, Beyer, & Pfister, 2020). While Christina makes sure establish good lines

of communication with the coaches, Delaware is still no stranger to this problem. Coaching

staffs still are not certain how to incorporate data analysis into their decision, and oftentimes are

not able to use the data they are being presented correctly. With that being said, the focus of my

research turned to developing strategies that could help educate coaches and support staff on

sports analytics and how to properly implement data into decision-making.

I first wanted to investigate how sports analytics is currently being applied at other

universities. The first one I identified was the University of Alabama, specifically with their

football program, where they recently hired directors of both sport performance and performance

sciences. These directors were immediately able to overhaul the team’s training program through

the implementation of a more scientific approach towards improving training methods that

greatly benefitted players like running back Najee Harris by enhancing their athletic

performance. This new approach includes the use of technology that has encouraged more of a

buy-in from players like Harris, because the idea of being measured further motivates them and

allows them to compete against a tangible number (Feldman, 2021). The second institution I

identified was Boston University, where their director of analytics has actually written software

for the men’s hockey team that determines which plays and situations work, and which players

and combinations are behind the success of those situations. From a whole program standpoint,

most of their data collection comes from the use of wearable devices placed on student athletes.
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What is interesting in the case of Boston University however is that there is no universal

software platform for the entire athletic department, as many of their teams use different

performance technologies with varying capabilities including Catapult, Polar, and Firstbeat

(Jahnke, 2019).

From there, I began looking into the topic of immersive analytics, which uses technology

based in augmented and virtual reality to expand the visualization of data and analytics. This

process, also referred to as Sports XR, is implemented with the goal of creating better situational

awareness and more agile decision-making by coaching staffs. Through the use of VR headsets,

analysts can create immersion through situated and collaborative visualization, which allows

coaches and players to directly interact with the data (Lin, Yang, Beyer, & Pfister, 2020). As a

result, this technology creates a virtual environment that exposes players and coaches to real-life

situations. By fostering this type of environment, players and even coaches can then develop

proper visual responses and acquire task-relevant information that will result in more efficient

decision-making (Thatcher, Ivanov, Szerovay, & Mills, 2020).

The next phase of my research was to conduct my interview with Christina. During our

conversation we covered multiple topics within the field of sports analytics and recounted some

of her experiences as the face of analytics at the University of Delaware. From that conversation

I came away a few notable points of interest in terms of both challenges and opportunities the

university has in front of them in their utilization of sports analytics. The first one being that

Christina’s main challenge seems to be about being able to delegate analytics-related tasks to

people who simply know what they are doing. With the analytics staff currently limited to her

and two interns, a lot of her collaboration comes with a sport performance team who specialize

in areas like athletic training and nutrition. Because of this, they are not well-versed in data
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collection and reduce the impact of some of her projects. Secondly, Delaware Athletics is

considered to be top-of-the-line in terms of their use of performance technologies to collect

sports data but have yet to apply sports analytics to actual game situations on the sidelines. Part

of that is due to a limited staff, but Christina’s goal is to eventually compete with FBS level

institutions by applying data to game plans. Another thing inhibiting this potential however is

poor planning by coaches. According to Christina, she is constantly dealing with coaches being

last minute with their practice plans, leaving her little time to provide analytical feedback. If

these coaching staffs can eventually learn to collaborate with the analytics team, Christina feels

that the future of analytics in college sports will lead into the areas of recruiting and scouting.

Once her new analytics department expands, she feels that the next step for Delaware will be

developing analytical scouting reports to prepare each program for all of the competitions, while

at the same time taking an analytical approach to finding recruits that will fit in with each team’s

needs and philosophies.

Based on all of this research, my recommendations to Delaware Athletics would be to

expand the analytics staff once the budget allows it, because then Christina would be able to

delegate tasks to others, allowing her to complete projects that go beyond the surface level of

data in areas like scouting, recruiting, and game situations and therefore making data more useful

for coaching staffs. Secondly, the analytics team should be included in each team’s development

of practice and game plans. If coaches were to send the analytics team rough drafts of plans

ahead of time in terms of what drills and team sessions they will be doing on a given day during

the week, Christina and her staff could more effectively breakdown data about where the team

should be and then provide a more useful report each coach. Finally, I believe that the athletic

department should invest in VR technology. These headsets come at a relatively low cost and can
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effectively help enhance player development and lead to5 faster decision-making (Thatcher,

Ivanov, Szerovay, & Mills, 2020).

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References

Delaware First. (2020). ATHLETICS: BUILDING OUR HOME. Retrieved April 26, 2021, from

https://delawarefirst.udel.edu/priorities/athletics-facilities/

Feldman, B. (2021, March 01). Analytics and sports performance science have Shaped MLB,

NFL. Is college football next? Just look at Najee Harris. Retrieved from

https://theathletic.com/2417571/2021/03/01/college-football-analytics-sports-science-dave-

anderson-breakaway-najee-harris/

Jahnke, A. (2019, May 01). Sports Is Now Data Science. How Did That Happen? Retrieved from

http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/sports-analytics/

Lin, T., Yang, Y., Beyer, J., & Pfister, H. (2020). SportsXR--Immersive Analytics in

Sports. arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.08010.

Orledge, J., Stein, A., & Emig, K. (2018, July 11). Delaware athletics relies on 82 percent of

budget being subsidized by university. Retrieved April 25, 2021, from

http://udreview.com/delaware-athletics-subsidized/

Thatcher, B., Ivanov, G., Szerovay, M., & Mills, G. (2020). Virtual reality technology in

FOOTBALL COACHING: Barriers and opportunities. International Sport Coaching

Journal, 1-9. doi:10.1123/iscj.2020-0011