The NCAA is going to put all its stats under one umbrella -- and then sell them
You may have your favorite place to get football stats today. Hopefully it's not the official NCAA.org site, an archaic mess that makes its users individually count each ranking after sorting for a specific metric. Mine is CFBStats.com, a gold mine of information that allows you to get from the 2017 team tackles for loss leaders (Ohio State, Michigan and Northern Illinois in a 3-way tie) to find the 92nd most efficient passer on second down in the 2008 season (TCU's Andy Dalton) in less than five seconds.
But soon the NCAA will like you to have a new favorite stats website -- the NCAA.
The NCAA has partnered with an British company named Genius Sports to put all of its statistical and analytical data under one umbrella -- and then sell them. The NCAA signed a 10-year deal with Genius, hoping to market their stats to television networks, football websites, conferences and, perhaps as an offshoot of Monday's news, sports books. Schools will receive free subscriptions for the first three years of the contract.
From Bloomberg:
Under the new agreement, Genius Sports will capture metrics and stats ranging from basic scoring to advanced metrics for coaches. The collection will start with men’s and women’s basketball, then expand to other sports. In basketball, for example, the data will include shooting, fouls and turnovers by location, player efficiency and other metrics.
“It was really just recently that we started to say to ourselves, ‘Wait a minute, all these statistics are big data, and that’s valuable in this era of analytics,’” NCAA executive VP Oliver Luck said.
The service will start with the 2019 men's and women's basketball tournaments. Football's availability is to be determined.
