Imagine getting free tickets to every home game that your favorite sports
team plays! Not only do you go, but you get to sit in a great seat, and mingle
with the players and coaches. In some cases, you might even get paid for being
there.
That's what it's like for sports statisticians, those people
who attend college and pro games and record the statistics.
"There's a downside," warns Nichelle Moore, a sports statistician
from Charlotte, North Carolina. "You don't really get to watch the game.
You have to concentrate on entering your data. And if you're a fan, it's
really hard not to get your emotions involved in what's going on. You
have to sit back and not get caught up in the action. You have to exercise
real self-control!"
Moore first began keeping sporting statistics while she was in college.
"In college I played softball. I wanted to do something else to keep myself
busy, so I went to the sport information director and offered to assist them
by keeping stats during a game. They trained me, and then later, as other
students came along, I would train those other students."
Initially, Moore kept stats by hand, but eventually her school became one
of the first to begin using portable computers. Using computers greatly increases
the speed by which statistics can be recorded and released. There are special
software programs available for keeping sports statistics, although professional
teams engage software developers to custom design their own statistics software.
"After a while, other schools started contacting our department to see
if we would keep stats for them. So I started making some money at it. It
was a financial safety net for me. It gave me some income during college that
I wouldn't have had otherwise," says Moore.
Like most sports statisticians, Moore has a regular 8 to 5 job in another
field. Statistics are something she does on evenings and weekends. "I'm
a freelancer. I fly to different cities throughout the southeast, and I work
with television production crews to supply statistics for football and basketball
games during the televised production."
Moore really enjoys the travel, especially since airfare, hotel, food and
other expenses are paid by the television or radio networks. "I provide the
statistics and I work with a graphic person to make sure the statistical report
actually appears on screen. Once that's over, they fly me back home and
I go back to my regular job."
When Moore goes out to record football stats, it requires inputting a series
of codes and commands to account for every yard and the amount of time that
every play takes. "In football, you must indicate how a ball moves, whether
it's a pass or a run, how far the ball has gone when it stops, how it
stops and where it stops," she explains.
"Football is very fast; it never really stops. You can't skip a play
and then be able to catch up. Football is more of an exact science than basketball.
With basketball, you are doing the same sort of thing -- you are indicating
an action, a jump shot, a layout or a dunk, and associating a number with
it."
Regardless of the sport, Moore says, "The key is how exact you are and
how quickly you can interpret the rules. In many cases, it is a judgment call."
Sports statisticians often work in pairs. The spotter watches the game
and reports the action seen on the court or the field. The person inputting
the data enters it into the computer.
The spotter might say, "J-03." The recorder knows this means that a jumper
was taken by player three, and enters that code. Fast and accurate keyboarding
skills are crucial. "The really stressful part is when the computer crashes
during a game," says Moore. "I have learned to always use really good computer
equipment."
If you want to be a sports statistician, Moore believes that you will never
run short of work, at least not if you are good at what you do. But she emphasizes
that it is a lot of work and requires a lot of self-discipline.
"You have to stay with it and it takes a long time before it gets to the
point where it pays off. Since I volunteered as a student, I was a seasoned
pro before I went out into the world."
Sports and sports statistics is a family affair for Moore. Her father,
Eric Moore, is a managing partner in his own business in Raleigh, North Carolina.
"We are primarily involved in providing statistical services to athletic
events," he says. "Right now, we are in the middle of basketball and the end
of football. Soon we will go to the high school state football championship.
Our job will be to keep track of what the players are doing, how many passes,
how many times did the running back carry the ball, and then of course there
is a summary of the total number of yards, how many penalties, how many fumbles,
etc."
When Eric Moore recruits statisticians, he looks for fans with a strong
knowledge of sports. "There are some programs that actually train people,
but the best training comes from working out of a sports information office
at a college or university."
Eric Moore has always been a sports fan. His background is in broadcasting,
where he did play-by-play announcing. "I was always looking for additional
information to give my audience. As a result, I became sports information
director at Fayetteville State University," he says.
Like his daughter, Eric was a quick learner. "I began to look for a quicker
and more concise way to keep statistics other than with paper and pencil.
So having found that there were computer programs available, I began to train
my student workers on how to use the computer. People began to ask us to do
statistics because we were quicker."
Of course, most statisticians in the U.S. are volunteers. Because people
can get volunteers, they don't see it as something they should pay for.
Moore's company has a reputation for speed and accuracy, so it is able to
obtain contracts. However, Eric Moore says, "It is not enough to be full-time
work. I do other things."
Hugh M. Davis is the chief statistician at Eastern Kentucky University.
"I started in 1974," says Davis. "I wasn't much of an athlete but I liked
sports. I was 15 at the time. My dad knew one of the coaches and they were
looking for somebody to keep score. So that's how I started."
Davis is mainly self-taught. People from the sports department showed him
the basics, then he studied on his own, using books and manuals as his guide.
Davis now keeps statistics for several sports -- softball, baseball, football,
volleyball, basketball.
His responsibilities also include ensuring that games are covered and maintaining
the statistics area of the website.
For the last few years, Davis has been using a portable computer and a
software program called Automated Scorebook. Before that, he says, "I did
it the old-fashioned way, using a pen and paper."
Like most sports statisticians, Davis's doesn't do it for the
money. "I do it because I like it and it keeps me involved. If you are going
to do this sort of thing, you should really like sports because there is a
lot of work to be done and you had better have another source of income."
During the sport season, Davis sometimes puts in as much as 40 hours a
week. Most of that time, he is also working full time in another field, so
the time commitment is heavy.
Dr. Robert Schutz, an active member of Statistics in Sports (SIS), agrees
that the financial rewards are not great.
"People who work for the professional teams and go and record statistics
at hockey games or baseball games are generally not getting paid for their
efforts. Nobody gets paid to do the type of statistical mathematical analysis
that some of us do," he says.
Schutz is a former program chair of SIS, which is a component of the American
Statistical Association. "We are academics with master's or doctorates
in applied statistics who are interested in the analysis of sports statistics.
It is a hobby, but as professors, some of us are able to fit it into our work
and our research. None of us are paid as sport statisticians. We are pursuing
this for our own interest."
Schutz is a trailblazer in the field. "I am one of the two or three persons
who is using sports databases and using the data to find an optimal [game]
strategy."
He explains: "What I do...is I take the data over seasons, and I analyze
the data and see what sense I can make of it. I apply my knowledge of development
as a teacher, a researcher and try to develop optimum strategies.
"I have always been interested in sports and interested in statistics.
This lets me combine the two. For 100 years, people have been writing about
statistics in sports. I have published a couple of papers on the history of
sport statistics. Over the years, people have looked at things like optimal
strategies, predicting world records, etc."
While Schutz says his work isn't stressful, he admits that others
in the field might disagree. "People who record statistics at games have a
fairly stressful time. My friend records real-time statistics at hockey games
and moment by moment. He has to keep track of where the puck is, who has it,
and so on. He gets paid, but they pay just enough for him to watch the game
for free. It's not a full-time job."
If young people want to get into sports statistics, Schutz suggests they
approach teams and offer to volunteer.
"There are enough sports enthusiasts that most teams can get people to
do it for free. A number of people like to be close to the action. As for
the students who come and work with me, I would never encourage them to concentrate
on sports statistics because there are no jobs out there."
If you are interested in statistics, then Schutz's advice is to enroll
in an applied statistics program and work as a statistician. "There are quite
a few jobs for applied statisticians, and then as a side, a hobby, apply some
of your knowledge to sports statistics."