About Me

I’m a Senior Fellow at The Wharton Sports Analytics & Business Initiative and a Lecturer in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. My formal education is in statistics and French and I have spent my entire career as a sports analytics professional. I teach and lead sports analytics research projects at Wharton but I also provide consulting services. I have a unique perspective on sports analytics problems having been exposed professionally and worked on problems across all major sports. I have worked with teams or on projects across various sports including NFL, Power 5 FBS football, NBA, college basketball, MLS, European soccer, MLB and sports media company ESPN. My most recent consulting clients have been an MLB team, a sports betting company, and a European soccer club.

Previously I was the VP of Football Analytics at SūmerSports. There I led our football analytics efforts working with teams in the NFL. Before Sumer, I was a Senior Sports Data Scientist at ESPN. In 2016 at ESPN I led the revamp and relaunch BPI and introduced Strength of Record (SOR) for college basketball which are both official metrics used by the NCAA tournament selection committee. In college football I was the original creator of ESPN’s Allstate Playoff Predictor. I created Fantasy Soccer Projections for ESPN, and worked on other metrics such as NFL FPI and NBA BPI. I authored many articles for espn.com in addition to creating the first of its kind objective data-based rating system for all college football and NFL players.

With my training and expertise I am qualified to be an expert witness on statistical and sports analytics matters. To contact me, click the email button at the top of the site.

Personal

My wife and I co-coach our coed basketball team of 4 girls and one boy. In my spare time I am chasing my goals in my recent hobby of marathon running and my lifelong love of waterskiing. I enjoy coaching my kids’ sports teams and while trying not to overthink strategy for elementary school aged soccer. I volunteer regularly in the community and at my local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Professional

I’m a sports analytics expert with years of management experience. I built and grew a data science team from scratch working on NFL Football analytics problems at SumerSports. I have more than 5 years managing data science staff and driving key business decisions. At ESPN I led the development, implementation, and communication for many proprietary player & team metrics across NFL, CFB, NBA, CBB, and soccer.

Among those metrics, BPI and Strength of Record (SOR) are official metrics of the NCAA selection committee. Another, the Allstate Playoff predictor bring millions of people to ESPN to play out how their team can reach the playoff. CFB Real Plus-Minus was the first “objective” rating for every college football player.

EDUCATION

  • Phd in statistics from Virginia Tech

  • MS in statistics from BYU

  • BA in French from BYU

  • BS in statistics from BYU