The Super Bowl of Analytics

Thomas H. Davenport

Guest Contributor

As anyone who follows sports the least bit knows, it’s Super Bowl week. The papers, news broadcasts, and sports blog sites are full of Super Bowl trivia. By the way, have you heard that the coaches of the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers are brothers? That’s the kind of inside scoop you get in this blog!

One issue that’s not usually addressed in the media frenzy is the relative strength of the two teams’ analytical capabilities. This would be a great question for a blog post, if only I knew the answer to it. Most teams, including these two, are pretty quiet about what they do with analytics. However, using my trusty DELTA framework for assessing and building analytical capabilities, I can venture an opinion based on the information leaked to the outside world.

D is for data, and my sense is that neither team has anything really exotic in that regard. The best sports analytics groups—Red Sox in baseball, Rockets in the NBA, Patriots in the NFL—seek unique data on players so that they can generate unique analytics. The Ravens are just getting started with analytics—they appointed their first analytics director in mid-2012—so they probably haven’t done much yet. The 49ers, however, have been working on an enterprise data warehouse, and have partnered with vendors SAS and SAP to capture and analyze data. Advantage: 49ers.

E is for enterprise. Organizations that are good with analytics manage them across the entire enterprise, rather than in a siloed function or two. Again, Baltimore is just getting started with analytics, and my sense from the press releases is that their stats guy, Sandy Weil, is exclusively focused on football players and play. On the other team, Paraag Marathe, the 49ers’ executive vice president of football and business operations, has a much broader role. By all public accounts, the team is focused on football analytics as well as fan satisfaction analytics—they even did an analysis of tailgating. Score another point for the 49ers.

L is for leadership. Neither Jed York—the young scion of the DeBartolo family who has taken over the 49ers—nor Steve Bisciotti, the Ravens primary owner—are analytical innovators of the likes of Sandy Alderson (now at the NY Mets) or John Henry of the Red Sox. But Jed York did a good bit of quantitative work as a financial analyst before the joined the 49ers, and he appears to be supportive of the team’s analytical efforts. Bisciotti has no apparent quantitative background. Neither of the Harbaugh brothers—the two teams’ coaches–would be confused for the Patriots’ Bill Belichick (the man with the most analytical acumen, and the least personality, in the NFL coaching ranks), so no points for analytical coaching on either side. But based on the owner comparison, an extra point for the 49ers.

 T is for targets. This is the other side of the enterprise factor—does the team have a clear focus on a particular analytical domain? It’s a little unclear what the Ravens are focused on, but it appears to be football only. The 49ers are all over the map with analytics, using them for drafting players, choosing plays during the game, maximizing the salary cap, and optimizing the fan experience. It’s great to spread the analytical wealth, but I’m guessing that the Ravens are a little more targeted. Let’s give a point to the guys in black and purple—otherwise things are becoming lopsided.

A is for analysts. In sports and business analytics, it’s all about the smart people. I don’t know the full capabilities of both teams’ quantitative analysts.  However, Marathe has been at the 49ers for twelve years, and has certainly had time to assemble a strong analytics staff. The fact that he is effectively the team’s COO also means he has the clout to spend money on good people. Sandy Weil at the Ravens is new, and strikes me as a solo practitioner thus far. The NFL’s press release described him as a “math whiz” who had worked for the San Antonio Spurs, so I’m guessing he’ll have some difficulty getting his ideas across to the Ravens’ coaching staff. This one is a bit of a hunch, but I have to again give the edge to the San Francisco Bay over the Chesapeake Bay.

The numbers add up to a clear win on analytics for the 49ers. It will be interesting to see whether an analytical edge translates into a win on the scoreboard, and how the matchup between Marathe and Weil compares to, say, the onfield battle between quarterbacks Colin Kaepernick and Joe Flacco. Tune in next week—I may be eating an analytical crow—or a raven.

Thomas H. Davenport is a Visiting Professor at Harvard Business School, a Distinguished Professor at Babson College, Director of Research at the International Institute for Analytics, and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte Analytics.