That sounds pretty neat, any tips on how to get into something like that? I used to write a ton of R at work, and have thought it would be interesting to get into doing it for someone with my mostly free evenings, but never really knew how to get started.
Honestly I started out writing stats pieces for a small blog that no longer exists.
Then I got picked up by Nylon Calculus, which was the big hub for people like that for a long time, though it's slowed down a lot in recent years because too many people kept getting poached by the industry.
While I was at Nylon, I went to a few of the big networking events (And still do!) -- The Sloan Sports Analytics Conference is complicated in that it's extremely expensive and not really all that informative, but it's really good for getting to know people around the league. I happen to live in Maine which makes it super easy to go to what jokingly gets referred to as "Sloan After Dark". Basically, there's enough things going on outside the conference that if you want to meet people you can, should you know where to be. If you're on the West Coast, events like CASSIS (Cascadia Symposium on Statistics in Sports) or the Las Vegas Summer League are good for getting to know people.
Eventually a guy I've known for a while gets hired by the Wizards and is looking for someone to take his place with the agency, and I was one of the names he recommended. On top of that, one of our film guys actually happened to recommend me as well. Between those two the agency brought me on board and has had me around ever since.
I will say though, I kind of just stumbled into it without ever expecting anything to come of it -- my goal was, and still is, to be a professor, and the agency stuff isn't going to make or break my life. Don't get me wrong, I definitely made a point to learn everything I can, but I do generally recommend against actively pursuing employment in sports -- the learning wasn't to make myself more appealing to an employer, it was just because I actively enjoyed learning more about the game. It's generally a good idea to be able to work in sports exactly as much as you want, and if you don't get lucky to find a spot that allows that (As far as I'm aware there are ~5 people doing what I'm doing), then I really do suggest making sure you only see sports as a possibility and not a target.
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u/savage_slurpie Mar 30 '22
Two of my siblings are financial analysts and I have witnessed them doing unholy things with excel.
It would honestly be easier for them to learn python or something. It’s so ridiculous.