Nerds Unite: MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference
The beacon that draws us north.
It’s the beginning of March, and that means the players report to warmer locales while the nerds head north. It all makes sense when you look at the lineup that MIT Sloan Business School puts together for their annual Sports Analytics Conference.
This year, FanGraphs will be in full force at the event, as Daves Cameron and Appelman will be attending, and your intrepid NotG reporter will be covering the event’s nerd-angles and nerd-crevices. If you doubt the credentials of the event, just check this list. The invited speakers and panelists this year include:
Tobias Moskowitz, University of Chicago Business School Professor
Rob Neyer, SBN Baseball Editor
Tom Tippett, Director of Baseball Information Services for the Boston Red Sox
Mark Cuban, Owner of the Dallas Mavericks; Co-Founder and Chairman of HDNet
John Hollinger, ESPN Columnist
Marc Stein, ESPN Senior NBA Writer
Kevin Pritchard, Former NBA General Manager
Daryl Morey, General Manager of the Houston Rockets
Justin Tuck, New York Giants Player
Jeff Van Gundy, ESPN Analyst and Former NBA Coach
Sarah Robb O’Hagan, President of Gatorade NA and Global CMO
Hank Adams, CEO of Sportvision, Inc
Sunil Gulati, President of US Soccer Federation and President of Kraft Soccer
Darren Rovell, Sports Business Reporter at CNBC
John Walsh, Executive Vice President of ESPN
R.C. Buford, General Manager of the San Antonio Spurs
Brian Burke, President & General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs
Jonathan Kraft, President of The Kraft Group
Bill Simmons, Columnist at ESPN
Eric Mangini, Former NFL Head Coach
Del Harris, Former NBA Head Coach
Jeff Moorad, Owner of the San Diego Padres
Andrew Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods professor of economics at Smith College
Oh be still my beating heart! Oh be strong my knobby knees! These titans of nerd-dom will be discussing the newest in sports analytics in themed panels. We’ll tweet, live-blog and report on the results found in panels such as “Birth to Stardom: Developing the Modern Athlete in 10,000 Hours,” “Sports Gambling: The Source of Sports Innovation?” and “Gut vs Data: How do Coaches Make Decisions?”
Of course, we’ve saved the best for last, as two important questions will color all inquiries over this coming weekend. For one, I will attempt to prove or disprove the theory that Malcom Gladwell and I are the same person. Only one semi-Jamaican nerdly sports writer will escape the weekend, maybe.
And two, will the rest of his panel be able to withstand the proverbial heat brought by our own Jonah Keri when he links montreal-stlyle bagels, pictures of kitties, distressed asset management and regressing wOBA platoon splits into one anecdote?
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Lame. These guests should be replaced with Watson: The Computer or Tom, doesn’t matter.