Allison Loucks - ESPN Director, Business Development & Innovation

Allison Loucks is the Director of Business Development and Innovation at ESPN, where she oversees ESPN’s Analytics group. Her team has created ESPN metrics including their Total QBR, Basketball Power Index and pass rush win rate. In this conversation, Allison talks about…

What she does as a director of the analytics group and what a typical day looks like
How ESPN creates proprietary metrics
Challenges of using complex metrics in simple ways
How sports betting has affected her team’s work
Common misconceptions about ESPN metrics
What’s on the horizon for the analytics team
What she looks for when hiring
Her ESPN career and journalism background
Meeting one of her sports heroes

Show links

ESPN Analytics home page

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts: Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, TuneIn.

Expected ValuePaul CarrMarch 27, 2024ESPNComment

Paul Hembekides - Content Producer, ESPN

Paul Hembikedes, aka Hembo, is a Content Producer for ESPN and got his start in the Stats & Information department, working with Expected Value host Paul Carr in the ESPN research room. Currently, Hembo works on Get Up and #Greeny, Mike Greenberg’s daily ESPN Radio show. He also partnered with Greenberg to co-author “Got Your Number”, a New York Times Bestseller that explores sports history through the lens of who “owns” each number in sports. In this conversation, Hembo talks about…

The origin of “Got Your Number” and he and Greenberg’s process for choosing the numbers.
How he put together the stats and facts for each athlete.
How he balances stats and words in the book.
Biggest surprise when researching and writing the book.
His path and how he got to his current ESPN role.
What he had to learn to adapt his sports passion and knowledge to TV & Radio.
A look inside a researchers mindset & how he approaches the “give me the best stat” question.
Tips & advice for getting into sports research.

Then, TruMedia’s Sergio De La Espriella joins the show to discuss Paul’s conversation with Hembo.

Show Links

To purchase “Got Your Number”, click here.
Follow Hembo on Twitter: @PaulHembo.
Follow @TruMediaSports on Twitter.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts: Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, TuneIn.

Expected ValueGuest UserMay 3, 2023ESPNComment

Lauren Poe - Sports Analytics Developer, ESPN

Lauren Poe is part of ESPN’s sports analytics team, which is responsible for metrics like Total QBR, Power Indices for Basketball, Football, and Soccer, and Strength of Record for college football. She has a degree in Mathematics from the University of Oklahoma, spent time as a math teacher, and got her ESPN in the Stats and Analysis department. In this conversation, Lauren talks about…

Her career path from math teacher to ESPN
Her early years in the ESPN Stats & Analysis group
The challenges and importance of data cleaning
Steps she took to join ESPN’s analytics team
What she does as a sports analytics developer
Creating and maintaining ESPN’s metrics
Her favorite college football metrics
Communicating data well in writie
How she watches games, especially Oklahoma football

Then, TruMedia’s Sergio De La Espriella joins the show to discuss Paul’s conversation with Lauren.

Show Links

Follow Lauren on Twitter: @laurenpoe.
Follow the Women in Sports Data on Twitter: @WinSportsData.
To check out the Women in Sports Data website, click here.
To check out ESPN’s 2022 College Football Playoff predictor, click here.
To check great article explaining ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI), click here.
Follow @TruMediaSports on Twitter.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts: Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, TuneIn.

Expected ValueGuest UserAugust 31, 2022ESPN, Football, BasketballComment

Fernando Palomo - ESPN Play-by-Play Commentator

Fernando Palomo has worked at ESPN since 2000 as an anchor and soccer play-by-play commentator, both in English and Spanish. Fernando has covered multiple major soccer events including World Cups, Euros, and the UEFA Champions League. He has been one of the more receptive soccer people to using data and advanced stats on TV and frequently uses analytics in his broadcasts. In this conversation, Fernando talks about…

The upcoming Liverpool-Real Madrid Champions League final
What he looks for in soccer stats
How he uses data as an announcer
The differences in calling a game in English vs Spanish
How data is used and received differently in two languages
A track and field record that he still holds in his native El Salvador

Then, TruMedia’s Sergio De La Espriella joins the show to discuss Paul’s conversation with Fernando.

Show Links

Follow Fernando on Twitter: @fernandopalomo.
To read up on Fernando’s bio, click here.
To read a Q&A he did with Texas A&M Today, click here.
Follow @TruMediaSports on Twitter.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts: Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, TuneIn.

Expected ValueGuest UserMay 24, 2022Soccer, ESPNComment

Alok Pattani - Google Cloud

Alok Pattani is a Data Science Developer Advocate for Google Cloud, which partners with sports organizations including Major League Baseball and the NCAA. He is also a consultant for the Dallas Cowboys, and he was previously a founding member of ESPN’s sports analytics department. In this conversation, Alok will talk about…

- What Google Cloud is and what he does for them
- How Google works with MLB and the NCAA
- BigQuery and how he uses it
- How the volume of sports data has changed in recent years
- What he does for the Cowboys
- What NFL teams are doing in the analytics space and how NGS data has changed that
- Advice for students looking to get into sports analytics
- Why he chose sports and ESPN out of college
- Developing and communicating metrics at ESPN
- Researching LeBron James’ The Decision show at ESPN
- How he combines his love for data with his love for ice cream

Show links
- Follow Alok on Twitter: @AlokPattani
- MLB Film Room powered by Google Cloud
- Alok’s white paper on schedule-adjusted metrics in NCAA basketball (page 92)
- Using BigQuery to simulate March Madness
- Explaining ESPN’s Total QBR
- 2011 notes on the Mavericks and Dan Crawford
- Paul Carr’s Google presentation on effectively communicating data
- Wentworth Homemade Ice Cream
- Follow @TruMediaSports on Twitter

Expected ValueRafe AndersonOctober 15, 2020NFL, Football, ESPN, GoogleComment

Brian Burke - ESPN Senior Analytics Specialist

Brian Burke has been at the forefront of football analytics over over a decade, since creating AdvancedNFLStats.com in the mid-2000s. He’s now a Senior Analytics Specialist at ESPN, where he and the analytics team recently unveiled new metrics for Run Block Win Rate and Run Stop Win Rate. In this episode, Brian will discuss…

- Previous metrics he’s developed at ESPN
- The process of building the models for Run Block Win Rate and Run Stop Win Rate
- Challenges he and the team faced in creating these metrics
- How he knows when to stop tinkering with new metrics and let them loose
- The excitement of releasing new metrics into the wild
- The headline story of the metric: Aaron Donald is average against the run
- What’s next on the analytics horizon
- What a typical NFL Sunday looks like
- His path from being a Navy fighter pilot to the sports analytics world
- A favorite Army-Navy moment
- How he broke a Navy war game.

Show links
- Follow Brian on Twitter: @bburkeESPN
- Introduction to Run Block Win Rate and Run Stop Win Rate
- Aaron Donald is an average run defender
- Pass Block Win Rate and Pass Rush Win Rate
- ESPN’s Analytics home page
- Brian Burke bio
- Brian joins ESPN
- Advanced Football Analytics
- Follow @TruMediaSports on Twitter

Expected ValueRafe AndersonSeptember 16, 2020Football, NFL, ESPNComment

Paul Sabin - ESPN Senior Sports Analytics Specialist

Paul Sabin is a Senior Sports Analytics Specialist at ESPN, where he works on various metrics as part of ESPN’s Sports Analytics group. In this episode, Paul will discuss…

- What his job entails at ESPN
- The college football title game, through the lens of metrics like Total QBR and Football Power Index
- Creating the Player Impact Rating
- Challenges of capturing a human element in ESPN’s College Playoff Predictor
- Communicating uncertainty
- Midseason takeaways from ESPN’s Basketball Power Index
- How an engineering class pushed him toward a stats career
- Advice for people entering the sports analytics industry
- Being a Nationals fan during their World Series run

Show links- Twitter: @SabinAnalytics, @ESPNStatsInfo
- ESPN’s Sports Analytics home page
- Football Power Index
- College football Total QBR
- College football Player Impact Rating
- Basketball Power Index
- Midseason BPI takeaways

Expected ValueRafe AndersonJanuary 8, 2020ESPN, Football, BasketballComment

Taylor Twellman - ESPN Soccer Analyst

Taylor Twellman has been ESPN’s lead soccer analyst for nearly a decade, and he provides perspective on using data in television and communicating with non-analytics types. Among the topics discussed…

- The objective information he looked for as a player
- His prep process for broadcasting a game
- What makes a stat good and useful for him
- Challenges of working information into a soccer broadcast
- What’s interesting about expected goals
- What he wishes he could quantify and what he’d like to get from player-tracking data

Expected ValueRafe AndersonOctober 16, 2019Soccer, ESPNComment

Jeff Bennett - VP, ESPN Stats & Information

Jeff Bennett oversees ESPN’s Stats & Information Group, which produces statistics and analytics that power all of ESPN’s platforms. Having been at ESPN for 25 years, Jeff’s career parallels the rise in sports data and analytics, and he is one of the most influential people in mainstream sports stats over the last quarter century. In this podcast, he discusses:

What ESPN’s Stats & Information Group does
How his interest in sports and numbers developed
Joining the ESPN research team and working on shows like SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight
Starting the Sports Analytics team
Developing metrics like Total QBR
Working with the NFL’s NGS data
The future of sports analytics

Listen here and wherever you get podcasts!

Apple
Google
Spotify
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TuneIn

Expected ValueRafe AndersonOctober 9, 2019ESPNComment