David tipped me off on a blog Pat Coyle started this past summer. Actually, Pat’s first post was in 2003, but he seems to have re-dedicated it to the idea of sports marketing over the summer. Coyle is the Director of Database Marketing and E-Commerce in the Community Relations and Marketing branch of the Indianapolis Colts organization.
Pat has been working with local universities, including IU’s School of Informatics, for the past two years. Kristy and I were on a team in Shaowen’s Sports Informatics class last spring, and Pat gave us some Colts swag for “winning” the battle of student presentations to him on a Colts-based IT idea. We pitched a new game stats prediction activity that would try to create small, bonded groups of fans and simultaneously try to fill the dead time near the end of the week. (As a two-plus-decade owner of fantasy sports teams, I still think that’s a winning idea.) Knowing that there are at least a few guys like Pat out in the industry is one of the reasons sports informatics is an exciting proposition.
Pat has several projects afoot. He endorsed the I Choose Indy! blog, which is filled with testimonials about why people chose to live in the area. (Pat was a Bears fan first, so I wonder where his heart will be when Chicago takes on Indy in Miami this winter.) He has also spent quite a while leading a website redesign for the football organization and is trying to launch a new social networking site — MyColts Fan Network. That is deserving of a separate blog post at a later time. Also, Pat just previewed a Colts widget that will be released into the wild soon and then tracked to see how it spreads.
Baseball is pretty well represented and SI ready, thanks to the fan-based statistical analysis pioneered by Bill James. The other sports are catching on, with some teams very entrenched in these ideas of using technology to improve coaching, marketing and fan experiences. However, the wall of proprietarity is making it difficult to figure out who is open to sports informaticians to enter the organization and help revolutionalize their games. It’s great to see someone like Pat working so openly with his ideas. Ultimately, that will serve him well, both in generating feedback and in attracting potential employees.
