Harvard Sports Analysis Collective

The Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective (HSAC) is a student-run organization at Harvard College dedicated to the quantitative analysis of sports strategy and management. Founded in 2006, the club meets weekly and is for students interested in sports statistics, sports business, and problem solving. After launching the new HSAC blog in October 2009, undergraduates, graduates, and faculty have published several hundred posts, some of which have been featured by publications including the Boston Globe, ESPN The Magazine, Yahoo! Sports, NFL.com, Deadspin, Grantland, and the Wall Street Journal. The club has published two academic papers – “Improving Major League Baseball Park Factor Estimates” (2008) and “Predicting Overtime with the Pythagorean Formula” (2010) – in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. In April 2011, the club made its television debut when it was featured on NFL Network in a series of episodes analyzing the 2011 Draft. Our members and alumni have worked for various professional sports teams such as the Phoenix Suns, Charlotte Bobcats, Cleveland Browns, New York Yankees and Portland Timbers. A member of the Ivy Sports Business Network (ISBN), HSAC provides a forum for learning and discussion about careers in the sports industry. We have organized trips to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and the New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports, and have hosted guest speakers such as ESPN’s Adam Schefter and Andy Katz, Football Outsiders’ Aaron Schatz, Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, Harvard men’s basketball coach Tommy Amaker, Grantland’s Bill Barnwell, NFL wide receiver Anthony Gonzalez, and Celtics President Rich Gotham. HSAC has become an analysis partner for several sports related publications and companies and we are available to engage in additional projects. Please contact us at harvardsportsanalysis@gmail.com if you have any questions or want more information.