Over the past decade, there’s been a growing emphasis and dependence on data-driven decision-making in almost every sport. Yet, the UVA football program’s use of data is only in its early stages. Newly hired coach Bronco Mendenhall is a supporter of analytics, and therefore welcomed my capstone team into the complicated inner workings of football recruiting in order improve the recruiting process through applying statistics to remove bias and ultimately recruit the best possible players for UVA

To do so, my team will quantify the three key player characteristics that coaches value:  player performance, academics, and grit (or toughness), which, when combined, indicate a player’s overall fit to UVA.

Additionally, we will use statistical modeling to predict both a player’s probability of attending UVA, as well as their potential for success in order to optimize the allocation of recruiting resources.  At the conclusion, our team will provide the recruiting staff with a multi-dimensional visualization displaying this information to help coaches both find and retain the best possible players.

Although the sports analytics space interesting, I am investigating a different field for my STS research-- namely, the podcast. I will be analyzing the origins and current ecosystem of podcasts in order to evaluate whether podcasts promote the spread of information and encourage democracy with their low barriers to entry and convenient, on-demand access, or have become structured and centralized like traditional media.

 To do so, I will ground my analysis on Langdon Winner’s theories, apply Christopher Weare’s framework on the interplay between the Internet and democracy, and compare the podcasts origin story to that of broadcast television.

 I will also conduct research on the current podcast landscape composition from both a producer and audience standpoint. This will all help answer the question of whether the podcast sociotechnical system upends traditional notions of who is in power, or has become deeply centralized like traditional media. Little research exists on podcasts as an emerging technology, so I am excited to research this field to close part of this knowledge gap.