Behind the Laptop Week 5
Conference Play Begins and Being the Change
If you’re interested in watching any of our remaining matches, all of them are on ESPN+
Thursday, 9/26
I’m sitting in our hotel meeting space in Provo, Utah prior to our match at BYU this evening. I had the chance to have lunch with one of my peers this afternoon and I’m so glad that we were able to get together. I have often said that coaches tend to have opportunities to meet up and talk shop, mainly at large club tournaments. Analysts don’t have those same regular opportunities so I’m always happy to take advantage of times like today. It was a great conversation and I look forward to getting to know more Big 12 analysts in the weeks to come.
A focus of mine this season outside of my usual team responsibilities is widening the use of stats in volleyball media, particularly in television broadcasts. To that end, I’ve been trying two things, working more with our sports information person and working more with television broadcasters.
Our team has a new sports information person this season, so I made a point of talking with her before the season to discuss what I do and how I might be able to supplement the stories she currently tells or help her tell some stories that she isn’t currently able to tell for lack of data. I am happy to say that she was open to collaborating a bit so now, after each match, she’ll ask me for a few extra pieces of data that she doesn’t have access to. So far, she’s incorporated some of my data to give more depth to how our team served, passed, and dug. Current NCAA stats don’t give her a lot of material to work with so I am able to give her a little bit more to write about to paint a slightly more complete picture of the match. To be clear, I am not helping her craft her narrative of the match because I think that is her job and I should not try to influence her to tell stories that I think matter. She doesn’t need my bias. But hopefully, by working together, we can give people reading her summaries a little more to think about to help them better understand the match that just took place, as well as the game of volleyball in general.
Along those same lines, I’ve been lucky to get to know the regular broadcaster for our matches at CU. Over time, we’ve talked about how we might help each other. At our home matches, I provide him with an iPad (you can see it below, to the right of the laptop) that has a couple of worksheets open on it. It is updating constantly during the match, just like the stat feed that he is used to receiving, but I’m providing data that he usually can’t get. For now, I’m giving him reception and digging stats and he’s getting comfortable integrating those into his broadcasts. He likes having the additional information and I’m glad that he’s finding it useful and working to incorporating it into the broadcast.
Why am I pushing these stats to the media I have connections with? Because I believe that, in the long run, telling better stories gives fans, both old and new, more ways to connect to our game. When I watch basketball and football broadcasts, I am jealous of the stats that broadcasters have (and use). It occurred to me that volleyball broadcasters don’t have stats like that because people like me aren’t making them available. In many sports, stats are generated by third parties, rather than internally. In NCAA and NBA basketball for instance, teams pay companies to install cameras, analyze practices and games, and provide analysis. In NCAA Power 4 volleyball and beyond, we have settled on doing that work in-house, done by people like me. Volley Metrics provides analysis to programs that can afford that service but maybe can’t afford a full time analyst. Since Volley Metrics mainly provides video exchange and scouting information to college programs, they don’t make it available to outsiders so the only source of volleyball stats for broadcasters are the sports information departments of the schools where they broadcast. So, if I want volleyball broadcasts to look and sound more like those other sports that I envy, I need to help them do that.
When I hear Tony Romo, Greg Olsen, and the Manning brothers talk about their game, they have great data their networks created and/or were created by other providers. NCAA volleyball doesn’t have that. Yet. The second part of my envy of those broadcasts is that those stars aren’t explaining anything to you, they’re just talking about their game and, if you can keep up, it’s super rewarding. If you can’t keep up, then they leave it up to you to figure it out. I think there’s a way to bring fans in better than that but I am jealous that they don’t have producers in their ear, telling them to explain the rules of the game again. I believe that we can bring fans into our game without having to explain the game from scratch every time. I think we can give fans some credit for either knowing something about the game or for figuring it out.
I believe that humanizing the athletes and telling stories about who they are as people is cool and invests fans in their efforts. For instance, I love learning about athletes during the Olympic Games and I care more about their performances as a result. While the fans get to know the athletes, they can also get to know their performances. Ultimately, fans are watching athletes play a sport so I want to tell stories about the athletes as well as stories about how good they are at the sport. I am in a unique position to provide the raw material to people in the media. If I don’t go to them, they’re not going to seek me out. That’s not the standard that has been set in other sports. If I want media to be better and give fans more ways to love and appreciate the sport, then I have to take the first step.