By Rubin E. Grant
Dr. Darin White is a firm believer in sports analytics, both on and off the field.
It’s why White launched Samford’s sports marketing and analytics program in 2012 and added the first-of-its-kind Center for Sports Analytics in 2017.
White is executive director of the program, which is considered among the best in the nation by leading sports industry experts and is on the cutting edge of providing opportunities for students beyond college.
“It’s a unique program and it’s cool to do it here in Birmingham, especially with Andrews Sports Medicine here,” White said. “It’s helping put Birmingham on the map in another way.”
The program takes a three-pronged approach with sports business analytics, including both a marketing and finance focus, and there’s a player and team performance focus.
White and his students work with sports teams and large sports marketing brands to make the best use of the oceans of data that surround them. White also has put together the Sports Marketing & Analytics Advisory Board that recently added Jean Sullivan, widow of Pat Sullivan, who was a Heisman Trophy winner and head football coach at Samford.
White and his students currently work with 18 teams, including all the sports teams at Samford, the Birmingham Bulls, Legion FC, Birmingham Squadron, UAB baseball, Birmingham-Southern’s men’s soccer and tennis teams, and two soccer teams in England.
Some of the students have gone on to have successful sports business careers with dozens of professional sports franchises, including the Houston Texans, Portland Trailblazers, Philadelphia Flyers, Minnesota Vikings, Atlanta Hawks, Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers and Tampa Bay Rays.
This fall, White has dipped into the high school ranks, assigning an intern to work with Vestavia Hills’ football team.
White’s interest in analytics began when he was a student and standout soccer player at Vestavia Hills. He graduated in 1985.
“It goes back to my math teacher, Kay Tipton,” White said. “She sparked my love for mathematics.”
Tipton, who retired in 2007 after more than 40 years teaching at Vestavia Hills, founded the school’s math team and guided it to 15 math team national championships in a 20-year span.
White went on have a successful playing and coaching career in soccer. While working as a professor at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, he helped start the men’s soccer program and led the team to the 2003 National Christian College Athletic Association National Championship. He was inducted into Union’s Sports Hall of Fame in April.
“My time coaching and teaching at Union laid the foundation for our Center for Sports Analytics at Samford and the success we have experienced over the last decade because it gave me the credibility to have a trusted voice within the sports industry,” White said.
Rebels Connection
White is enjoying the analytical connection he’s made with his high school alma mater.
“It’s going pretty good,” he said, “but this is just the first year. Any time you have an engagement with a team, you have to find out what the coaches’ philosophy is on offense and defense and what they’re trying to do.
“There’s not one solution and it’s very sport dependent. There’s a completely different kind of analytics for different sports. We’re trying to figure out what’s best for them and what they’re trying to accomplish.”
With that in mind, White is employing what Bill Connelly of SB Nation theorizes in his football study hall as the five factors in winning football games: explosiveness, efficiency, field position, finishing drives and turnovers.
“We have developed a methodology to grade the team on those five variables each week,” White said.
For Samford’s football team, White said, “We also do scouting analytics for upcoming opponents, transfer portal/recruiting analytics, self-scouting analytics prior to the playoffs, etc.”
Vestavia Hills secured the No. 3 seed in Class 7A, Region 3 with a 45-0 shutout at Tuscaloosa County last Friday. Senior quarterback John Paul Head led the way with 292 yards total offense, rushing 137 yards and three touchdowns and completing 13 of 18 passes for 155 yards and a touchdown.
The Rebels (7-2, 5-2 in Region 3) will close the regular season Friday at home against Helena (8-1). Next week, Vestavia Hills will travel to Decatur to take on Austin (8-2) in the first round of the Class 7A playoffs.
Although the Rebels receive reports from the Samford intern, Vestavia head coach Robert Evans said, “We don’t get a lot of analytics from him.”
That’s because the Rebels already had started their season when they began working with Samford analytics.
“Dr. White lives right by the high school and he’s fantastic,” Evans said. “He’s got an awesome program at Samford. It provides some value to us, but it’s too late in the season for us to use what he’s giving us.”
Evans, however, is all in on analytics.
“Football is all analytics with stats and probability and using things such as down and distance to determine play calls,” Evans said. “It’s all basically just math. There’s probability, angles, blocking schemes and also whether you have enough players on either side of the center to see how the offense and defense is aligning.
“That’s what’s called scouting. We go into a game with a value premise and factor in the minimals. Then it goes back to calculated guesses, such as when to try a fake field goal or two-point conversion.
“On offense, defense and special teams, we’re looking for an advantage. We study tendencies on how to stop the other team when we’re on defense or exploit them offensively when we have the ball.
“Analytics has gotten a heightened awareness the last five years, especially in the pros with decisions about when to go for it on fourth down or go for two. That part fascinates me, but we don’t do as deep a dive into it.”
The thing Evans likes most about Samford’s analytics program is the business aspect.
“I’m much more interested in the business end, selling our product,” he said. “We not only have our games on NFHS Network but also YouTube Live, trying to increase recognition for our program.”
