Sports Science in the U.S. is divided among different practicing groups. Universities have their way of doing things. Athletic departments, sport teams and academic departments sync up to varying degrees where teams function as living laboratories for researchers doing vital, publishable work. Professional services contractors like Exos and P3 cater mostly to individual athletes (and do best-in-the world work) and they sometimes scale up to work for teams on a non-exclusive basis. Technology-based services with U.S. presence, like Catapult, Omegawave and Sparta, have similar non-exclusive business models that function in reverse, focused on teams (college and pro) than on individual athletes.
Two other important groups factor into the future direction for U.S. Sports Science, forces that are not in play anywhere else. American corporations (and global corporation with major U.S. footprints) have big stakes in consumer products that quantify personal health–physiology sensors, fitness trackers and such. Some, like Under Armour, Adidas and Apple (maybe Intel too) have roadmaps that go right through sports. Finally, the professional networks that connect these disparate groups are just starting to take shape, helped to form by a bunch of conferences–Leaders in Performance, Innovation Enterprise Sports & Technology Summit, Dave Tenney’s Sounders Sports Science meetings, the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference and Art Horne’s Boston Sports Medicine & Performance Group Summer Seminar.
All of this is new. The team initiatives, the research programs, the business models, the technologies and the human networks are evolving. The one certainty is that all these things are set to change. Some recent events are a pretty big deal in terms of how things are set to play out.
An article by The Globe and Mail in Toronto summarized the Sports Science moves that the San Antonio Spurs made over the summer. The Spurs made important hires from Canada, Australia and Spain, making the choice to import expertise, rather that take a stake in developing the same competencies in the U.S. An alternative can be seen in the collaborative research between the Orlando Magic and the University of Central Florida, work that led to a new published paper in the Journal of Athletic Training. There are dozens of professional sports teams, hundreds if you consider minor leagues and major colleges, and there are lots of different paths for them to go down and all kinds of choices to make.
Corporations are going to exercise influence on teams’ choices. Under Armour made a minimal investment in Omegawave. Nike’s CEO said that his company was still collaborating with Apple. SAS have a data services client in the Toronto Maple Leafs. Duke men’s basketball will be using SAP data visualization technology. In lots of cases the companies are working on figuring things out so broader trends don’t seem likely to emerge, and corporate collaborations, I predict, will continue to be insignificant, vague one-offs where goals are mostly explorative.
U.S. universities are, I think, the best place to be, and the Orlando Magic is smart to collaborate with one. American research has led the world in exploring and transferring technology, and it seems reasonable to expect that will continue. It is one reason why the BSMPG Summer Seminar is such an important meeting. Compared to the executive meetings that cater to C-level and elite team Directors, Art Horne grows the supply of hands on, inter-disciplinary performance coaches and clinicians, drawing them by the hundreds to the Seminar each May, many coming from American university teams and education programs. He also hosts a smaller meeting for the Director crowd, sessions that amplify the trends from his larger meeting and which foster discussions that set an agenda for U.S. Sports Science going forward.
There are lots of choices for teams to make, but at a basic level they seem to come in two flavors. A team that wants to do Sports Science can look for people that will tell them what to do, whether that is a corporate service, a technology partner or a talking head at an executive conference. Or a team can engage with every one else who is trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t, in effect, participating in the larger research enterprise of Applied Sports Science.
The Best Things I Read Last Week:
- Why every person matters- Motivation Contagion Science of Running blog … Social science research, especially stuff that comes out of Behavioral Economics, has lots to say about how can coaches can improve.
- Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE Finalists Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE … Challenge competitions are a good way to get technologies out of the lab and into the world, and these are exactly the type of physiology sensors that have sports science utility.
- Improving the Practice of Sports Science Research International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance … Journal editorials are an excellent forum for top researchers to assess the state of the profession.
- Exploring age bias in US-based MLS academies Offball Movement blog … The logistics of youth athletic evaluation put kids into 12-month buckets when a shorter interval, like on the half year, might serve them and their sports better in the long run.
- Technical Performance Reduces during Extra-Time Period of Professional Soccer Match-Play PLOS One … No surprise, a match is dramatically different during overtime, and this is a good look at how different it is.