In the past decade, society has seen the rapid increase in the use of artificial intelligence in almost every aspect of life. Athletics use of AI has been a part of professional sports for a while now but is just recently becoming incorporated into college athletics.
Focusing on the biggest sports at Wisconsin, there have been a lot of changes with the use of AI — both at the professional level and the college level in each of these sports.
Starting with football, the National Football League has incorporated AI into most aspects of the game, including broadcasting, injury protection, scouting and officiating.
In 2017, the NFL partnered with Amazon Web Services to create Next Gen Stats tracking data about the location, speed and more for every player and every play, which is used in broadcasting and performance analysis.
In addition, the Digital Athlete program was developed to leverage players’ biomechanical movement data and AI-driven simulations to predict injury risk. The 2022 Contact Detection competition was introduced to advance collision identification and injury prevention by signaling when physical impacts occur.
Individually, teams use AI for a multitude of reasons, including identifying patterns in opponents, play simulations or to analyze players for scouting purposes.
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On the administrative side, the NFL has also been implementing AI. It is used to help create the most optimal schedules, as well as to help grow the game by providing resources to help the public understand the rules and regulations. It has also made its way into officiating. While this hasn’t been completely implemented into the NFL, the new “Hawk-Eye” system allows AI to determine measurements for first downs.
Some of these new technologies have begun to trickle down to the college game. One of the main focuses of AI usage in college football has been injury prevention. Softwares like PlayerData and IoT sensors have been implemented at multiple schools, including Wisconsin, to analyze workload and injury risk factors both during practice and in-game.
The other main use has been in the media. Veritone’s aiWARE has been adopted by the College Football Playoff to automate transcription and for facial and logo recognition. Pro Football Focus and Sportlogiq have partnered to use programs to automatically generate data and metrics from video footage.
In basketball, AI has been used to track shots, analyze data, predict patterns and assist in scouting in the National Basketball Association.
One of the most recognized uses has been the NBA’s partnership with Microsoft Azure and OpenAI to create “NBA Insights.” This program is available to fans, giving them insights to the data behind the trends in the game.
KINEXON COMPETE Vision has been used by teams and media alike to automatically track shots and their relevant data. This can also be used to track player performance and predict injury or fatigue.
For scouting purposes, NBA teams have begun utilizing AI as well. Platforms like Ballin AI and Anova Sports produce data from video footage about individuals or teams.
College basketball has also implemented shot tracking software, similar to in the NBA. Broadcasting teams also use AI to analyze and interpret data from the video itself. AI hasn’t had too much of an impact on college basketball yet, but it is expected to insert itself eventually.
In the National Hockey League, the uses of AI to track data are not yet as prevalent. The NHL has partnered with AWS to improve performance analysis. They developed a program to predict the outcome of a face-off in real time.
The NHL also developed a system called Puck and Player Tracking that uses cameras and sensors to track player and game data.
College hockey has incorporated similar uses of AI as the NHL. They mainly use it for analytics and tracking data. But, individual programs have begun to implement new uses. The ECAC (a Division I conference) is partnering with 49ing in order to improve officiating and video analysis, as well as making the game more accessible for fans.
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So, what does this mean for Wisconsin Athletics?
With the onset of AI, and the looming introduction into college sports, changes are coming. AI referees seem to be one of the up and coming advancements, which may be the biggest impact of AI on collegiate athletics in the near future.
It also will likely speed up the advancement of the game itself. We have consistently seen throughout history that each generation gets better and better, leaving previous records in the dust.
While Wisconsin is home to one of the largest research institutions in the U.S., it is important that the athletic programs utilize this resource to stay ahead of AI and become the innovators themselves. Otherwise, the rest of college athletics may leave them in the dust.