DailyDirt: Jocks Versus Nerds
The rise of fantasy sports and realistic video games for every major sport has expanded the audience and engagement incredibly. Even if you can't throw a spiral, you can still manage a fantasy football team. Sabermetrics changed baseball, and deep learning algorithms are about to change how a lot of other sports are played. Computers aren't just going to beat people at chess and Go. They might become better talent scouts and strategists for every major sport.
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- IBM's cognitive computing platform Watson is becoming a talent scout for the Toronto Raptors, analyzing unstructured data to find undervalued free agents and trade targets. If this kind of artificial intelligence for NBA moneyball works, it'll probably expand to other professional league sports as well. And someone out there is probably going to make a killing with fantasy sports, too. [url]
- Embedded sensors in tennis rackets, golf clubs, helmets, etc... are going to provide a flood of sports data that will change the way these games are coached and played. These sensors will allow players to improve their skills and point out their flaws -- and possibly help avoid injuries. And in football helmets, we may even be able to better quantify brain damage from head impacts. [url]
- How will football strategies evolve over the next 50 years? Every play is caught on digital video and shared now, and playbooks are tablets. Simulations can help plan the best plays, and the difference between a video game and the real game could get a bit blurry for spectators. [url]
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