With the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference upon us we were inspired to take a look back over the last 7 years. We compiled a list of every panelist from 2007 – 2013 from the conference website. This information includes: the year, name the of panelists, organization they represent, name of the panel, primary sport (if applicable) and gender. Based on this we compiled a variety of stats and ultimately put together a chart that displays every panelist organized by year and their primary sport. If you click the icon it will take you to the video of the panel if it’s available (awesome).

The visual is larger than the blog space, so click here to play around.

Below we list out some of the interesting data points gathered.

Team Participation (Player or Front Office member)

The NBA leads with highest percentage of participating teams with 50% (Celtics, Spurs, Grizzlies, Rockets, Mavericks, Suns, Bulls, Pacers, Raptors, Warriors, Knicks, Lakers, Pistons, Magic, Nets).

NFL (43.75%) – 49ers, Rams, Browns, Eagles, Patriots, Giants, Cowboys, Jets, Lions, Jaguars, Saints, Chiefs, Broncos, Falcons

MLB (36.67%) – Pirates, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Padres, Astros, Red Sox, Diamondbacks, Rays, Marlins, Indians, Athletics

NHL (20%) – Bruins, Maple Leafs, Blackhawks, Penguins, Capitals, Kings

Sport Representation

Baseball is well known for being at the forefront of stats and sports. The first two years (07 and 08) Baseball panelists led the way with 6 and 9 appearances respectively.

Since that time Basketball has led 4 out of the next 5 years (09, 10, 11, 13). This is largely due to high number of appearances by Daryl Morey and Mark Cuban (see next category).

Football has been the fastest growing and dominated 2012 with 9 panelists. This year Football is #2 to Basketball with 10.

SSAC has hosted many more than just the big 4 sports. Past inclusions are Racing (2012/13), Tennis (2012), Lacrosse (2007), Soccer (2007/09/10/11/12/13), MMA (2013) and Golf (2008/09/11/12).

Top Appearences

SSAC co-founder and Rocket’s GM Daryl Morey and ESPN’s Bill Simmons lead all panelists with 9 appearances each.

Top Ten: Darly Morey (9), Bill Simmons (9), Shira Springer (8), Jessica Gelman (8), Jeff Ma (8), Brian Burke (8), Mark Cuban (8), Dean Oliver (7), John Walsh (7), Mike Zarren (7).

Media Breakdown

As a sponsor and massive entity, ESPN leads by a far margin in terms of appearances. ESPN personalities have appeared 93 times on panels (57.4% of all Media appearances).

Top Ten: ESPN (93), Boston Globe (9), Sports Illustrated (9), SB Nation (5), Football Outsiders (5), New York Times (4), Time.com (4), Grantland (4 – not including Simmons… could be lumped with ESPN), Baseball Prospectus (3), Philadelphia Inquirer (2), Others (24).

Corporate Breakdown

SSAC has done a great job bringing in a diverse group on companies into the analytics discussion. Most notably this year we’ll see a Big Data panel with companies like HP Vertica joining in.

Top Ten: Athlete’s Performance (7), Ticketmaster (7), tenXer (Jeff Ma) (7), Octagon (5), Cooper Perkins (5), Sportvision (5), Adidas (5), Baseball Info Solutions (3), EA Sports (3), Game Plan LLC (3), Other (89).

Gender

A common joke at SSAC is the disparity between Male and Female attendees. The panel breakdown is not much better.

Out of 589 panelists 61 were female (10.35%).

This number improves slightly when you look at individuals rather than appearances. Out of 350 unique people 39 were female (11.14%).

2010 was the lowest percentage year (6.85%). Breakdown is 2007 (17.5%), 2008 (10.34%), 2009 (11.67%), 2010 (6.85%), 2011 (10.58%), 2012 (10.24%), 2013 (8%).

There’s a lot more data to be parsed and we’re happy to share. We’ve made a google spreadsheet publicly available. Feel free to do your own breakdowns and let us know what you find in the comments. Grab the spreadsheet here.

Also, much of this data was hand compiled and may contain errors. If you notice something let us know and we’ll update appropriately.

EDITOR NOTE:
I was contacted by an organizer of SSAC who mentioned that they make it a focus to find women to participate each year. We strongly encourage women (especially those who are in academia… great opportunity here) to participate and submit papers/proposals. I’ve been a part of many tech conference that suffer from the same discrepancy and the most common cause is the lack of submissions. If you or someone you know wants to contribute you should contact them directly here.

Check out Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5 and Week 6.

Magic Retired

Vince Dunk Champ

Dr J All-Star MVP

Scottie All-Star MVP

Miami Sweep

AI MVP

East Bay Funk Dunk

Wordpress Slideshow

Harold Minor

AI

JR Rider

Half Man Half Amazing

Scottie Pippen

Magic

Check out Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4 and Week 5.

Bird's Jersey Retired

Chief Hits 1304 Games

The Point

Jordan Dunk Champ

Kiss The Rim

Spud Wins Dunk Contest

Cedric The Entertainer

3-Peat for Hodges

Pump It Up

Wordpress Slideshow

Bird Retires

Bird 3Point Contest

Jordan ’88 Contest

Jordan ’87 Dunk Contest

Spud Webb

Ceballos

Dee Brown

Check out Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 and Week 4.

Nance Wins Dunk Contest

McHale Jersey Retired

Magic is Back!

Malone Reaches 34k

King Scores 50 Back-To-Back

79 Consecutive Games Streak

Wordpress Slideshow

Adams Odd FTs

Nance

McHale

Magic!

King

Check out Week 1, Week 2 and Week 3.

Barkley Reach 6642 Rebounds

Jordan 800th Consecutive Double Figure Game

Bol's 15 Blocks

Mailman 20k Points

Mavs Lose 19 Straight

Wordpress Slideshow

Mailman

Greatness

Tallness

Check out Week 1 and Week 2.

Nique's Number 21 Retired

Bucks Retire #4

Ewing First In NY to 15k

He's Back!

Wilt Ties for 3rd Most Points

Wordpress Slideshow

Nique

Moncrief

Ewing

Jordan

We’ve been super excited to see Milton pretty much everywhere lately. Maybe you’ve seen his work on cover of Grantland’s Quarterly publication or perhaps on ESPN.com collaborating on a great Bill Simmons piece. Enjoy and let us know what you’ll remember most about the season that was 2011-12.

The body parts break down as follows:

Head Height = Followers
Head Width = Following
Eyes Height = Last Tweeted
Eyes Width = Followers/Day
Mouth Height = Followers/Day
Mouth Width = Tweets
Arms = Reach
Hands = Tweets/Day
Legs = Days on Twitter

What does that mean? Based on the leg height they are all veterans of social media… which is no surprise in this day an age. The head ratio is interesting. A round head means they tend to have a balanced number of followers/following (Maynor and Durant). Tall heads tend to be more followed (James and Wade). The narrower the more severe the discrepancy (Mike Miller). Mouths are also interesting. The mouth ratio is the volume of tweets versus followers per day. So a tall mouth means they don’t say much, but they have a large audience (Mike Miller). A wide mouth means they say a lot to a potentially smaller audience (Eric Maynor). The more normal looking mouths are a balance of the two.

If you want to play around and build your own lineups or see what you look like next to the NBA elite then head over to Tweepify.Me and check it out.