The NFL Team Effect on Player Career Longevity

Project Description

For anyone who follows the NFL, the NFL draft is an important event for teams both in the short and long term. As part of the draft process, teams have access to the all of the available data regarding a player's potential. This includes statistics from college, results from the NFL combine, as well as interviews with former teammates and coaches. With all of this information available to all teams, it seems that some teams have knack for drafting quality players and some teams do not. Traditional thinking suggests that if a player is of high quality, they will be successful wherever they are drafted. However, is this really the case? The aim of this project is to use team data to determine if a relationship exists between team statistics, both offensively and defensively, to determine if they play a role in the length of a player's career. What I am looking for is a person who can gather historical NFL data from sites such as profootball-reference.com, get the data into a usable format, and perhaps assist in analysis. Ultimately, I would like to publish these findings and present the results at the Joint Statistical Meetings next summer in Philadelphia.

Project Department

Statistics and Analytical Sciences

Researcher Requirements

I would like a student who is organized, an effective communicator, and is experienced in using Microsoft Excel. Specifically, I would like the student to have experience using the lookup functions (i.e., VLOOKUP/HLOOKUP) and string subsetting functions (i.e., MID, RIGHT, LEFT). The workload will be no more than 4-5 hours per week in the fall semester, and will mainly consist of gathering and cleaning data.

Project Duration

October 1, 2019 through August 1, 2020

Contact

Austin Brown
abrow708@kennesaw.edu 

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