Michael Lopez has been the NFL’s Director of Football Data & Analytics for over a year, and he’s also a statistics professor at Skidmore College. He brings a strong academic background and a coaching perspective to his NFL job. Among the topics covered:

• What he does in his role for the league
• State of analytics in the NFL
• The league’s relatively new NGS player-tracking data
• Working with the NFL competition committee
• The NFL’s first Big Data Bowl (and the next one?)
• Advice for students interested in a sports analytics career