Sports analytics is fueled by fans, and funded by teams. The 19th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC), held last Friday and Saturday, showed more clearly than ever how both groups can join forces. After all, for decades, the industry's main energy source has been fans weary of bad strategies: too much bunting in baseball, too much punting in football, and more. The most enduring analytics icon, Bill James, was a teacher and night watchman until his annual 'Baseball Abstract' books began to upend a century of conventional wisdom, in the 1980s. After that, sports analytics became a profession. Meanwhile, franchise valuations keep rising, women's sports are booming, and U.S. college sports are professionalizing. All of it should create more analytics jobs, as 'Moneyball' author Michael Lewis noted during a Friday panel. 'This whole analytics movement is a byproduct of the decisions becoming really expensive decisions,' Lewis said. 'It didn't matter if you got it wrong...
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