With the recent rise of artificial intelligence (AI), its presence has found its way into all aspects of our world: social media, education, art, and now athletics.
College and professional athletic departments are beginning to use AI to quickly sort through player profiles. Using technology to analyze game tapes, academic records, and stats helps recruiters sort through thousands of athletes quickly and accurately.
Colleges and universities use AI systems from companies like SparkCognition to aid in scouting high school athletes. SparkCognition has created an AI system that assesses a recruit’s fit within a team and predicts their potential success.
The use of advanced technology during recruiting and throughout the season offers numerous advantages for both coaches and athletes. AI speeds up the usual daunting aspects of coaching, like scanning games to create highlight reels, coming up with team-specific practice drills, and sorting through recruits’ files to predict potential success and performance.
This saves coaches hours of time, allowing them to spend more time face-to-face with athletes. While this alone is a benefit to players, applicants are also able to extend their profiles to more colleges through AI, find an athletic program best fit for their skill levels, and create personalized training and injury prevention.
While AI has benefits, it also brings disadvantages. Coaches may become so reliant on technology that they lose the human elements of player development and recruitment, including experience-based decision-making.
While AI might take some of the weight off the coach’s shoulders, it may also add more. Coaches now have to navigate new systems and adapt them to their original coaching styles. AI could also create player-coach tension over how and why data is being collected from these systems.
The possible effects on the athletes may include privacy concerns, mental health declines, and algorithm-biased recruiting. The constant tracking of a player’s performance can cause them to feel that they no longer have control over their own body, further leading to anxiety, pressure, and fear of failure. Furthermore, recruiting systems are often based on historical data of recruits, undervaluing athletes from underrepresented groups.
The use of AI in professional leagues like the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, and National Hockey League is very similar to the way it is used in the NCAA. This brings a lot of the same advantages and disadvantages. Adjusting to this new field of athletics will take great effort from both players and coaches, and will hopefully reap more benefits over time.
