Episode 3: Ethan Young • Bridging the Data Gap, NFL to CFB

Intro

Today's episode of "Moneyballers: Inside the College Front Office" features Ethan Young, discussing his journey in sports analytics, particularly his role as Director of Strategic Intelligence and later as Director of Player Personnel at UCLA.

‍

He shares insights on the transition from NFL to NCAA, the challenges posed by the introduction of NIL, and the evolving landscape of data and technology in college sports. Young emphasizes the importance of understanding the business aspect of college athletics and the need for effective organizational structures, including the role of general managers. He highlights the opportunities for competitive balance and the necessity for athletic departments to adapt to the changing environment.

‍

Takeaways

• Ethan Young was a pioneer in the role of Director of Strategic Intelligence in sports.
• The transition from NFL to NCAA revealed significant differences in data availability and usage.
• Data-driven decision-making is crucial for talent evaluation and recruitment in college football.
• The role of general managers in college sports is still evolving and lacks a standardized definition.
• Athletic departments should prioritize football to ensure financial sustainability for other sports.
• There is a gap between current practices in college sports and the potential for data utilization.
• Successful athletic departments will need to adapt their organizational structures to meet new challenges.

‍

Full Transcript

____________________

Luke Bogus (01:30)
Ethan Young, man, pumped for you to be on the podcast. Thanks for being here.

Ethan (01:32)
Absolutely Luke, I appreciate you having me.

Luke Bogus (01:34)
Yeah, we met at this point, what, two or three months ago. And I mean, I, before we even met, I was very familiar with your kind of rise in the industry, specifically around the title of Director of Strategic Intelligence, in 2018, I would hear that title today, but seven, eight years ago, that's wild. How did that come to be? Who came up with that title? Were you the first? Like maybe walk me through that journey a little bit.

Ethan (01:56)
I laugh because I think not only is it the first, it might be the only. It's so out there. I remember when it got announced, I think there was something in the LA Times, they're like, they launching nuclear warheads over there? What are they doing at the UCLA football offices to warrant this sort of title? But, you know it was funny, Chip and I connected when I was at the League office.

We were very kindred spirits in terms of how we approached team building, philosophy, et cetera. So we really hit it off. And one thing we both aligned on is the power of data, but there was a lot of data being done wrong. And the term analytics had a lot of bad connotation in the industry at the time. And he drove this was like, hey, I don't really like that term, but let's come up with something that drives to what we both believe in.

And so that was kind of what we arrived at. And, you know, there was kind of a brainstorm session briefly there and that's what it came to be. But really that role at the end of the day, Luke, it was a lot of game management, a lot of opponent scout and a lot of special projects, you know, so it was really, Hey, he'd have a unique problem we got to solve. And how do we generate a conclusive outcome?

and answer to this question in using data and all the resources we had. a lot of times we didn't have the resources, so we had to go develop them.

Luke Bogus (03:06)
And before we get into that job specifically, you did allude that you guys met at the kind of league office because you were kind of a next gen stats analyst. Maybe like, what were some of the things that you were doing there? And did it very simply translate from NFL to NCAA back in 2018? Or what were the things that were so obvious that the NFL was doing that you jumped into the NCAA world and you're wait, they're not doing that? Like what are the things that stood out?

Ethan (03:27)
You know, it's funny. It was completely different and almost none of what I took from the league I could apply at UCLA. It was completely different. And the big reason for that to me, Luke, is just the difference in ecosystem, right? At the NFL, everything is built in suspenders. There is complete operational support and infrastructure. In college, it's the wild west in every form of the word. Like the data is not available. There isn't anything capturing it. Like you talk about wearables at practice.

That's not piped into anything, right? So, all of the spatial tracking data I been using at the league, we had Apache Zeppelin and SQL, and it was in these usable dashboards. And I was able to build proprietary metrics using the raw data and XYZ. When I get there, it's like, Hey, we have a software platform through Catapult, which this isn't not Catapult at all, but just where, where we were in 2018 and it

reports directly into this one reporting format and gives you these two or three metrics and that's it. And so there was so much meat on the bone there. And I still think there's meat on the bone there. Don't get me wrong. I didn't do a ton of spatial tracking stuff at UCLA. A lot of my focus moved in other directions because that was the needs of the organization.

Luke Bogus (04:34)
So spatial tracking data, that's one thing. What are other things that looking back your first 6 to 12 months you tried to do at the time, it's like, that's crazy. What are you doing? That's so forward thinking. And now it's like every program does it. Was there anything that you felt that you were a couple of steps ahead upon because of your experience in the NFL before?

Ethan (04:50)
You know, I think

in the industry, we were kind of considered as the odd balls. I think a lot of what we did was still is still considered crazy to this day. You know, we didn't use any of the fourth down charts or books. developed our own bespoke model. I think that's probably becoming a little bit more popular, but I still, many of my compatriots around college football are using the book. I think there's a lot of things

that we did internally that aren't known that nobody's replicated, particularly with portal process, particularly with frame projection of our athletes in high school, in finding offensive line, defensive line type bodies that maybe weren't ready made, but we had good track record success with that. I think there's still a ton on the bone in college football because of that.

Luke Bogus (05:33)
What's really interesting is obviously you came in with an awesome title. You eventually became Director of Player Personnel. But what's really interesting is that you were there from 2018 to 2024, which it really impressive tenure. But the amount of time and the time that you were there, you saw NIL wasn't even a thing to NIL should become a thing to it randomly became a thing on July 1st to collectives became a thing to Rev-Share became a thing. Maybe you saw it all.

Ethan (05:53)
man. Yes.

Luke Bogus (05:56)
How did your job change from like it never being on the radar to NIL to what it became before you stepped out?

Ethan (06:02)
Oh man, the job changed 4 or 5 times in role. the evolution was crazy. And at first, being so focused on data research and that led into recruiting too, terms of town identification and evaluation. But, and then when I got promoted, it quickly became, right, Hey, you got to oversee the recruiting arm of right? Which is a significant operational challenge in terms of managing 10 coaches out on the road and areas and.

inflow of talent for taking thousands of prospects and drilling it down to the 25 you want and outreach to those prospects, et cetera, right? Recruiting databases and evaluation of that, which is my bread and butter. So that was what made me excited. And that was what I loved about the portal is we really got to take a systematic approach to town evaluation. And I think what we did in the portal in terms of using data to filter down the guys we were really looking at that fit

our ICP, so to speak, was really helpful for us and valuable. And that was an evolution. And then quickly after the portal, literally six months later, was NIL, right? And now that becomes, instead of a strategic problem to solve, it's more of an operational and administrative problem to solve, right? So that's a completely different skill set. And now you're operating in different circles there and

that was an area that was candidly a challenge for us at UCLA. 'Cause that's not a place conducive to NIL in the football space. Just to be completely brutally honest. I'm sure that some people will be upset by that, but it's the truth and the reality of that situation. You know, going forward now to Rev-Share, I think it's something we started to deal with and no one had any answers at that time. And really in my current work now, a lot of people still don't have answers.

Luke, right? Like it's, changing so fast. And I think that will continue on until this really gets settled. Because now we have, as we approach April 7th, like there will be so much fallout from not only the House settlement, but the legislation coming forward from the Senate over the next few years, like there's going to be more and more layers to this. We went through the Title IX thing already. It came and went, right. So it's like, what is the next version of this that we have to prepare for? And.

you have to stay dynamic and I think ready to kind of challenge as a leader, you know, in this space, wherever program you're at, you have to be ready to pivot and adjust. And I think we did a good job of that at UCLA and that's kind of what you have to do in this era.

Luke Bogus (08:09)
Yeah, yeah, totally. And I want to talk about the operational burden and the this era part, but before we do tie a bow on kind of the UCLA experience, spoiler alert, you're not there. You are currently with the 33rd Team but I think what that puts you in a really unique position is that now you're at a level where you can kind of see from a bird's eye view, like all the tech and different data adoptions and tech adoptions just around the, not only college football, but just like general college sports landscape, I guess, comparing it to what, what you started with in 2018

what you left with in 2024 to what you're kind of seeing now as we're 90 days away from Rev-Share. Like, what are some of the most cutting edge things that you've seen some teams do on the data side or the tech side in general to get that competitive edge?

Ethan (08:47)
I'll be candid. think that there's still a large gap between where people need to be and where they are currently. I think the last couple of years that we've seen some good leaps from things like telemetry. I candidly am a DropBack fan, right? So I think that will have a future and a valuable place in this piece too in terms of evaluation ecosystem, right? But I think there's so many

gaps between where colleges in the NFL is from a complete ecosystem standpoint where everything can live and breathe and Like i'll just share you know when I came into UCLA there was almost nothing from the previous regime you have to start over and that's so scary for an institution you're so bound to your people and your operators that when they leave they're starting over and you have to I think start building

pillars of like, this is our way, this is our system, this is who we are. And this lives and breathes regardless of who the head coach is, regardless of who the GM is, regardless of if Luke's there, Ethan's there, right, et cetera. This is institutional 101. And so that when you have an operator come in, all of your historical precedent isn't lost.

Luke Bogus (09:54)
Yeah, that is absolutely an underrated part is like you coaching staff. It's like do we have a huddle subscription? When does that like we're like all that stuff is just

you have to figure out like what's your stack, you know, change different tech tools. We use this tool at the last thing. Let's bring it over here. And like figuring that all out when oftentimes you're getting hired five days before the portal opens for the winter portal. Like that's crazy. And I think, you know, hot off the press, we're recording this about 60 minutes after this happened, but we just saw the very first case of an institution or an organization, a front office in Stanford, Andrew Luck, let go of the head coach. And the press release said, Andrew Luck has decided to fire head coach, which is that is just

Ethan (10:17)
Yeah.

Yes.

Luke Bogus (10:33)
crazy, but it's very, very, very normal in the world of NFL, front offices to your point. There's this operational stack on top of whoever the coaching staff is to have some sort of, you know, stability across, you know, coaching changes. And maybe that leads into my question of just like, what would be your definition

of what a front office in college sports is in 12 months? I mean, I know it's chaotic right now. I know the hot thing right now is to hire GMs and that's all been happening. I'd be curious what maybe your definition of a general manager is slash should be. And then what your org structure ideally could be, should be for a potential front office for that organizational structure at the college level.

Ethan (10:57)
Sure.

Yeah, let's just talk about what it actually is before we talk about what it should be because what it is currently is 10 different things. Everybody has their own definition. Like you talk about the Stanford example, right? That's fascinating. He's essentially the athletic director, right? And, I have a big theory that, you know, kind of doing this right in what 80s need to do to support GMs is kind of be partners, you know, step in step

and because you can't do your job as GM, we talk about the importance of the operational and the administrative piece, Rev-Share, contract structure. Those are all AD level required access. And the GMs have those answers to the test. They gotta align, right? I think in today's world, with the very definitions, you're not gonna have the same outcomes. One GM is gonna go somewhere and be doing X, Y, and Z, and then he's gonna go to another school and have the same title and be doing A and B.

And I mean, look at what's happening right now at say USC. That's a shotgun wedding arranged by the AD between a head coach and a GM that have never worked together. And like, I don't, couldn't tell you what that GM is doing. Is he just functioning as a DPP like I did for Chip? don't know. And like supporting Lincoln's vision. Is he making decisions on players? I can't tell you that. But it's interesting, right? When you have a dual reporting system, like that's a failed model manifold.

If we're emulating the National Football League, there's only one team in the entire NFL that doesn't have head coach, GM in terms of all aligned reporting to an owner and has it fractional in that team not to point fingers, it's not successful. And then you have another team where there's a, and I'll name this team cause I'm not going to put too much, but the Atlanta Falcons, where you have an owner president

who's a non-operator but has authority but not responsibility, who has hired a GM and a head coach. And so that's Rich McKay, who obviously is a very renowned executive. And he has no day-to-day operational involvement or responsibility, but he has authority over those two people. That's kind of the AD model, right? So you have an AD over top, a head coach and a GM in college. If that team doesn't win, the AD is not gonna probably get fired directly. Now, indirectly over time, he's probably gonna be held responsible by the

the owner, their chancellor, president. But if they lose a game, no one's looking to him. And that's not really an adopted model in the NFL either. So it's funny, all these teams in college are trying to adopt the NFL, but they're not actually adopting the NFL. They're adopting a model of college that fits their ecosystem and trying to professionalize it with titles.

Luke Bogus (13:32)
Yes, yeah, the...

Ethan (13:33)
All of that

to say, that's what it is. What should it be? So what it should be to me as someone that isn't, a personnel man and a scout, like if you look at what's successful in the NFL, like Ron Wolf in the free agency era in the NFL redefined what a general manager is to me. He came in, he was the CEO of the organization, but his bread and butter was who is on the field. Talent, personnel, evaluation, and valuation in support of that. Right? So like

Hey, I'm going go trade for Brett Favre. That's the move I'm making. Hey, I'm going to go sign Reggie White. Here is what he's worth based on my opinion, based on our salary cap. Those two moves helped win them a Super Bowl, right? So that's what a general manager is to me at its core in terms of what that title is. How does that apply in football? Well, I think it's a lot of the AD Venn diagram and it's a lot of the head coach Venn diagram currently. And it's really taking to me the most successful version of this will be taking the really powerful personnel people you have in college,

the people at Oregon, the people at Ohio State that have been there for a long time and had success and give them access to that Venn diagram of two people that don't really want to do those parts of their job anymore because it's too much and delegating it and championing that person and aligning the organization. And I think in the future, Luke, like this really done right, you see a really successful GM or DPP hired in an Andrew Luck type capacity to oversee the football arm

and they bring a coordinator that they have worked with at another school for many years to come be the head coach underneath them. And that's a powerful working relationship because when you really study what works in the NFL, like if you go in the last 20 Super Bowls, eight of them are going to be people and pairings that had previous work experience. The shotgun wedding thing does not work in the NFL. There's only two examples in the last 20 years, the Rams with McVeigh and Les Snead

and the Seahawks with Pete Carroll and John Schneider, where a Super Bowl has been won with a shotgun wedding duo. And if you look at the hires, it's about a third of the hires. So you have a tenth of the Super Bowls and a third of the hires. That's not really performing. You look at Andy Reed and Brett Veach. Andy hired Brett as an intern and worked with them for 16 years before he was this GM. Bill Belichick and all of his executives over the years. Let's inverse it.

The Buccaneers, right? Jason Light, excuse me, sorry, I'm drawing a name, Light, went and hired, you gotta edit that part out. I know what I'm talking about. Went and hired Bruce Arians, who he'd worked with for many years as his head coach. And he was out and retired and they went and won the Super Bowl. Howie Roseman went and hired two coordinators after the Chip Kelly era that he had worked with Andy Reid and Doug Peterson

and Nick Sirianni. So they were aligned and they'd work together. I think that's the vision of what works in the NFL. We're really focused on what sounds like the NFL right now in college, not what is actually working in the NFL.

Luke Bogus (16:11)
Yeah, that's a wonderful quote there. And I couldn't agree more in the sense that you have two ends of the spectrum from what I see and on our end is you take one person in the current pre-existing personnel department and you're like, congrats, you got double the pay salary, you're now called the GM, problem solved, we're good guys. That doesn't work. And you have the other end of the spectrum, is like, front office sounds really cool, so let's just make up seven titles and hire seven people and then

Ethan (16:35)
Ugh.

Luke Bogus (16:35)
also

problem solved. And so it's like, there's gotta be something in the middle. And I like that quote of everyone talks about wanting to be like the pros and professionalizing, but you know, just there's a difference between acting like it or pretending to act like it. And we're seeing a lot of the life.

Ethan (16:46)
No question.

Luke Bogus (16:47)
Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting too, cause like, this is all just, we've talked about in the scope of college football, but we had Mitt Winter on the podcast a couple episodes ago and he's like, go up one level to the athletic department. It's like running an MLB team, an NFL team, an NBA team, a WNBA team, all within one. And so that's all the complexity and problems for college football, which again, of course is the big moneymaker here. It's the big financial driver, but like,

Not only you talking about this complexity times 5 for 5 to 7 revenue sharing sports per school, probably, but we also have this like weird imbalance problem where in the pros, mean, yes, you have a salary cap and you have a salary cap in college, but it's not like the NFL, NBA, MLB and WNBA all have a billion dollars a share and then one owner can figure out how they split it up between all their different franchises. That's basically what we're doing here at the college. And so just wanted you to pontificate on maybe some of the issues,

competitive imbalances, some of the stuff that could come from that slash what are you seeing in the field? I'm from talking to a lot of ADs who are having to think about how do they split up Rev-Share? How do they build that front office? Do they over invest or under invest in certain sports? What are the ROI? Like these are the questions that ADs and folks are having every day and you're in the thick of it. So I'd love to kind of hear what you're hearing.

Ethan (17:59)
Yeah, I think there's several ways this conversation can go. And I think I might get off my train of thought here. So reel me back in if I go too deep. But I think the first one, Luke, is at the end of the day, this is a really powerful opportunity for all the schools in the middle, right? Because this is not a sport with great competitive equity. College football, even college basketball, there's what?

I think three current sitting head coaches in one national title in football and six in basketball or five in basketball. That's really low, right? So like it's the same people winning and then they get out. There for various reasons. I think this is a really powerful opportunity to change the entertainment value of the offering, which is good for business. Now it has to be done right and enacted correctly, but like how powerful would it be?

If Kansas State won a national championship in three years or in 10 years, that would reinvigorate the sport a little bit. Instead of the same 3 or 4 teams winning. And I just threw Kansas State out as a random example, know, Missouri, Syracuse. Wow. Like that would be so compelling, right? And I think we're in a place where we can do that and with what's coming legislatively and that's really powerful.

It allows you as an operator, if you're an AD, you're a head coach, you control your outcomes now instead of being limited by them. Now, is there going to be imbalances? Yeah, that happens in the NFL, right? Like you look at the Rams and the Cowboys, they can spend cash over cap that nobody else can in free agency and stack their books. But those are marginal and their advantages, don't get me wrong, but their marginal advantages versus when I was at UCLA, I felt like I was bringing a squirt gun to a firestorm, right? Like we had an NIL budget

compared to people we were competing against, was 1/10th or 1/15th of the size. And for us to compete, and we're expected to beat those teams on the field in conference play. And that's not gonna happen anymore, where instead of that ratio, it's gonna be maybe, all right, hey, this school is a full Rev-Share school, and this year, their rival is also a full Rev-Share school, and they have 10 more million in NIL. Okay, well, the Rev-Share number is so high

that really waters down the impact of that extra money. And that's really great, I think. And it's a win for the donors too, because now you don't have to pay just to be competitive. Your money actually does move the needle. So I think it's kind of a win-win for all constituents. And there's more money in it for players, so that's a win too. And players deserve to get paid like 100%. They are working in this thing and it's bearing revenue. So that's a no-brainer.

So I think that's one, it's really great opportunity. And that's why having these conversations about organizational philosophy are so vital because there's so much meat on the bone if it's done right. The Green Bay Packers were a failing NFL franchise before they hired Ron Wolf. They were one of the worst teams in the league. And they completely changed their destiny by aligning their organization with a good operator who made great decisions and they went and won. That opportunity is there now or potentially there. It's not April 7th yet.

The second part, you just talked about the, we're running an MLB team. We're running a woman's basketball team. Absolutely. You do need to know what business you're in. The only profitable sport in college sports is football. College basketball is not profitable. If you look at the public schools and of course it's profitable, like to run the tournament, that's a billion dollar tournament. But for the individual schools offering men's basketball, if you take out North Carolina,

who made 20 million in revenue or over revenue in profit last year in average NCAA public institution is losing 50 grand on basketball if you take out North Carolina. If you put North Carolina back in, they're a little bit over the profit, but most schools are not making money on men's basketball. For football, you'd have to take out the top 21 programs for that to happen, right? So there's a lot more meat on that bone there in football. So you've got to know that's where you're in.

That's your business and you need to orient that. Prosperity in football is prosperity best practice in the athletic department to support those others. Like nobody wants other sports going away. I want to be very clear on that. I certainly don't. I do think you need to be financially responsible within those other sports in order to ensure their survival and you need prosperity in football to support that as well. I think ADs that defied their sports in their efforts in

ways that don't align to that vision, you're probably going to be in trouble. And that's a stark reality. And I think most ADs are doing a good job putting football first. That's a common platitude. But I do think hires need to start matching that. If you look at the AD hires throughout collegiate sports, not many of them have football first backgrounds. Some do, and some are really good. And there's great ADs that don't have football first backgrounds. I do think that's going to probably be a requirement going forward.

Because how are you supposed to partner with a GM and give them everything they need and partner with a head coach and give them everything they need if you don't institutionally align with that and you don't see the value? And I almost think there's a world where this becomes a hybrid position. Like the GM and the AD are really functioning the same role in a professional organization. You look at it, goes owner, GM, head coach. Well, what is it in college? Chancellor, AD, head coach,

the GM Venn diagram of where does that really fit? Like, ADs may become presidents where they're seeing more of the business operation of the athletic department rather than the on-field product, right? Which that's what they do currently and that role doesn't really exist. It's kind of really occupied by head coaches, but it needs to exist because it's becoming too big of an enterprise for one person to fully manage and own. And it's different duties, Like, Luke,

you might be really good at saying, hey, I'm going to build a great budget and I'm going to build a great roster. But I also need you to get in front of a room of 20-year-old men and motivate them to go out and kill the other team. that's different skill sets. So I think we'll get there. keeping all that in mind is really important in this era. I had a third point, but I can't even remember what it was going to be because I went on so long about those other two.

Luke Bogus (23:37)
No, I mean, what I love and what I'm picking out of that is, like, I just like the words that you're using around enterprise, business, revenue, return, prosperity, and things that, like, this has been a business for years, and I think, you know, not that the folks in the athletic department aren't thinking about the enterprise of an athletic department like a business, but I think it is, something we talk about all the time, is like, July 1, like that.

Like there's no more hiding it. We don't have to pretend anymore that this isn't a business. Like it is, we're paying our talent and to pay our talent we need to have a great P&L. We need to think about our margins. We're going to do things that grow our margins and grow our top line. Like this like business mindset where the AD becomes a CEO and you start to have this C-suite executives. And again, we see that today with AD and deputy ADs, but to your point, I think the backgrounds of folks that fill these positions are going to matter, especially as the jack of all trades

kind of needs to maybe go away and to where to your point, like it's really a diamond in the rough to find somebody to motivate the crew to kill the team and also balance the PNL. Like those intentionally might be two different people. And again, you might have two titles on your staff today that technically do both of those things, but other people fitting in those titles today actually set up for success post 2025. And the house is going to be really interesting to see. you know, obviously it's no secret that the 33rd Team is in the thick of helping, helping teams think about this kind of stuff.

Ethan (24:56)
Absolutely. Yeah. We sit around, we fly to colleges and have these same conversations every day in offices. So it's, it's fun stuff and it's really exciting. Right. mean, I think that's the language that most of the people we meet with have is there, you know, there's some trepidation, but there's some excitement, like, Hey, there's really an opportunity to get this right.

Luke Bogus (25:14)
Yeah, for sure. Well, Ethan, I know you're a busy guy and probably having to talk to another school here pretty soon, but appreciate you coming on the podcast and thanks for all the insight. Really, really enjoyed the conversation and we'll catch up again soon.

Ethan (25:25)
Absolutely, Luke. Thank you.

Luke Bogus (25:27)
All right, appreciate it.

‍