What are actual ways an athletic department could be using AI?

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AL.com’s Michael Casagrande pulled off a legitimately difficult feat on Tuesday. He managed to get a coach to say something interesting during a college football media day event.

He reportedly asked LSU head coach Brian Kelly about AI in college football.

This is the first time I can recall a head coach of a major athletic program indicating that they are actively looking to incorporate AI into their program. I’ve talked about this with a few ADs, and while I know a few that are at least curious about the technology, I haven’t talked to anyone using it for anything other than occasionally producing AI-led game recaps for overworked Sports Information Departments.

Lots of media companies have experimented with using AI to create content. Outside of ones run by known idiots, most of those firms have scaled back their ambitions, once they realized that running AI-led content without heavy human editing often leads to embarrassing factual mistakes. I’ve experimented with ChatGPT tools with Extra Points, and beyond a few cheap throwaway gags that have been done to death on the internet, I haven’t found it particularly useful either.

It feels like at least half of the internet is full of breathless hype about how AI is going to change everything, replacing the hype merchants who tried to sell us all on Metaverse strategies, Web3, and SPACs. I’m not particularly interested in joining that chorus, especially since I think a lot of the hype isn’t grounded in reality.

But Kelly did get me thinking…are there other potential athletic department AI use cases here, ones that most athletic departments could execute?

I think there might be a few:

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