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Did Mississippi State figure out a way to actually make AI useful in college sports?

AI probably can't recruit an athlete or write a great gameplan...yet. But perhaps it can help sell tickets?

Good morning, and thanks for your continued support of Extra Points.

I admit, I’m a little bit of a skeptic about AI.

Not because I don’t think the technology can’t have meaningful consumer or business uses. I used some ChatGPT-like tools when making early prototypes of Athletic Director Simulator, and we’ve used some AI tools in building Extra Points Library and other very basic software experiments. And I’m aware that there are other promising use cases elsewhere.

But whew, buddy, there is also a lot of garbage. LLM tools have been terrible for any sort of content writing or research that requires any level of deep subject knowledge or specificity, the bulk of commonly used AI art is artificial and sloppy, and the level of hype substantially outpaces any actually useful tools for regular people. Got a company that doesn’t make anything useful? Slap AI in that type and presto, you’re in line for a new seed round.

So much of the newsletter ecosystem is propped up by phony baloney AI newsletters, brands whose tools only kinda work and breathless hype machines…so it’s usually easier for me to just ignore most of the pitches I get.

But recently, I did learn about an athletic department actually using an AI tool that appears to have done exactly what it was supposed to do. It won’t revolutionize a department or bring in hundreds of millions in new revenue or turn North Alabama into Alabama overnight.

But it may help sell some more tickets. Or, at least, it did at Mississippi State.

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