Weller Ross

I recently completed my graduate degree at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, where I earned a M.A. in applied health sciences with an emphasis in sport analytics. I graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Tennessee with a B.S. in sport management and minors in statistics and business administration. My courses in sport management, statistics and business administration have prepared me well for most any opportunity in the world of sport.

Last year I worked in the Buffalo Bills’ Department of Football Analytics, where I was put in charge of projects implementating of advanced statistical models to examine a wide variety of football-related topics, including game plans, strategy, in-game decision-making, and player evaluation. The experience provided me with invaluable knowledge and insight into how a professional sports team operates. I was also able to improve my skill set through this role as I utilized SQL, R, and Python to manage large datasets and conduct in-depth statistical analyses.

As part of the degree requirements for my graduate program, I completed a master’s thesis which is titled, An Examination of Decision-Making Biases on Fourth Down in the National Football League. My research uses a Bayesian approach and introduces a new methodology to directly test for a psychological bias called representativeness. The findings reveal that the top five teams in terms of managing this bias account for nine of the 12 Super Bowl winners from the time span of my dataset. The results also show that when a coach makes the optimal decision on more than half of the fourth downs his team faces in a single game, his team wins 67.2% of those games.

My experiences have confirmed my desire to work in the sport industry, and I am confident that I have the ability to be a valuable asset to any organization that hires me. I am a team player who enjoys problem solving and I believe that I can greatly contribute to the field of sport analytics.