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Alum Kevin Clark ‘14 Part of Growing Sports Analytics Field

10/16/2022

Brophy Alum Kevin Clark ‘14 helped the Houston Texans defeat the Jacksonville Jaguars last week, pulling off an upset and helping the team get back into the win column. Clark is not a professional athlete who scored the winning touchdown or made the game-winning tackle. He is the Decision Science Lead for the Houston Texans.

What is that you ask?

Watch any sporting event on television today and you will hear the term analytics. Teams, coaches and evaluators across the sporting landscape use it daily to make decisions on play-calling, player potential and roster evaluations among other daily tasks.

Clark has used his love of sports and playing background at Brophy to find a niche in the growing sports analytics world.

When people hear sports analytics, most people think of the baseball movie Money Ball featuring Brad Pitt which detailed the analytics boom in the sport.

“Sports analytics can be misconstrued because of Money Ball where it is always glamorous,” said Clark while preparing for the Jaguars’ game. “It is not. You need to have a love for what you are doing to stick it out in the industry. I absolutely love it. We work on a lot of cool things here and it is fun to see the impact on the games.”

After Brophy, where he played football, was a member of NHS and Latin clubs, and a writer for the Literary Arts Magazine, Clark attended Arizona State University and received his BS in Computer Science with a minor in Economics.

He had seen Money Ball and read the book, but baseball was not his sport. He worked for Intel during the last year of his undergraduate studies and prepared to graduate. Then he read a book about hockey analytics called Stat Shot and realized this new field existed outside of baseball.

He desperately wanted to work in sports and cold-called and emailed everyone in the NHL with an analytics title or background. He did not get a single response for four months. Five months. Then, the Coyotes called six months later, and the rest is history.

He started in a research and development position and was open to any new responsibilities.

“Most analytics departments are quite small,” said Clark. “You have your one title, but you end up wearing many hats. I am happy to be adaptable. I did a lot of different things: software development, data engineering, and data science.”

The COVID effect on the sports landscape forced Clark to start looking for other opportunities outside of the Coyotes and the NHL, leading to a position with the Houston Texans.

He has had three positions within football operations with the team since 2020.

“In football analytics, you are never going to have the same day,” said Clark. “You are always trying to answer different problems. The best thing is you are working in the sport you love. I am a firm believer that if you love what you do you are not working.”

He looks back on his time playing for Brophy and still implies those lessons in his daily work.

“Having my playing background at Brophy has had a significant impact on my current job,” recalled Clark, who lists Kairos as his favorite Brophy memory. “The defensive coordinator at the time was Gary Galante. He was good at teaching us the foundations of defense and the technical side of coverages. It is stuff I still use and build off today when I do projects, using the schematic side of football you get from playing and coaching really helps me out.”

Clark interacts daily with the coaching staff and personnel departments while also holding weekly meetings with the position groups like the quarterbacks. He uses the latest decision science department software to do statistical modeling and anything numbers related in evaluation.

“We are just another tool in the tool bag to make better decisions,” said Clark. “We all want to win together.”

Clark lives in Houston with his fiancé Kelly Huntley. He is one of three Brophy graduates working in the NFL in the analytics and scouting field. Cade Knox ‘16 is in his first season as the Giants' offensive assistant/game manager. Fred Gammage III ‘12 is in his fourth season with the 49ers as a pro personnel scout.