At a recent practice of the University of Toledo, home of the women鈥檚 volleyball team, the Rockets, players in white, midnight blue and gold uniforms took turns spiking and bumping volleyballs speeding overhead.
Standing against the wall with her right foot in an athletic boot due to an injury was junior team member Brooke Naniseni from Oahu, Hawaii. She says she doesn鈥檛 use AI programs like Chat GPT as much as her friends do, but that they could be helpful in web searches for classes.
"If you're like really stuck on something, if (you) don't have a peer to talk to it's a good source to use," she said.
She said that extended to her sport, too.
"I know we use it to come up with some competitions on our team," said Naniseni.
For example, the team uses the sports AI tool Hudl to capture video and analyze data of how players are performing.
Team analytics and performance
Brian Wright is the women鈥檚 volleyball coach at the University of Toledo. He said Hudl has changed how he coaches.
"We're filming practice and within an hour it's going to break down every ball that was touched in this whole practice," he said. "It figures out who touched the ball, where they were, how good that touch was, what kind of touch."
Coach Wright is happy that the technology saves him time and energy to figure out how his team is performing. But AI is also playing a part in who is added to the roster in the first place, by searching the Internet for players鈥� stats and their standing on previous teams.
"(It's) just massively revolutionary in terms of what we could do and how fast we could siphon through all that stuff," Wright said.
Getting everyone on-board
There's another Bryan at the University of Toledo working on the AI effort: Bryan D. Blair, the school's athletic director. He's led a push to use AI for all UT athletic teams.
He said the department鈥檚 move toward AI began with the simple question of how to work smarter.
"We鈥檙e understaffed relative to our dreams and ambitions," said Blair. "How can we be more efficient with our time?"
He said early on, members in the department were hesitant. Because of that, the athletic department in Copilot and ChatGPT for its entire athletics staff, including coaches and administration 鈥� which helped staff get to a basic comfort level.
Despite fears about automation replacing jobs, Blair said there haven't been positions cut. But as AI becomes more embedded in daily operations, Blair said there are still concerns.
"Is it the right data and the right output from the AI platform?" said Blair. "Is it trustworthy? And how much additional fact checking or second guessing do you need to do?"
AI in pro sports
The interest in AI extends to local professional sports teams, too 鈥� including the Cleveland Browns. Brandon Covert is the Vice President of Technology for the Haslam Sports Group, owners of the Browns.
"There鈥檚 a lot of different ways we鈥檝e been looking at AI," said Covert.
The team is frequently ranked at or near the top of the league in the
Covert said after forming an AI steering committee about nine months ago, the Browns found early success with fan feedback. After every game, the organization collects huge volumes of open-ended text comments.
"Large language models are great at taking all of that, synthesizing it, and telling us what our fans are actually saying," said Covert.
For example, fans reported technical challenges using a ticketing and concessions program. AI helped find and lay out the issues for staff to tackle.
But he said there are still concerns about accuracy. AI is not used on its own to make decisions for the team.
"Can a computer tell us when a quarterback was sacked, or where he was looking, or if a receiver was open?" said Covert. "It's not quite to the point where it can identify those things as accurately as we would need it to be identified."
That's a theme echoed broadly among many professional and collegiate teams: Technology supports decisions, but doesn鈥檛 make them 鈥� yet.
