#216 How Data is Changing College Football | Danny Davis, CEO of Recon Sports
Description
Welcome to episode 216 of Sports Management Podcast.
Today's guest is Danny Davis, founder & CEO of Recon Sports - a platform helping college football teams use data and AI to build smarter rosters and develop elite athletes.
We spoke about:
- The use of athlete data in sports
- The risks of operating in college sports
- How military experience shaped his entrepreneurial mindset
- The mindset shift from Army officer to entrepreneur
- How he invested 10,000 hours to master his craft
And much more!
Time stamps:
00:01 Intro
00:26 What Recon Sports does - syncing athlete data
01:22 Internal vs external data and identifying future stars
02:40 The hundreds of metrics collected across programs
04:15 The original idea: from high school analytics to college innovation
05:43 First client discovery and go-to-market process
07:02 Biggest challenge - scaling himself and training others
09:03 AI, digital twins, and the next frontier of sports analytics
11:19 Why consolidating data is the foundation of AI success
12:01 The risks of operating in college sports
14:38 Expanding into aerospace and other verticals
18:27 How military experience shaped his entrepreneurial mindset
22:02 The mindset shift from Army officer to entrepreneur
26:57 How he invested 10,000 hours to master his craft
31:14 The value of mentorship and how to find great mentors
37:17 Overcoming rejection and separating vision from strategy
40:16 Advice for breaking into the sports industry
43:40 Outro
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