In a sports industry worth billions of dollars, teams are constantly searching for an edge.
Sometimes that edge comes from a star player. Increasingly, it comes from something else entirely.
Data.
From the NFL to Major League Baseball, front offices are investing heavily in analytics to evaluate players, shape strategy and gain even the smallest competitive advantage. The people who can uncover those insights are in high demand.
At Rice University, students are learning how to do exactly that, and they are proving they can compete at the highest level.
Senior Lucca Ferraz is one of them.
Ferraz recently won the 2026 NFL Big Data Bowl, one of the league’s premier analytics competitions, after entering this year’s contest solo and developing a model that offers a new way to evaluate pass defense. His work was presented in front of NFL decision-makers during combine week, a stage where teams identify not only talent on the field but also talent behind the scenes.
“It’s definitely a dream come true,” Ferraz said. “If you told me even three years ago that I’d be sitting here today as a back-to-back finalist, a champion, I would have thought you were crazy.”
His win reflects something larger than a single competition.
It points to the rapid rise of Rice’s sport analytics program, a relatively new and still rare undergraduate major that is quickly becoming a pipeline into professional sports.
“It’s been honestly crazy to see the growth for analytics at Rice,” Ferraz said. “My freshman year, I think it was the first year they started offering it as a standalone major.”
That growth mirrors a broader shift across sports. Front offices today are built as much around data scientists as they are around scouts and coaches. The goal is simple. Find an edge.
At Rice, students are trained to think that way from Day 1.
“Sport analytics is fundamentally about winning in a way that statistics is not,” said Scott Powers, assistant professor of sport management. “In sport analytics, you’re always trying to win more games.”
Powers brings that perspective from the professional level, and it shapes how the program is taught. Students are not just building models. They are working through the same types of problems teams face and learning how to apply their findings in competitive environments.
“Sport analytics is competitive,” Powers said. “You’re trying to find ways to exploit small edges and make better decisions than other teams.”
That approach reflects how the field operates at the highest level. Teams are not just looking for people who understand data. They are looking for people who can apply it.
For Ferraz, that preparation becomes obvious the moment he steps outside the classroom.
“When I’ve been applying to internships or jobs, I’ll get a take-home assessment,” he said. “I’ve looked at it and been like, this is really similar to one of the homeworks I’ve done in class.”
That familiarity creates something just as important as technical skill.
Confidence.
Students are not walking into interviews hoping they are ready. They already know they are.
For Ferraz, that confidence carried into this year’s Big Data Bowl. His project focused on one of football’s most dynamic moments, the deep pass, and explored how defenders respond in real time.
“Anyone who’s watched football knows that the downfield pass is one of the most exciting plays in the game,” he said. “I wanted to measure how the defender can react to these plays.”
Instead of only analyzing what happened, his model simulates how other defenders might have responded in the same situation, creating a new framework for evaluating pass coverage.
Out of hundreds of submissions, Ferraz reached the finals for the second consecutive year and this time finished on top.
“I ended up with something that I’m really proud of,” he said.
That kind of success is becoming a pattern.
In addition to Ferraz’s victory, a team of Rice students — Kyle Leung, Rayaan Damani and Rahul Lal — won the undergraduate division of the NFL Players Association Data Analytics Case Competition, earning a $15,000 prize.
The competition challenges students to analyze real-world issues facing NFL players, including workload, performance and injury risk, and present their findings to NFLPA leadership.
“We had a strong foundation in data analysis and building models, and we were able to present our work and get critical feedback throughout the process,” Leung said.
“Rice’s sport analytics major has pushed us to build projects working with data that many teams use,” Damani said. “Having those skills gave us an advantage.”
That momentum extends beyond football.
A team of Rice students from the Rice Sport Analytics Team (RSAT) was selected as an overall winner of the Diamond Dollars Case Competition at the 2026 SABR Analytics Conference, a national competition where students present solutions to real baseball operations challenges in front of MLBMajor League Baseball executives. The winning team — Mark Cohen, Brady Detwiler, Brendan Lloyd, Andersen Pickard and Saylor Robinson — stood out for their analysis and strategic recommendations. A second RSAT team featuring Jacob Andreini, Chad Federico, Ethan Larimore, Dante Maurice and Kenneth Soh was also recognized at the conference, continuing a strong stretch of success for Rice students across major analytics competitions this spring.
Those outcomes are translating into real opportunities.
Rice graduate Jonah Lubin ’25, a 2025 Big Data Bowl semifinalist, now works full time with the Las Vegas Raiders as a football data science assistant, focusing on player evaluation.
Together, those experiences point to something bigger than individual achievement. Rice students are entering one of the most competitive and rapidly growing areas in sports and standing out.
“When we walk into these kinds of things, we don’t feel intimidated,” Ferraz said. “We feel like we belong and that we’re prepared.”
That confidence reflects how much the industry has changed and how quickly Rice has positioned itself within it.
Analytics is no longer a niche in sports. It is central to how teams evaluate players, build strategies and pursue championships.
At Rice, students are not just learning about that shift. They are stepping into it early, prepared and already ahead of the curve.
For Ferraz, who came to Rice looking for a way to combine his strengths in math with his passion for sports, the timing has come together at exactly the right moment.
“I’ve always loved sports,” he said. “Being able to get here and see all the resources they’ve put into this, it’s been perfect timing for me.”