A CMU Playbook for the NFL Draft
How Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences is shaping the future of sports analytics and decision making
Abby Simmons
- Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences
- Email abbysimmons@cmu.edu
- Phone 412-268-6094
Experts from Carnegie Mellon University’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences are applying their strengths in statistics and data science, decision science and neuroscience to help professionals make better draft picks and to help the public understand the reasoning behind them.
Navigating Football’s Data Blitz
Did you know that every tenth of a second, chips embedded in NFL players’ uniforms record information about each player’s speed, direction of movement, and position on the football field?
Ron Yurko knows. And he’s turning data like this into insight in his role as director of the Carnegie Mellon Sports Analytics Center (CMSAC).
Yurko is an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Statistics & Data Science. His work at CMSAC is helping the general public engage with the data behind the draft and helping CMU students launch sports analytics careers after graduation.
Watch Yurko present CMSAC research to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, CMU President Farnam Jahanian, Statistics & Data Science Department Head Rebecca Nugent, and members of the media at Powering the Future of Sport: A Draft Week Showcase at CMU's Robotics Innovation Center on April 22.
Rebecca Nugent, head of the Department of Statistics & Data Science and Fienberg Professor of Statistics & Data Science, sees an incredibly bright future for researchers and educators in sports analytics.
“There have always been researchers and students interested in sports analytics, but now that the technology has advanced to provide unprecedented access to data in almost all sports, the pace and quality of work has rapidly accelerated,” said Nugent. “And there’s no better place to do this type of work than at CMU.”
Integrating AI into the Draft
CMSAC teamed up with the NFL for research on the historical value of a pick in the NFL Draft, and now fans can engage with that research using the NFL IQ AI chatbot, asking simple questions like “What’s the chance of getting a superstar player at the end of the first round?” or more specific questions about whether or not a team should trade back in the draft.
Yurko and statistics Ph.D. student Quang Nguyen have also created an NFL Draft Value Chart displaying information about which teams have been the “best and worst at drafting players” between 2011 and 2023.
Turning a Passion into a Career
The Department of Statistics and Data Science has given Carnegie Mellon alumni the tools and inspiration to pursue careers in sports analytics after graduation.
“It’s amazing to watch CMU students turn their passions into careers that help shape the future of professional football,” Yurko said.
Learn more from alumni Shravan Ramamurthy, now with the San Francisco 49ers, and Toby Junker, now with the Washington Commanders, as well as Ph.D. student Meg Ellingwood, who will be working with sports technology company Teamworks after her graduation in May.
CMSAC in the News
- NFL Football Operations (April 24, 2026): Introducing the NFL Draft Tier Chart
- WTAE-TV Pittsburgh (April 23, 2026): CMU's 'Future of Sport' showcases AI and analytics to NFL executives
- KDKA/CBS Pittsburgh affiliate (April 23, 2026): CMU promotes AI and robotics in draft week showcase
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (April 22, 2026): Pittsburgh enlists Mark Cuban and Jerome Bettis to showcase its tech brawn during NFL Draft
- KDKA/CBS Pittsburgh affiliate (April 13, 2026): Carnegie Mellon analytics helping shape NFL draft decisions
- April 8, 2026: Sports Generate More Data Than Ever. CMU’s Sports Analytics Center Asks What It Means
- Sept. 11, 2025: Watt vs. Garrett? Metcalf vs. Pickens? Quang Nguyen Uses Next Gen Stats to Evaluate Player Performance
- The Washington Post (March 4, 2025): From NFL to chess, an existential question: Can all games be solved?
An Education You Can Bet On
When online sports betting was launched in Pennsylvania in 2019, it seemed like a harmless way to earn extra money to many. But with 96% of online bettors losing more than they make, and the high potential for gambling addiction — especially in young people, whose brains are still developing — Ron Yurko and Linda Moya, Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, say it isn’t as harmless as it seems.
In spring 2026, Yurko and Moya launched the Grand Challenge Seminar, “Sports Betting, Highs and Lows: Your Brain on Stats.” The course explores probability, cognitive biases, addiction and the business behind American sportsbooks.
Yurko says the class is a way to “vaccinate” students against the high-risk inherent in sports betting.
Moya notes the risk of addiction is particularly difficult to break in college students’ adolescent brains.
“Their brain is still developing. They’re particularly vulnerable as adolescents,” she said. “We have these biases. You need to not only be aware of them, but keep checking yourself on them, and avoid the possibility that you could become addicted.”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (April 14, 2026): What are the odds? CMU sports betting class explores statistical, cognitive sides of gambling
Using Decision Science & Statistics to Understand the Loser's Curse
On Wednesday, April 22, Dietrich College's Department of Social and Decision Sciences partnered with the
Department of Statistics & Data Science to host the annual Hilliard Family Speaker Series on Behavioral Economics.
This year's talk, titled "Human Behavior and Analytics in the NFL Draft: Has the Loser's Curse Been Broken?" featured Cade Massey, practice professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, faculty director of Wharton People Lab and co-faculty director of the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative. Massey discussed an update to his 20-year-old research into the ways NFL teams have systematically over-valued top picks in the annual college draft.
Is it possible that something so consequential to teams and watched so closely by fans could be wrong? Is it really true? Perhaps that earlier analysis was flawed because the statistics available at the time were too crude to capture player value. Or maybe the finding was true then, but teams have learned since to value picks more accurately. Massey and co-author Richard H. Thaler investigated over 20 NFL drafts to ask whether, when, and where teams have improved. They found progress in some areas but persistent problems in many others. Overall, the central goal – identifying which prospects will actually perform best – remains as elusive as ever.
Following the lecture, Ron Yurko led a panel discussion with Massey, Karim Kassam, vice president of intelligence at Teamworks, and Sam Ventura, vice president of hockey strategy and research for the Buffalo Sabres.
Touchdown: The Science Behind High-Stakes Decisions of the NFL Draft
The NFL draft is a fast-moving, high-stakes event. Decisions made on the day can shape a team’s prospects for years to come, and with millions of dollars on the line, the financial stakes are high as well.
Steven M. Chase, a professor at the Neuroscience Institute and Department of Biomedical Engineering, studies what happens when people choke under pressure and how our brains prepare for action.
“Most of what I study has to do with these moments in time when you're about to perform an action, and you know what the outcome might be if you're successful. So the draft is fun to watch because the stakes are so high for these teams,” he said.
Cleotilde (Coty) Gonzalez, professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, studies how people make decisions in complex environments.
“Under time pressure, seasoned experts are better able to identify which details matter most and retrieve relevant information quickly,” she said.
Take a deeper look Inside the High-Stakes Decisions of the NFL Draft.