First, tell me a bit about your “day job.”

I worked in communications and PR for higher ed – as a sports information director when I got started. In 2011 I transitioned and worked at Waynesboro then Westminster College, then to Slippery Rock where I am now. Now I work mostly on the web content and the alumni magazine.

After I worked in the sports information director role, I wanted to keep working on some of the athletics stuff, so I kept working as a Steelers’ statistician. There’s nothing like doing that, especially if you’re working a 9-5 job as well.

You’re also an accomplished freelance writer on sports and education issues. What do you enjoy writing about?

I like to blend in storytelling – sharing stories. Especially my work now at Slippery Rock, sharing the stories of alumni and students and the transformational experiences they’ve had. Relating those memorable stories is different from the statistician work I do. The storytelling lets me be creative.

I also freelance for higheredjobs.com. It’s a different approach – I give advice for people on how to use research in their job search.

How did you get started as a game-day statistician?

Waynesburg had a relationship when I was there with the Herald-Standard. I did an internship there and met Jim Downey who worked there and got to know him. He was also the Chief Statistician for the Steelers – he’s been there since 1982  – he goes back a long way!

Well, he knew that I did the football stats work for Waynesburg and asked if I wanted to fill in for Steelers games to replace someone if they happened to be unable to do it that day for some reason.

My first game was in 2001 – that was the first year they opened up Heinz Field. It happened to be the Ravens-Steelers playoff game. The next year that person I filled in for didn’t come back, so I became the full-time spotter there at first, then I started doing the data entry. There are two people who do the data entry on a laptop on game days. I’ve been hanging on to the job since – not many people let these jobs go once they get them.

What is the process like for the work you do on game days?

The NFL has a proprietary software – Game Statistics and Information Systems – GSIS. We affectionately call it Jesus. We key in the events of every play during the game, and the NFL’s New York office is assigned a person to the game as well and they watch the game and follow our data work to make sure we’re getting things correct. There’s another person who handwrites everything as well just to be safe.

There are a total of six people on the crew. One each for offensive and defensive calls – both on laptops doing data entry. We’re basically like court stenographers. We also have an auditor who communicates with the folks in New York to work on any corrections that we need to make and to make sure it’s all polished. She also helps key in tackles data too.

I have a spotter who helps me as well to ensure I’m staying live and keeping up with the play. And there’s one person who looks at the plays in case we need to make changes – every play is numbered, so they may go back and look at play 1,601 to confirm a certain player made a tackle.

It all goes very fast. You sit next to the media box and the coaches so you’re close to all of the action. Sometimes after the game I have to go back and think about what the score of the game was since we’re focusing so much on each play like a problem that needs to be solved.

How do teams use the data and who sees it?

20 years ago it was mostly for the media to use – we’d send them the play-by-play for them to use. Now, with so many partners that use the data – especially with legalized gambling and fantasy football – the data has become a huge asset.

Do players or coaches ever lobby you to change the numbers?

It goes straight to the NFL – we don’t interact with players or coaches. A team may have some feedback and work through the NFL to question a sack, for example. A lot is subjective. The most scrutinized thing are sacks because there is often so much riding on those numbers with player bonuses and incentives.

I was just going to ask that. With incentive pay and bonuses often tied to stats, how important and how much pressure do you get as you input and audit stats?

We used to work for the teams and get paid by them directly. As of last year we work directly for the NFL – in large part because of the importance of legalized gambling and needing to ensure everything looks pristine.

We send all the data to New York and they audit that and then meet with the Elias Sports Bureau on Tuesdays to confirm the data.  That’s why you may see changes in fantasy football statistic numbers coming out later in the week after those meetings. We don’t get any feedback from coaches but we do get weekly, I guess you can call them report cards, from the NFL showing us how many of our stats were changed during and after the game.

What would surprise people most about the job?

I think how subjective the tackle numbers are – especially with assisted tackles. 25% of tackles are usually assisted tackles. But for fantasy football leagues that value tackles, this could be helpful to know. You can see how different team stat crews often give different percentages for tackles on average, so knowing which team’s crew gives more could give you an edge I guess!

Now that we are working directly for the NFL, those variances will be less than last year. The NFL is wisely recognizing what an asset the data is – with legalized gambling now, the data has to be seen as pristine.

Also, I think people would be surprised at how much data we accumulate each play. When you see a pause in the action for a commercial or clock error – we love those. It helps us get caught up in case we need to make any adjustments. Just the speed in which we have to key in all that data – especially if there’s a hurry-up offense – staying live with it all is hard.

What data do you key in for each play?

Just me alone, I handle the offensive side. On pass plays we key in whether it’s a shotgun, under center, no huddle, formation, the passer, the intended target, the yard line the ball was thrown to, the yard line the play ends on and the direction of the play. The system automatically calculates yards after the catch if there are any. On run plays the runner, formation, direction of the run, end yard line… and that’s just me.

Any funny/memorable experiences you can share?

My first game was memorable. That was the game they gave Bettis a painkiller injection before the game that went wrong and Amos Zereoue ended up starting.

In 2005 too – we played the Patriots and in the game there was a clock operator error. The Patriots got 52 extra seconds in the first half and ended up scoring. Now we have a time stamp on every play – the system captures time of day and game clock time for each play. So sometimes we have to fudge the numbers to line them up right if something doesn’t match up. Our software gives us error messages when the time-stamped play doesn’t show a regression in game time from one play to the next, and sometimes we have to adjust the game-clock time if it doesn’t count down from one play to the next.

That play gave us an increase of time after a play of 52 seconds, instead of a regression, due to the error. I was worried – I called up Jim and told him I was worried that fans were going to later think we cheated for the Patriots and that they were going to think we were letting the Patriots get away with something.

The NFL ended up acknowledging the clock operator error though and that we were not at fault. But I was so worried when this was brought to my attention after the game!

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