Introducing Two SB Nation Research And Analytics Interns

A couple of months ago, I announced that SB Nation was allowing me to hire an intern. In the end, the applicant pool was impressive enough (thank you so much for that) that they let me hire two. I'd like to introduce them now: Mike Nixon and Chris A. Brown.

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Mike Nixon

Mike is a former Arizona State linebacker, a former Los Angeles Dodgers farm hand, a former All-Academic Pac-10 performer, a former San Diego Charger, and a post-graduate scholarship winner. He is currently a grad student at New York University, and he recently took up blogging at a site called The Battered Fan. (He also sat down for an interview with SBN's House Of Sparky a few years ago.) One of the main purposes for this internship position was to deeply explore game charting and the analysis that comes with it. That isn't all Mike will be working on, but I can't wait to explore that with him.

Chris A. Brown

Chris is approaching his second year at Jacksonville State University, and his resume appealed to me in a completely different way: in many ways, he was me in high school. With little reward, he tracked and maintained statistics for his high school football, basketball and baseball teams. He served as a de facto sports information department for his high school, feeding the local beat writers his stats at halftime and after games. One of the many things the field of sports analytics requires is obsession with grunt work and activity many would find terribly boring. He has proven he can lose himself in the nitty gritty, and to say the least, I find that appealing.

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Over the coming months, we will be doing quite a bit of football game charting, attempting to build up the play-by-play database to include years before 2005, expanding the base of writing at Football Study Hall, and pursuing quite a few other projects as they arise. These positions were created with college football first in mind, but Mike and Chris might not be solely limited to this sport.

I am incredibly grateful to SBN for allowing me the opportunity to bring a couple more people aboard, I am thankful to everybody who applied, and I am excited to get started with Mike and Chris.