Five of the Falk College sport analytics students who worked for the United Football League this season attended the UFL’s championship game in St. Louis. From left to right, UFL Operations Manager and Syracuse University alum Bryan Kilmeade, Zach Seidel, Toby Halpern, Austin Ambler, Danny Baris, Nolan Bruton, UFL Senior Vice President of Technology Scott Harniman and UFL Vice President of Football Technology Brad Campbell.
When seven students from the Department of Sport Analytics in the David B. Falk College of Sport started working for the United Football League (UFL) this past winter, league officials explained the kind of data they had available and asked the students to pitch their ideas on how to use it.
One dataset tracked quarterback completion probability, and two students, Austin Ambler and Danny Baris, pitched a metric to quantify quarterback decision-making. They call it a “QB Decision Score,” and it determines if a quarterback made the right passing decision based on the predicted EPA (expected points added) of each receiver on the play.
The UFL officials overseeing the sport analytics students—Operations Manager Bryan Kilmeade, Senior Vice President of Technology Scott Harniman and Vice President of Football Technology Brad Campbell—wondered if such a model was possible, but gave Ambler and Baris the go-ahead to try.
“A week later they came back and gave us a first run-through, and we were like, wow, this is impressive,” Kilmeade says. “In our minds this was going to take the whole season. It took a week.”
Throughout the 2025 UFL season, which ran from March 28 through the championship game on June 14, the seven sport analytics majors—Ambler, Baris, Toby Halpern and Zach Seidel (who are all on schedule to graduate this December), Nolan Bruton ’26, Eleanor O’Connor ’27 and Johann Perera ’25—worked on several significant projects for the league.
In fact, many of their data analysis models were elevated to the teams and their coaches during the season, and they may eventually find their way to the NFL, which has a strong relationship with the UFL. The leagues often discuss rules innovation, technology and player development.
“This partnership (with the Falk College of Sport) has exceeded our expectations on the league side, and we’re looking forward to continuing it with as many students who want to do it,” Kilmeade says. “The students have impressed everybody we’ve gotten them in front of.”
Kilmeade ’18 was a sport management major in Falk College when the sport analytics program started in 2017. He earned a minor in sport analytics, where Department of Sport Analytics Chair Rodney Paul was one of his professors and current Director of Corporate Partnerships and External Engagement Francesco Riverso was his advisor.
He stayed connected with Paul and Riverso throughout his early professional career with the XFL and USFL, which merged to form the UFL. When he was with the XFL, he reached out to Falk College and its Football Analytics Club about data regarding kickoffs. The students in the club charted games and their analysis led to the new kickoff rule that was first used in the XFL and adopted by the NFL before the 2024 season.
From left to right, Falk College of Sport students Danny Baris, Toby Halpern, Zach Seidel, Nolan Bruton and Austin Ambler with St. Louis Battlehawks player Pita Taumoepenu, the UFL’s defensive player of the year this season.
At the UFL, the league has the same issue: Lots of data, but a small staff that can’t possibly get to it all. So, Kilmeade reached out to Paul and Riverso again and it was a natural fit as UFL President and CEO Russ Brandon is a member of the Falk College of Sport Advisory Board, and former Syracuse University football star Daryl Johnston is the UFL’s executive vice president of football operations.
The partnership between the UFL and the Sport Analytics program marked the first time an American college or university has worked with the nation’s premier spring football league.
Paul says the experience the students gained from working with the UFL was “impossible to replicate in the classroom” as the league and students held regular meetings to discuss their projects, shared findings through visualization (charts, graphs, dashboards) and strategized on next steps.
“The main thing I got from working with the UFL was more experience working with data,” says Baris, who majors in sport analytics and statistics. “I also was able to experiment with a few types of models that I had not worked with previously, and I gained experience presenting work to people with a less analytical background.”
As Kilmeade says, the students hit the ground running, throwing and kicking. Other examples of their work with the UFL include a point after touchdown conversion (PAT) decision chart, onside kick alternative and game timing.
Falk College of Sport analytics students in St. Louis with the UFL championship trophy, which was won by the DC Defenders, who defeated the Michigan Panthers 58-34.
Ambler, Baris, Bruton, Halpern and Seidel were available to travel to St. Louis for the UFL’s championship weekend in mid-June. There, they capped their internship experience by staffing the Fan Fest Sportable booth, where fans used the Sportable tracking device to measure their throwing skills, and the Tech Suite, where they displayed their work from the season. Kilmeade says film producer and UFL co-owner Dany Garcia was one of the many dignitaries who were impressed by the students’ presentation.
“I was able to do projects with real-world data that were actually used/implemented by the league, and grow my technical skills and abilities by having to learn new techniques in order to accomplish some of the projects,” Ambler says. “These new skills that I learned will be able to be applied to other projects in my future roles throughout my professional career.”
To read the full story, visit the Falk website.
