Blog Plan

[tbarach26]

1. Do you plan for your final project to be an extension of the mid-semester project? a. If Yes: Identify specific ideas for how you will extend your mid-semester project. The more details the better here. Do you plan to add additional data? Be sure to include which topic(s) you will incorporate: text analysis, network science, unsupervised learning, and/or spatial data.

Yes, our final project will be an extension of the mid-semester project. We will wrangle additional data, including adding the football conference to each team (SEC, ACC, Big10, Pac12, etc.) and transfer portal data (https://247sports.com/season/2023-football/transferportal/) before and after NIL. We want to see how NIL impacted athletes' decisions on where to transfer. Are athletes going to schools with the highest average NIL valuation per athlete? We will use network science to display a map with schools as the vertices. The edges will represent transfer portal movements to different schools, with the weight/color of each edge being the total NIL Valuation leaving one school to another. This network will be directed because an athlete from Florida can transfer to Georgia, and a Georgia athlete can transfer to Florida.

b. If No: Include details regarding the new general topic / phenomena you want to explore and the questions you hope to address. Identify reasonable data sources and how you will acquire the data (web scrape? download? specific packages? API?).

2. Describe what you hope to deliver as a final product. Will your blog include a published Shiny application? Will it incorporate an interactive map? Will it involve a predictive model that forecasts future values of some quantity using data that you’ve integrated?

Our final product will include a Shiny application that serves as the central hub for users to explore the intricate details of student transfers and NIL money distribution. The Shiny app will provide an interactive interface where users can seamlessly view transfers throughout college football and how NIL valuation impacts their decision for where to transfer.

The project will feature an interactive map component that includes data on transfers of athletes across the country, coupled with the visualization of their NIL money. Users can interact with the map and look at specific schools, highly NIL-valued transfers, and more.

We may implement a predictive model to add a forward-looking dimension to our project. This model may be as simple as a linear regression predictor where we can forecast future NIL valuations of schools and predict the number of transfers to and from each school for a given year in the future.

3. Outline a schedule for your group’s progress that will take you from now (ideas phase) to the final blog post and presentation at the end of the semester. During the last project, we had specific checkpoints for different phases of the project. Based on what you envision for your final blog post, identify checkpoints for your group and dates by which you plan to reach those checkpoints. Hold each other accountable, so you’re not waiting until the last minute to do things! In particular, you should have at least one

11/16 - All the data wrangling for the additional transfer portal information is done (added to the existing data set)

11/30 - Have the majority of the visuals complete with only small tweaks still to do

12/5 - Complete the final changes and make the project look visually appealing

12/7 - Be ready to present; go over all the materials and rehearse the main aspects that we would like to talk about

12/13 - Finish Blog Post + Reflection II

[katcorr]

Very interesting ideas, particularly the directed network of transfers. I don't think you need to implement all of these ideas (network + map + predictive modeling + shiny app for interactivity) for this project, but you can assess what you want to keep and what you can cut back on once you begin and assess what's reasonable with the time remaining. Just remember that the blog post will involve writing and interpretations, so even if you include a shiny app for interactivity, you'll still need to interpret some of the visualizations within that app, in the blog post (along with an introduction and conclusion etc.).

Blog Plan: 10/10

[tbarach26]

Since last week, we have wrangled our transfer portal data for the top athletes in each football position from on3.com. This produced 666 total athletes. From that, we summarized all the data by the school they left combined with the school they went to and summed the total NIL valuation, average NIL valuation per player, and the number of athletes. For example, Jackson State University had eight football athletes transfer to The University of Colorado with a total NIL valuation of $7,753,000 (average NIL valuation of $969,125).

Then, we used this data and created a leafly map on our Shiny app. Our group has achieved the work we expected to by this point in our schedule.

[katcorr]

Great!

Status Update 1: 5/5

[nnarayanan17]

Project Checkpoint Plan: 11/30 - Have the majority of the visuals complete with only small tweaks still to do

What we have done: Since our last project checkpoint, we have added two separate options in the "Follow the Money" visual to choose what college players are transferring from and where they are going to. We have also created another interactive component called "Will My Athlete Transfer?". The user can change certain inputs like social media following, what conference they want to transfer to, NIL valuation etc. to determine the likelihood that the a player with these attributes/preferences will transfer. We have completed the app (with small tweaks remaining), and are now beginning work on the blog.

[katcorr]

Awesome, this sounds really interesting!

Status Update 2: 5/5