Putting Student-Athletes’ Data to Work

• In Event: Data Bodies at Work

Abstract

There are only so many hours in a day in which student-athletes at American universities can train, play, study, and sleep. And so, especially in big-money sports like football and basketball where black men are over-represented, these young people are relentlessly measured, quantified, and recorded in order to optimize their performance and make the most of every minute. The season is a sprint, and every footstep is accounted for. Some of this dataveillance is participatory, with student-athletes taking an active hand in their health and diet. Often the experience is more passive, with the measurement and the interpretation of the date left to other professionals--trainers, nutritionists, coaches, and more. How do these young people relate to these data practices, and how does the institution relate to them and their data? How do Fitbits and smartphones become a part of a total institution?

We interview Division 1 student-athletes and their support staff in order to understand how student-athletes relate to the terabytes of data collected from and about them. The hope is to develop interventions that help them take a more active role in the process--to be agents, rather than objects of data science. In exploring these data narratives, we compare the perspectives of students and staff, as well as the experiences of students in different sports cultures. Because of their intensive training, these groups often prototype technologies and practices that then make their way to the broader population, and so we also compare the intensive monitoring of student-athlete data with similar practices in healthcare and workplaces.

Authors

• Daniel Greene, University of Maryland

• Tamara Clegg, University of Maryland