USC’s football program is turning to data science to gain a competitive edge. By aggregating play‑level statistics from thousands of FBS games, the university is building a searchable database that can be queried by coaches and analysts alike.
From classroom to the gridiron
Bruce Wilcox, an associate professor of engineering, recruited a team of Viterbi students and recent alumni at the start of the spring semester. Among them, Saloni Deepak Prabhu, a 2025 graduate, oversees the day‑to‑day technical work, while Conor McQuiston, Director of Football Analytics at USC, commissioned the effort to analyze past strategies and outcomes.
The platform integrates millions of play records into a unified warehouse, allowing analysts to compare seasons, test different formations, and examine player performance alongside tackles, penalties and touchdowns. This capability is expected to reduce the time spent preparing data, freeing analysts to focus on insight generation rather than data wrangling.
The first version of the system is slated to be operational by the end of summer, providing a foundation for running natural experiments that reveal which strategies most effectively translate into wins on the field.