Pre-season football is a utilitarian experience. It isn’t the most eye-popping sports performance, but it serves a great purpose for coaches, scouts and team builders as they prepare for the regular season and pare the roster from 90 down to 53.

1,184 elite athletes are cut, which is almost triple the number of active players in the NBA (446).

Sometimes when I drive into work, quietly enjoying my ride and the scenery around Portland, I think about how much I love my job. I don’t feel my work is a sacrifice, instead, I see it as a chance to positively impact so many people around me.

I have a secret to tell you.

There is a sports agent out there who has negotiated over $2 billion in NFL contracts, has appeared in ESPN commercials, and is the only agent to ever appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated – and he never passed the bar exam!

I think I have a new favorite word to describe our business: incubator.

Local Portland, Oregon magazine The Pearl recently profiled SMWW and described us as, “one of the nation’s foremost pro-sports front-office incubators”

Sports analytics has become the wild west of the sports industry, with new ideas, formulas, and approaches coming to the forefront daily. Data manipulators are constantly seeking to find the newest way of approaching and analyzing data, hoping to find the perfect formula for team and individual success.

Now, the NBA is getting in on the fun announcing their first over NBA Hackathon, which despite its moniker does not involve fouling Dwight Howard.