2019-20 Academic Year Research Progress Report

Purpose

The purpose of this page is to report on progress occurring during the 2019-20 academic year related to RGC grant-related research accomplishments.

Reported RGC Grant-related Research Accomplishments

Semantic Indexing of 2 Games from 1992 Alabama Football Season

As a result of RGC grant funding, we investigated the recovery of play-by-play data from the historical record. For games in 1992, the historical record consisted of typed play-by-play datasets requiring manual transcription by volunteers, which allowed us to investigate the inclusion into our data processing pipeline of a crowdsourcing method for historical data transcription. We reported on these efforts in this conference paper (PPT). A summary of our results:

1. Alabama versus Tulane on October 10, 1992 at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, LA; RECOVERED PLAY-BY-PLAY DATA: 176 plays from 26 drives
2. Alabama versus LSU on November 7, 1992 at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, LA; RECOVERED PLAY-BY-PLAY DATA: 185 plays from 26 drives

Example SPARQL queries for retrieving plays from these two games (only) from the 1992 Alabama Crimson Tide football season meeting a variety of query criteria (PLEASE NOTE: To run each query, click on the Blue Arrow icon in lower left portion of screen after clicking on links below):

1. All rushing touchdowns that went for over 15 yards during the 2 games of the 1992 Alabama Crimson Tide football season in our database
2. All Jay Barker touchdown passes that went for over 25 yards in games from the 1992 Alabama Crimson tide football season (Just those Jalen Hurts TD passes for which there are video clips).
3. All touchdown passes that went for over 10 yards in the 2017 Alabama Crimson Tide football season (Just those plays for which there are video clips).

Semantic Indexing of 2 Games from 1961 Alabama Football Season

As part our RGC grant, we investigated games from the 1961 season. For games from 1961, there were no historical records available containing play-by-data. However, there are other documentary sources of such data, including journalistic newspaper accounts of those games. In our study, we investigated the inclusion into our data processing pipeline of a crowdsourcing method for historical data-extraction from newspaper articles. We chose to use articles published in the Tuscaloosa News available online. [See this conference paper (PPT) for documentation of this milestone.] A summary of our results:

   Alabama versus Tulane on September 30, 1961 at Ladd Stadium in Mobile, AL; RECOVERED PLAY-BY-PLAY DATA: 104 plays and 22 drives
   Alabama versus Vanderbilt on October 7, 1961 at Dudley Field in Nashville, TN; RECOVERED PLAY-BY-PLAY DATA: 129 plays and 25 drives