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The computer that beat Jeopardy might just help you win Fantasy Football

Edward C. Baig, and Jon Swartz
USA TODAY
ORG XMIT: NYR205  In this file photo of  Jan. 13, 2011, "Jeopardy!" champions Ken Jennings, left, and Brad Rutter, right, look on as the IBM computer called "Watson" beats them to the buzzer to answer a question during a practice round of the "Jeopardy!" quiz show in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. Watson is now on a diet of medical textbooks and journals for health care. IBM says Watson, with its ability to understand plain language, can digest questions about a person's symptoms and medical history and quickly suggest diagnoses and treatments.  (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

NEW YORK — Can the computer that won at Jeopardy help you become a fantasy football champion? Can it make an Olympic athlete reach greater heights? Might it improve your own golf swing? And with the swirl of controversy surrounding concussions in the NFL, can it help us get a better understanding of head injuries?

Most people first got wind of IBM Watson in 2011, when it emerged victorious on Jeopardy.

But Big Blue’s “cognitive computing system” isn’t just a whiz at game show trivia. These days, the Watson ecosystem covers 350 partners across 17 industries, from travel to toys to health care, where it assists doctors in making tricky diagnoses.

And now through some of these partnerships Watson is increasingly tackling the wide world of sports.

Kansas City, Mo., mobile app producer Edge Up Sports, for example, is leveraging Watson to try and give fantasy football owners an edge. The startup, which has launched a Kickstarter campaign, scoops up and analyzes team and player data on all things NFL, culled from social media, weather reports, injury histories, analyst write ups, and news stories.

How does a team perform on grass versus turf? Given a player’s recent injury performance how is he likely to do after his latest sustained hit? Such answers are factored in.

“Perhaps the Yahoo or ESPN analyst isn’t really talking a matchup or even a personal situation with a player’s life. By taking an aggregate view across a wider cross-section we’re going to surface a more complete picture,” says Edge Up creator Ilya Tabakh.

Another ecosystem partner, Spare5, is using Watson to connect pro golfers who have a bit of downtime with duffers looking to bolster their golfing mechanics. In that respect, Spare5 is like a matchmaker between golfer and golf pro. Watson can learn the personality of the student golfer, and supply tips to the instructor so that he or she can apply proper teaching techniques.

Meantime, the National Hockey League’s Pittsburgh Penguins is teaming up with another Watson partner called 113 Industries to try and improve the fan experience before, during and after home games at CONSOL Energy Center arena, and also to help grow the fan based among the millennial generation.
Understanding what Watson has been up to requires a basic grasp of cognitive computing. Think of it as an umbrella term that encompasses forms of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The topic has garnered a lot of attention lately with Google’s recent announcement that it is opening up its machine learning software code to researchers and engineers. And machine learning is a hotbed for other tech companies too.

For its part, IBM Watson attempts to process, analyze and learn from information just like people do, and it does so by ingesting tweets, research reports and numerous other documents, at a blistering rate of 800 million pages per second. Back when Watson was playing Jeopardy it was the size of a small bedroom.

Today it is down to a stack of about three pizza boxes.

Triax of Norwalk, Conn., is using Watson to try to reduce sports-related injuries. It has developed quarter-sized sensors that fit inside headbands or scull caps. The sensors, which are being used in about 50 schools around the U.S. and increasingly abroad, can track head impacts on athletes in real time, whether they’re playing football, soccer, hockey, lacrosse, rugby or other sports.

Watson’s role is in analyzing Twitter feeds and the personalities of the athletes to correlate those personalities to risk.

“There’s some data out there that suggests certain athletes with specific character traits are at a higher risk of hurting themselves or someone else,” says Triax President Chad Hollingsworth. “We’re trying to find a way to identify who those athletes are and maybe take some preventative teaching steps.”

Triax also sells $189 Bluetooth sensors aimed at parents who want to understand how head collisions impact their kids.

“When a parent picks up their child from a sporting event…they can now communicate with Watson via Q&A, saying, `hey, he took a big hit, what does that mean, what are the symptoms?’ and Watson can come back with an intelligent answer,” Hollingsworth says.

FILE - In this July 5, 2015, file photo, United States' Abby Wambach holds an American flag after the U.S. beat Japan 5-2 in the FIFA Women's World Cup soccer championship in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Wambach, the leading career scorer, male or female, in international soccer, announced her retirement from soccer on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2015,  shortly after the U.S. national team celebrated its Women's World Cup victory at the White House.  (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File_ ORG XMIT: NY178

Adds U.S. Gold Medal winning soccer player Abby Wambach, who is lending her support to Triax’s efforts, “When it comes to health - and especially your head--I am a believer in having as much information as possible to make informed decisions.”

World-class athletes are just type of clients that work with bio-medics company and IBM Watson partner Orreco. The Irish company attempts to maximize the performance of such athletes, including 29 Olympic medalists, by combining blood test data with observations from coaches and other data.

“There’s no shortage of data in pro sports. The challenge is how do you make sense of it and what can you do with it. That’s where we were so taken and fascinated with the Watson project,” says managing director Brian Moore.

Through Watson, Orreco can rapidly pore through cutting edge research—covering nutrition, sleep monitoring, altitude training, injury recovery and so on--and using that research to build individual profiles for the athletes.

How does Moore measure success? “If you don’t add value in pro sports, you’re not kept around for very long,” he says.

IBM’s commitment to immersive sports goes beyond what it is doing with Watson. On Thursday that push deepened, when the company announced the IBM Sports and Entertainment Consortium, with the intent of “personalizing the fan experience,” says Jim Rushton, a former Miami Dolphins executive who will head the consulting effort.

Big Blue is combining its technology efforts with the expertise of architectural design firms such as HOK, and infrastructure providers Juniper Networks, Ruckus Wireless and Alcatel.

Ultimately their fruits will be borne in apps, websites, email and texts that deliver richer second-screen viewing of The Masters golf tournament, and the tennis Grand Slam events at Wimbledon, U.S. Open, and Australian Open.

“Sports enterprises and venues need to look at ways to get to know their loyal fans as individuals,” says Rushton, who was chief revenue office of the Dolphins and Sun Life Stadium.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter

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