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On Friday, University of Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte unveiled Bevo Lab, a program that will build artificial intelligence tools for coaches and student-athletes across the school’s 21 varsity teams. The initiative promises sport-specific chatbots, roster-evaluation models and other analytics designed to give Texas a competitive edge.
What Bevo Lab will create
Bevo Lab will produce AI-driven systems tailored to team needs, from decision-support dashboards for coaches to individualized performance insights for athletes. The project’s stated outputs include specialized chatbots and models that evaluate rosters and opponents.
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Technology partners on the project are Dell Technologies, Google Cloud and SHI International, which will supply cloud and enterprise support as the university integrates the tools into its athletic programs.
Who is leading the effort
Kirk Goldsberry heads the initiative. Goldsberry is executive director of the Business of Sports Institute at Texas’s McCombs School of Business and has a long résumé in sports analytics: he previously led analytics operations for the NBA’s Spurs and for Team USA Basketball at the 2016 Olympics. He also works as an NBA analyst for The Ringer and appears on The Bill Simmons Podcast.
How coaches and athletes could use it
Goldsberry describes the tools as curated intelligence meant to turn raw data into practical strategy. In his words, “a strategy without data is a wish.”
For coaches, Bevo Lab aims to speed and simplify tasks that once required heavy spreadsheet work or specialist help. Goldsberry gave an example from baseball: a coach could ask a team-specific chatbot about an opponent starter’s top pitches, pitch selection patterns or velocity trends instead of manually parsing game logs.
For players, the lab will supply personalized metrics and visualizations that clarify strengths, weaknesses and performance limits. The goal is to make analytics accessible to non‑technical users so training and game plans reflect measurable insights.
Reception inside the athletic department
Support from the top appears decisive. Goldsberry credited AD Chris Del Conte with driving the effort and said Del Conte is “over‑the‑moon passionate” about bringing AI into Texas athletics. That backing, Goldsberry said, opened doors with coaches across sports.
Football coach Steve Sarkisian and his staff have reportedly cooperated, sharing existing processes and reports so the lab can better understand and streamline their data workflows.
Jobs, education and student opportunities
Contrary to the common narrative that AI cuts jobs, Goldsberry said Bevo Lab will create roles for students and provide hands-on vocational experience. He expects the initiative to help place students with partners such as Dell and Google Cloud and to prepare them for careers after graduation.
This emphasis on workforce development is framed as a central benefit: students gain real projects and marketable STEM skills while contributing to the university’s athletic analytics capacity.
Data privacy and governance
Goldsberry warned against an unchecked “arms race” in collegiate AI and stressed the sensitivity of student‑athlete data. He said having enterprise partners with experience handling secure, regulated data is critical to protecting privacy.
He called for ethical safeguards and careful stewardship, noting the blurred lines that can exist between medical and performance datasets and urging other programs to treat such information with equal seriousness.
The limits of AI in sports
While Goldsberry expects AI to raise standards and efficiency in sports analytics, he also emphasized the irreplaceable, human side of live competition. Fans come to watch people perform, and nothing on the sidelines changes the athlete‑vs‑athlete reality on game day.
That balance — advanced computation behind the scenes and human performance on the field — shapes Bevo Lab’s purpose. As Goldsberry put it, the technology should drive improvement and “a lot of new standards for best practices in that field.”
