David Graff, John Wirtz, and Brian Kaiser, Founders of Agile Sports
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David Graff, John Wirtz, and Brian Kaiser, Founders of Agile Sports The Broncos, the Browns, and the Jets all use Agile Sports's software to help players memorize offensive and defensive schemes. By Nitasha Tiku | Jul 19, 2010 A month after signing with the New York Jets in 2008, Brett Favre memorized between 40 and 50 percent of the team‟s complex offensive playbook. By the season kickoff, he had 75 percent of the plays down cold. He did it all with the help of coaching software developed by three twenty-somethings in Lincoln, Nebraska. David Graff was an MBA student at University of Nebraska working for Huskers football coach Bill Callahan when he first got the idea for Agile Sports. Callahan, a former Oakland Raiders coach, wanted to adapt his offensive and defensive strategy for college football. Leveraging his accounting background, Graff developed some crude databases that looked at statistical breakdowns. But there was one hitch. There was no way to analyze game tape away from the team‟s headquarters. To Graff, the technological dilemma smelled of opportunity. He sat down with two fellow students, Brian Kaiser and John Wirtz, and made the pitch: the three of them would develop a software program that would let coaches and players view, mark up, and “tele-strate” footage (writing on the screen like a sportscaster on TV) remotely and securely over a laptop. They presented the idea to Callahan in February 2006, and the coach liked it so much that he wanted to use it for spring training. That posed a small problem. “The demo was a lot of smoke and mirrors,” says Graff. They needed access to Callahan‟s coaching staff in order to assess the team‟s needs, and a year to build the software. Callahan agreed. With just their laptops and a $200-a-month office space, they went to work. Kaiser focused on the technology; Graff and Wirtz applied for patents and wrote the business plan. Security was the biggest concern. In addition to a firewall and tracking IP address of approved users, the software would text a five-digit access code to a users‟ personal cellphone. Callahan was so pleased with the software, called Hudl, that when he interviewed with the New York Jets in 2008, he brought it with him. The Jets soon signed up as a customer. Two more NFL franchises, the Broncos and the Browns, as well as 12 Division I college football teams, now use Hudl to allow players and recruiters study tape remotely. In the past year, the company has also signed on 1,300 of the country‟s 18,000 high school teams as accounts. The software lets coaches input video directly from a camera with the same notation and telestration functions. Players can also easily assemble highlight reel to send to recruiters. With 100,000 youth sports teams around the country, the company is considering diversifying even further. “Right now, we wouldn‟t rule anything out,” says Graff. Copyright © 2011 Mansueto Ventures LLC. All rights reserved. Inc.com, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195. Jets’ New Video System: A Home Page for Football By GREG BISHOP Published: July 28, 2008 After the Nebraska football program installed a new video system last season, one coach said it saved his marriage. Suzy Allman for The New York Times Kellen Clemens has said the new Hudl video system allows him to watch game film at home. Analysis and discussion of the N.F.L. draft and off-season news from around the league. Go to The Fifth Down Blog » That was beyond what David Graff, one of its developers, expected. The program, called Hudl, was conceived a couple of years ago by three Nebraska students whose obsessions were technology and Cornhuskers football. The result is part video library, part picture montage, part video game, part instant messenger, part calendar, part playbook — essentially an online community, like Facebook for football. Nebraska, under Coach Bill Callahan, used Hudl for the 2007 season to rave reviews. The Cornhuskers finished 5-7, and Callahan was fired. But he took Hudl to his interview with the Jets, and he was hired as assistant head coach. The system has been praised by the likes of Microsoft‟s Bill Gates and Coach Eric Mangini, whose Jets are the first N.F.L. team to use it. Graff said he hoped Hudl would eventually change the way teams store, access, edit and use video. “There is a world of possibility,” he said during a recent visit to The New York Times. Jeff Raikes, the president of Microsoft, who will become the chief executive of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in September, agreed. Like Graff, he grew up in Nebraska. Like Graff, Raikes obsesses over Cornhuskers football. He even installed a satellite dish to watch the coach‟s show, and he still subscribes to Huskers Illustrated. “Football in Nebraska is about state identity,” Raikes said. “Other places, they have other things. In Nebraska, it‟s Cornhuskers football.” Like Graff, Raikes knows something about technology. He started at Microsoft at 23; during his 27 years there, he helped create Microsoft Office and tablet PC technology. Raikes has long been a supporter of Nebraska‟s computer science and management program, which now bears his name. Students in that honors program are required to do nine-month projects. Raikes wondered, Why not create a project for Nebraska football? So he approached three students who shared his interest in computer science and the Cornhuskers: Graff, Brian Kaiser and John Wirtz. The project became Hudl, and Graff, Kaiser and Wirtz founded Agile Sports Technologies with the help of investors, including Raikes. Ever the Nebraska fan, Raikes had only a few conditions about teams the company would not approach, “like Notre Dame or USC.” Graff had previously worked in the Nebraska sports information office, so he was acquainted with Callahan. Graff, Kaiser and Wirtz sat down with the coaches and asked one question: What is the ideal system? Then they worked on reducing the time it took to reproduce video onto DVDs for home study, protecting the notes that previously would have been lost during replication and developing one system to run everything. Graff said he roomed with Cornhuskers quarterback Zac Taylor, the 2006 Big 12 offensive player of the year, who helped the tech people with the football side of the system. When Callahan saw a prototype in 2006, “he fell in love right away,” Graff said. Taylor said of Graff: “When he showed me the basic program they‟d come up with, I was stunned. I was shocked at how much they can do with it.” Hudl uses the same technology that powers the Xbox 360 video-game console, and the same controller. Raikes said Gates had been “blown away by the sophistication of the application.” Hudl‟s main screen looks like a member‟s home page on Facebook or MySpace. But instead of listing hobbies and interests, it features scouting reports, news feeds and lists of top performers, along with photographs (which draw players into the system), messaging and a calendar that can be accessed by trainers, doctors and nutritionists. Coaches can leave notes or voice messages, even draw on the screen; players can access that data from anywhere with an Internet connection. The full playbook is available, in color, eliminating the need for paper versions. Coaches can test players‟ knowledge of assignments instantly by having them draw on the screen. Coaches can keep track of the players‟ usage of Hudl, and can also send text messages to players when new video is in the system. They can send individual plays or instructions to all running backs or all offensive players or everyone on the team. They can run meetings with one computer. The main questions potential clients seem to have involved security; coaches cite the spying controversy involving the New England Patriots as heightening their concerns. Graff said that Hudl was tested by experts from Harvard and Microsoft, who pronounced it safe. He added that a player would be denied access to the system as soon as he was cut. The Jets liked Hudl so much that they signed an exclusivity contract to be the only American Football Conference East team to use it this season. In May, Graff said, the Jets watched about 20,000 video clips and spent more than 600 hours logged into the system. “It‟s an interesting concept,” Mangini said Saturday. “It‟s the ability to watch tape over the Internet. It‟s still a secure line. As a coach, you‟re always looking to be more efficient, and sometimes if you‟re not at the office and you haven‟t told the video guys, „Hey, I need X, Y and Z,‟ then you have the ability to access that stuff through this system. “It‟s not at the same speed as our normal operating system would be, but it does give you a vehicle to study when you aren‟t necessarily in the building.” Graff said that Jets quarterbacks Kellen Clemens and Chad Pennington had told him that they loved Hudl because they could watch more film at home, allowing for more time with their families. Rookies like linebacker Vernon Gholston and tight end Dustin Keller were able to log in while still in college so they could start learning the Jets‟ playbook. Heading into this season, Graff said he hoped to have a few more teams on board. Eventually, the company wants to branch into all sports, at all levels. It may add an interactive Madden-style video game component.