Texas announced Bevo Lab on Friday, a 25,000-square-foot sports analytics and artificial intelligence hub planned for Austin’s Innovation Tower, CBS Sports reported. Texas says early work with Google Public Sector has saved football coaches more than 15 hours a week in game preparation this season.
The project brings together Google Cloud, Dell Technologies and SHI International as founding corporate partners. Texas plans to use the lab across all 21 university sports and more than 500 athletes.
Bevo Lab’s work is intended to extend beyond scouting opponents, with Texas also applying analytics to transfer evaluations and player revenue-sharing budgets. The lab is expected to be fully operational in 2027.
Key Takeaways
- Texas says early work with Google Public Sector has saved football coaches more than 15 hours a week in game preparation this season.
- Google Cloud, Dell Technologies and SHI International are Bevo Lab’s founding corporate partners.
- Texas plans to use the lab across all 21 university sports and more than 500 athletes.
How Bevo Lab is changing Texas football preparation
Texas uses a tool called Football Scouting Intelligence to automate opponent data and video reports that coaches previously compiled by hand each week, Kirk Goldsberry, executive director of the university’s Business of Sports Institute, told CBS Sports. The system can answer questions about tendencies in specific situations, such as how often an opponent blitzes on third-and-5 or shorter.
Google’s Gemini analyzes information stored in the cloud and returns findings for coaches. The current version is a prototype, and Texas is beginning with football as the lab develops a broader system for bringing data into its work.
Texas attributes the reported weekly time savings to changes in how game-planning reports are produced. Goldsberry told CBS Sports that coaches previously received reports ahead of Sunday and Monday meetings after staff members assembled the information over the weekend.
Google engineers helped streamline that process. Goldsberry said the platform can also incorporate information from human-movement tools, including products developed by Catapult.
Those tools track measures such as acceleration, deceleration, heart rate and physical wear.
Texas plans a larger Bevo Lab research team
Goldsberry told CBS Sports that Texas has hired 24 undergraduate students for the lab’s first team, with training from Google scheduled to begin the following week. The university plans to involve as many as 40 student researchers in the first year and scale to 200 a year.
Austin’s Innovation Tower will house the 25,000-square-foot facility. Athletic director Chris Del Conte told CBS Sports that construction should be completed in about three months, while Goldsberry said the lab is expected to be fully operational in 2027.
The planned university-wide scope gives the project a role beyond football. Texas expects Bevo Lab to serve 21 sports and more than 500 athletes, using students and staff to develop analytics tools for teams across the department.
Transfer AI will inform evaluations and budgets
Texas has also used Transfer AI to evaluate basketball transfer-portal players and project how they might perform at the university against an SEC schedule, Goldsberry told CBS Sports. He said the models rate roughly 5,000 men’s and 5,000 women’s college basketball players, and that the men’s and women’s programs use the tool.
A football version generates scores for transfer targets at nearly every position group, CBS Sports reported. The tool gives Texas another data-based input for assessing players across the roster as the program considers potential additions.
Goldsberry told CBS Sports that player data also helps Texas inform its revenue-sharing budgets. He described the decision as finding the best player within the program’s budget, putting evaluation and financial planning in the same conversation.
Google Cloud and Texas are building the analytics hub
Google Cloud, Dell Technologies and SHI International are the founding corporate partners for Bevo Lab. Google Public Sector has already worked with Texas on the football preparation process, while Google engineers helped redesign how the game-planning reports are assembled.
Del Conte told CBS Sports that Texas is choosing to embrace analytics, saying, “It’s not the boogeyman. Let’s lean into this. Let’s lean into analytics.
” He has also described the lab as an effort to set a benchmark for sports AI and data analytics.
Google Cloud president and chief revenue officer Matt Renner, a Texas graduate, told CBS Sports the company works with other universities but is not investing in those partnerships at the same level. Texas plans construction over the coming months, with full operation expected in 2027.
