Data service forms football spinoff.

AuthorRingo, Kyle
PositionSPORTS BIZ

TOM WOODS IS MORE OF A FREE SPIRIT THAN HIS NUMBER-CRUNCHING CAREER IN AEROSPACE AND DEFENSE MIGHT intiailly suggest.

Two years ago, Woods was in a rut. He was frustrated with the monotony and slow pace of negotiating deals in the industry. He left Lockheed Martin 16 years ago to start his own business, TTJ&B Inc., providing aerospace and defense companies and organizations with a service he devised, taking massive amounts of data and giving it back in more user-friendly packages.

It can require more than six months or more of meetings and back-and-forths just to finalize one contract in this sector. The tedium wore on him.

Some who find themselves on the brink of burnout opt for dramatic changes. They might take a leave of absence to sail around the world or sell the business and switch paths altogether. Others go back to school.

Woods went a different route. He doubled down and started a second business built off the model of his first, but the new idea was rooted in football--the perfect elixir for a die-hard sports fan like Woods.

"There was no technological leap for us as a company," he says. "It was a simple extension of the same thing we already do in this other world and have done for years and years. It was basically just feeding a different type of information into the same thing we did."

The results have filled Woods' sails once again and have him eager to roll out of bed for work each day to run both of his businesses.

When football coaches and staffers break down film of opponents, they chart information such as down and distance, position on the field, formation, run or pass. Some are more detailed than others.

Woods' new company, Rll Sports Technology, takes that data from film of future opponents and produces interactive one-page reports, called dashboards, that show coaches the tendencies of their competitors in certain game situations and at every spot on the field. Who wouldn't want to be able to predict what the competition is going to do whether it's on the football field or in business?

Woods says the reports his system churns out to football coaches are so easy to understand, his 10-year-old daughter can make sense of them.

"She could take one of these things and have a meaningful...

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