RAS Creating New Content, Future Plans

When I created Relative Athletic Scores back in 2013, there was no plan of a website. I had a few hundred followers on Twitter, only occasionally wrote about my favorite football team, and had no designs on creating something that would be used as a research tool. I just had an idea I thought was neat, and enough free time and boredom to make something out of it.

I had created a spreadsheet to house the data and calculations I needed, and that was enough. Eventually, I outgrew a simple spreadsheet and needed to program the calculations for RAS. Eventually I tried building an app, and while it did the things I needed to do, I knew early on that it wasn’t going to scale up in the way I would need it to.

By 2017, I knew it needed to go online, so I built out relativeathleticscores.com, which eventually changed to RAS.football, as it is today. Here, I could build out whatever I needed to without worrying about scaling or outgrowing. I pledged then, and have repeated since, that RAS was always meant to be a free tool and I would never put it behind a paywall.

I stand by that, and the ability to look up player testing, create side by side comparisons, and all the functionality that currently exists on the site for users will remain unchanged, relatively stable, and most importantly, free.

Changes to social media and other personal circumstances have changed, however, and there’s a lot more that I can do. Not only to assist the draft community, as I have been doing for over a decade now, but to help build more useful tools and analytics. RAS already takes hundreds of hours of research, networking, coding, and social media work, and this will require even more. As such, I’ve decided to finally take a leap I’ve talked about several times over the years and create some paid content on the site.

Talking about it is one thing, but now I’ve started actually putting it together. Beginning Q3 2024, RAS.football will include a paid subscription in addition to the free content that is already provided. This new part of the site opens up a ton of new opportunities for research around the NFL draft, team tendencies, and trend analysis. I’m very excited to be putting it together and even more excited to see what you guys can find in all the data. Since it will be paid, I will have the incentive to continue to build, bring in more folks willing to build with me, and the hope is that you will all find whatever it is you hope to with a site like this.

I’ve been described as an odd fellow, and I know I can often be difficult to work with. Not that I’m disagreeable, but my attention strays quickly and wildly. I still plan on finding folks willing to help me grow the site and find new, cool things to try out. Again, the base functionality of the site will remain unchanged, but anything new I add will be on the new side of the site going forward.

Here is what I’ve either put together already or am planning on adding in the very near future for this paid content:

Price point: 50.00 US Annually

I’ll probably revisit this several times as we go, but this has been the fairest price point I’ve considered. It’s half the price of simply purchasing the testing data for a single draft year, and you’d be getting access to tools and functionality around data for nearly forty years. RAS itself will remain free, and I want to ensure even the new functionality is still affordable.

Date of launch: 6/15/2024 (VERY tentative and likely to change)

Integrated traditional statistics

I’ve been working to integrate traditional stats by linking my data with pro-football-reference.com‘s expansive database. This will allow us to view things like starts, yardage, sacks, tackles, and so much more alongside RAS. And not just the actual scores, but the individual tests. Want to see what the 40 times are for all of the top running backs over the years? Easy. Wondering if linebackers really are getting smaller over time? Easy. Want to show the average testing for starters in the AFCE in the last five years? Easy. Ever wondered if your favorite GM has tendencies when it comes to late round defensive players and arm length? Easy. That’s all things we will be able to do and it’s only scratching the surface.

There’s just too much to list here, but I’m going to put together a quick, non-comprehensive list of things we’ll be able to search and filter by:

Testing-Height, weight, forty, twenty, ten, bench, vertical, broad, shuttle, cone, arm length, hand size, wingspan, draft round, draft pick, draft team, number of starts, seasons, age, rushing yardage, rushing TDs, rushing YPC, rushing attempts, targets, receptions, receiving yards, yards per target, total touchdowns, sacks, interceptions, tackles, and seriously I’m just listing statistics, that’s what’s great about taking two related databases and squishing them together.

Expanded Internship Program

It had its ups and downs, but the internship program that I started in 2023 had some success, and I hope to take what I learned both about working with others and, frankly, myself and direct it towards helping more folks find a way to learn coding, data management, and how to look at analytics in a way that helps their own personal development.

Alternative datasets

Look, I’m a pretty smart guy, but also a fairly arrogant one. It helps to know your own limitations, but I have no illusions of being right all the time. I’m asked about several alternate ideas for RAS fairly often. Most often: viewing RAS without any size weighting, RAS with only fully tested players, and individually weighted metrics. For what RAS is, I know from working with the data for as long as I have how much value there is in these ideas. This is my data, my site, and my passion, obviously I know what’s best! Or maybe I don’t, which is why we’re going to build out some alternate versions of RAS anyway. If I’m right (I’m always right, just ask me), it’ll be a pointless exercise, a novelty, something to point at while twirling my mustache and haughtily laugh. If I’m wrong, it’ll be very cool to dig through an entirely new set of data and see what kinds of trends we can find.

See, if you’re passionate about a thing, you’ll do it. If you’re not, you won’t. If I create something others want that I find no value in, maybe their passion will see them finding trends I hadn’t even considered. Then, if I am shown the value of the thing, then I, too, can be passionate about it.

Everybody wins!

Improved User Tools

I will be testing as I build out this part of the site and I will be taking the testers feedback to create even more. Once it’s launched, I’ll have a system in place to receive and monitor feedback in the hopes of expanding functionality even more.

This is just a start

All of this is just the beginning. I’ve been operating based solely on modest donations for years, and any help I’ve brought in has been, unfortunately, unpaid. I’ll start out by bringing in help in the same way at first, but if this is successful then I’ll be able to flip that right around and invest back into the site, bring in some developers to enhance the user experience even more. If it’s very successful, maybe I can even hire staff and build it up properly.