Sports analytics crowd turns to data to tackle diversity

By JIMMY GOLEN
AP Sports Writer
BOSTON (AP) — The number-crunchers have vanquished starting pitching and brought a barrage of 3-pointers to basketball. Now they are taking on a more intractable and important issue: making sports more inclusive. A half-dozen sessions at the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference this weekend are dealing with diversity, equity and inclusion. Topics range from a discussion of the NFL’s Rooney Rule to one on transgender athletes. And they’re using the same analytics increasingly applied to player performance to show what’s working and how much work remains to make the world of sports more inclusive.