Next week, the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball brackets become official -- meaning that printers nationwide will be whirring to life. I love that all the sites and apps have interactive brackets now, but there’s something about that paper version that cements this time of year for me.
Hope you enjoy conference championship weekend and good luck in your office pool! — Ethan Joyce
In today’s edition of Power Up:
- Devils, Theta Labs partner on AI bot
- Inside GoRout’s Liberty League trial
- Athlete’s Voice: Former NFL lineman Ndamukong Suh
Devils, Theta Labs partner on agentic AI chatbot
Artificial intelligence firm Theta Labs is partnering with the New Jersey Devils to create an agentic AI chatbot specific to the team.
Named “Bott Stevens” for the longtime Devil and three-time Stanley Cup champion Scott Stevens, the bot is expected to launch in the coming weeks and will be accessible via the Devils’ website. Powered by Theta’s EdgeCloud computing platform, it will answer fan queries ranging from gameday matters (i.e., relating to ticketing or the broadcast) to player stats or merchandise using a combination of custom data sources provided by the Devils and real-time NHL metrics.
“The look and feel will be completely integrated from a brand perspective,” said Theta Labs co-founder & CEO Mitch Liu. “And there is a personality that we’re building.”
The latter was also a tenet of the agentic platform Theta built for the Vegas Golden Knights, its first NHL team partner, last year.
Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment VP/Content & Digital, Devils and Prudential Center, Marc Ciampa said their partnerships team was intrigued by the Golden Knights' use-case and are eager to apply a “Jersey attitude” to theirs.
“We’re known for bringing a Jersey attitude to our social media channels,” Ciampa said. “The thought is to bring that to the bot as well, where it might have a little bit of fun with you.”
Therein lies the distinction between agentic and generative AI, Liu added. “AI agents take on a level of independence,” he said. “The idea in the future is these agents -- or these standalone bots or entities -- can think on their own, interact on their own. The space I’m interested in is how does that improve the fan or customer experience?”
Liu said the Golden Knights' bot is registering hundreds of thousands of users per month but could not comment on more specific engagement or revenue-related KPIs. According to him, the Devils deal will extend into the 2025-26 NHL season as well and include Theta Labs signage in-arena at Prudential Center.
GoRout sees positive traction from first college football deployment
Last week, GoRout presented its findings from a pilot program with the Division III Liberty League to the NCAA Football Rules Committee. The company, which piloted its Gridiron play-calling communication tech with the seven Liberty conference teams, has partnerships with more than 640 NCAA teams for its baseball and softball products.
The GoRout proposal for NCAA-wide usage was not approved, but chief partnership officer Drew Robinson said the effort will continue to find GoRout’s place in college football and ultimately, help define how wearables fit in the game.
“We are going to spend quite a bit of time over the next year trying to get the committee and the NCAA to realize that one wearable, it defeats the purpose of what we do,” Robinson said, referencing the conversation around the 2024 approval of in-helmet comms at the FBS level. “... The hot topic is coach-to-player communication – we are coach-to-players communication. So why limit it?”
GoRout provided 10 wristbands and two tablets per team for last season’s experimental deployment, which allowed coaches to send in play calls for players to read on their wearable digital displays during conference games. The Liberty League allowed for three devices to be on the field for offensive and defensive units with no limits on special teams.
Jon Drach, head coach of Union College and a member of the previously mentioned committee, saw a dramatic impact on the transmission of plays to his players – he said the time between selecting plays (Drach also calls Union’s offense) and the transmission to players was between a quarter second and a half second.
“I think that it helped a lot of teams within our league,” Drach told SBJ. “[I was] disappointed that we could use it in the NCAA playoffs and in our out-of-conference stuff, but still, it really was a successful trial as far as that goes.”
GoRout tested its Gridiron product first during the 2023 bowl season, working with the Georgia Tech and UCF at the Gasparilla Bowl due to early interest in wearable tech from the Big 12 Conference, according to Robinson.
Drach mentioned that GoRout is much more useful than just showing a play. He shared that during the season, his defense leaned on a young safety for significant playing time, with the Gridiron device becoming a way to clearly communicate that player’s responsibility on any given play.
Thanks to the feedback from this season, Robinson said that future enhancements to the GoRout football system will include more options for messaging to players (for quick coaching points on top of play calling) and trying to make coaches’ play-call sheets a clickable document in the Gridiron system.
Here are a few stats from GoRout from its football deployment with the Liberty League:
- More Liberty League teams used the devices on defense (six out of the seven) than on offense (five of seven). Only two used it for special teams. “I’ve always thought this was an equalizer tool for defensive coaches,” Robinson said of the higher defensive usage. “They always have to wait until they see the offensive personnel, offensive formation ... with the GoRout system, one button – now everybody’s getting that call instantly up until the snap of the ball.”
- The majority of coaches had high praise for the GoRout deployment – following the first week, 80% of coaches polled by the company expressed happiness with both the technology’s performance and its durability on the field.
- Fifty percent of coaches sent in plays from the press box. The remaining coaches either sent plays from the sidelines (33%) or did a combination of both (17%).
- Five devices broke and required warranty claims during the season (representing 7% of total devices issued for the Liberty League). The most common issue? Broken wristband clips. GoRout only had to field two support calls during the 2024 football season.
Engineer, entrepreneur and enemy of quarterbacks: Ndamukong Suh talks tech, investments, more
Ndamukong Suh was among the most feared defenders of the 2010s. A three-time All-Pro and five-time Pro Bowler, the Nebraska engineering school graduate and Heisman Trophy finalist in 2009 had 71.5 career NFL sacks while playing for five teams, including multiple seasons with the Lions, Dolphins and Buccaneers with whom he won Super Bowl LV. He never missed a game due to injury in 13 seasons.
Suh, now 38, last played in 2022 and was part of the Sky Sports broadcast team for last month’s Super Bowl. He has invested in more than 30 companies, including Oura, through his family office, House of Spears Management. (Ndamukong means “House of Spears” in the Cameroonian language of Ngemba.) Suh also operates a real estate development company in Portland, Ore.
During SBJ Tech Week, Suh participated in a panel entitled “Tech and Talent: AI’s Impact on Athlete Training and Performance.”
On the datapoints he tracked during his career . . .
The most consistent one that we’ve always done was, waking up first thing in the morning, I’d use a simple Google Sheet: How do you feel? One to 10. Where’s your energy level? There were four or five questions. That was probably the most consistent, and then we had so many other pieces of sleep data, whether it comes from Oura or, back in the day, we had other programs that we use. Ultimately, it’s a combination of looking at all this.
I’ve always been wired, especially from an athletic perspective, [where] I don’t really care how I feel. I have a job that I want to go and do an accomplish, and so I’m going to push myself through that. And if I chose to go get drunk the night before, I know I have to get up, and I’m going to have to muster through some things because I did that to myself. Vice versa, if I woke up and I just wasn’t feeling well, because traveling, or whatever it is, there’s ways to manipulate the body and manipulate the mind so you can reach your ultimate goals at the end of the day. It’s a combination of knowing when to pull back and when to push forward.
On the growth of data and tech . . .
Back in 2010 when I started, which is ages ago, it was kind of archaic, but to where we’re at now in 2025, there’s been a transformation. As athletes, we find different nuances and ways to find ways to get that 1% or half a percent to take us to the next level. And so I was always going into the lab. I was fortunate enough to have an amazing performance director I still work with to this day.
And then I had the great lab on the campus of Nike where I got to sit there underneath Phil Knight’s beautiful campus and everything that he has out with innovation. Back then it was the Mia Hamm Building, but now it’s LeBron James Building. So in there every summer finding new ways to tweak and learn different nuances that can advance my playing career.
On not overloading on tech . . .
Tools are key to have, but we also have to have that human interaction as well. It’s very important. That’s why I mentioned Keith D’Amelio, who’s my performance director. To have that human interaction and being able to say, “I can look and feel and see the things that you’re doing and I can teach you about the data.” Because I’m so focused on my craft and what I’m trying to do and accomplish and be the most dominant, but at the same time, I also need to learn those different new aspects of these new data points that are coming out. Some of them may not be relevant to me and that’s okay, but how do we decipher which ones are the best ones for me and which ones are not going to be the best ones for me.
On his interest in engineering . . .
I was born and raised into it. My father was a mechanical engineer. So as a young kid, as early as probably, second, third, fourth grade, I was riding around in this truck. He owned his own business, and so I was always with him, especially in the summers, when I wasn’t in school. It became a way for me to, one, be exposed to the industry and then falling in love with it, but then also as a kid, wanting toys and bikes and all different stuff — that became a job. Sweeping job sites and carrying duct work and all these particular pieces, and as I got bigger and stronger, I could lift heavy equipment and do that and things like that. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was. So it was something I just easily fell in love with, [being] my dad, being on his hip, being able to watch and do everything, and just seeing it as something cool.
On his studies at Nebraska . . .
I was a construction manager, so a broader view where, basically, I have the understanding of mechanical, electrical, plumbing, all the different trades that go into developing a building because I have to manage all of it. I have to know enough to be dangerous.
On how he’s put that to use . . .
I have built apartments, commercial buildings, so I’ve definitely put my degree to use. I have a development company back home in Portland that I do a majority of that through, and then I’ve built single family homes, not for myself, but for others and just different developments with different partners. I first learned by starting to do it, especially when I was in Detroit my first five years playing for the Lions. There was a guy named Gary Shiffman — he runs and started Sun Communities, which is a big publicly traded company centered around manufacturing homes. And so I learned a lot from him. We still work together to this day.
On his investing mentors, Warren Buffet and Joe Moglia . . .
We share an alma mater, Nebraska, so I first met [Buffet] when I was playing football there and going to school. He was honorary captain my senior year. And so they randomly came to me and were like, ‘You’re one of our top players. We’d love for you to meet him and walk out with you to the coin toss. Do you know who he is?’ And I was like, ‘Of course I know who he is. You’d have to be under a rock if you didn’t.'
So I really started reading up on him, understanding everything that he did. And then, funny enough, there was a defensive assistant that I didn’t really know until later on in my senior year, a guy named Joe Moglia, who was a big finance guy — he was CEO of TD Ameritrade — so everybody knew him as football coach, a silent assistant coach, but nobody really knew why he left in a black car every Thursday night to go to New York. And I had the balls to ask him. So we built a bond, and he became a close mentor of mine, especially after leaving college and even to this day.
On his investments . . .
I have a broad spectrum — the hospitality space, real estate and tech, depending on what type of technology it is and if I can add value to it and also if it’s just functionally things that I use. Especially on the sports side of things, like Oura Ring. Hyperice — I sold a business to them over the last couple of years for new technology for them to integrate into their organization with Normatec. I’ve been an advisor since the inception.
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