StatSheet: Where Sport Stat Geeks Go To Play

Years ago I had a friend named Terry that was positively obsessed with baseball stats. Understand, dear reader, that this was before there were online fantasy sports sites and whatnot. He just loved the data, and spent hours and hours and hours every week tracking every possible baseball stat there was.

Now, he is not alone, o'course, and the advent of fantasy sports online has surely increased the numbers 100 fold from when Terry was devouring the old Sporting News newspaper.

And for such geeks, now there is StatSheet, a mindbogglingly rich environment packed with stats -- and here's the interesting bit -- great ways to visualize them. Better yet for those who share my penchant for a good story, the site was created and is operated by one person. Here's the text from their about us page that tells the rich beginning to this story:

My name is Robbie Allen and I'm the sole founder and developer of StatSheet.com and creator of the StatSheet Network (which includes StatFix.com and StatTweets.com). I'm a long-time sports fanatic and web entrepreneur, and I want to change the face of sports on the web.

The major sports websites have yet to embrace the web as a platform for presenting and visualizing stats. It is time for a fresh perspective and my answer is the StatSheet Network, which comprises sites I've created as well as partnerships I've formed with other companies and organizations. The feedback I've received so far has been very positive, which is great because I've barely scratched the surface.

All the sites in the StatSheet Network have the singular goal of doing something interesting related to sports stats. Three sites are publicly available, three others are in development, and three more are at the "notes on a napkin" stage. There is no shortage of interesting things to do with sports stats on the web.

Yep, one person made this powerful site. One. let me say that again. One.

And here he is, the star of the show:



And it is the charting that makes this quite cool. These little minis don't do the functionality justice, but they will give you a teeny taste of the incredible range of data presentation available on StatSheet.



One he's also a one man network, with a site for college hoops, StatSheet itself, and StatTweets, which I am guessing you can figure out just from the name.

His vid (if you didn't watch it) claims that he got a sub prime mortgage to get his seed money. Let's hope he was kidding, or at least that the Obama package passes fast so he can continue his great work on this fascinating and intriguing offering.

So leave that pad and paper at home. Cancel the sub to Sporting News (if it even still exists.) And get your b-ball shorts over to StatSheet and check it out!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.