The Intersection of AI and Sports
Miranda Burt, AB ’20, MBA ’26, reflects on how Booth prepared her for a strategy role with the Colorado Rockies and how AI can benefit professional sports teams.
- By
- July 06, 2026
- Artificial Intelligence
Miranda Burt, AB ’20, MBA ’26, has been passionate about sports for as long as she can remember. When she was three years old, she got rid of the pom-poms and uniform from her University of Tennessee cheerleader Barbie. “My mom asked me what I was doing and I told her, ‘Barbie doesn’t want to cheer. She wants to play basketball,’” Burt says.
Barbie wasn’t the only one. Miranda went on to play basketball throughout childhood and even competed for the UChicago women’s team as an undergrad. During that time, she also developed an interest in Chicago Booth and audited a few classes to explore the intersection of sports and business.
Burt began her MBA in fall 2020 through Maroon Scholars, a deferred MBA program that Booth offered UChicago undergraduates during the COVID-19 pandemic. After her first year, Burt worked as a consultant for GEP Worldwide, then as a strategy analyst for Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians. That was at the start of the AI boom, and Burt saw its potential to streamline business processes throughout sports—especially by collating massive amounts of data to speed up decision-making, leaving more time for long-term strategic work.
When she returned to Booth’s Full-Time MBA Program in 2025, she immersed herself in AI courses and was selected for the inaugural cohort of the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence’s Fellows Program. The new initiative gives Booth MBA students opportunities to engage with alumni at exclusive events and shape AI programming.
Burt graduated this June and will soon return to the MLB as a strategy lead for the Colorado Rockies. Below, she talks about her new role, how AI is reshaping the world of sports, and how Booth prepared her to succeed in a field she’s passionate about.
Tell us about your relationship with sports.
I’ve always loved sports. From a really early age, I had a clear understanding of how sports and being a fan brings a community together. Especially growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where Pat Summitt coached the University of Tennessee Lady Vols and won eight national titles. It really put women’s basketball on the map.
I played everything from basketball to softball to soccer to track and field. I studied abroad in Austria, and they had a women’s tackle football team there, so I played with them. Women’s flag football is becoming really big. It’s a sanctioned sport in most states now. I’m a little bummed—I was born a decade too early. Flag football will be in the next Olympics and I’ll be curious to see how that takes off.
What will you be doing in your new role with the Colorado Rockies?
I’ll be in strategy and analytics on the business side of the organization. My role will be twofold. There’ll be some general business strategy, and I’ll essentially act as an internal consultant for the team. It’ll be everything from product and pricing strategy, to media rights strategy, to the overall long-term organizational strategy.
And then I’ll do general department strategy as well. How do we build a department? How do we leverage AI? It’ll be a unique position to take what I’ve learned at Booth and in my previous roles and then apply that to the Rockies.
Where do you see the biggest opportunities for AI in professional sports?
I think the biggest challenge for any sports team is that there’s a ton of data—on fans, and really on anyone doing business in the area. But oftentimes, it’s siloed. It’s hard to connect that data and get a true 360-degree view of the customer, which is challenging when you want to create the best fan experience so people want to come back and see us again.
I think that’s one of the ways that AI can really provide that glue. As opposed to a single business question taking us days or even weeks to answer, we can leverage AI to organize that data and get insights in just a few hours. Then, we can hopefully get quicker and faster at solving these problems so we can start to bite off more long-term, strategic work.
“I realized everything we were learning in my AI classes could easily be applied to take over this grunt work so coaches could focus on what really matters.”
— Miranda Burt
You developed an AI tool. What problem was it designed to solve?
I took a ton of AI classes at Booth this year. One was Building an AI Company, which I thought was fantastic. I started to think about, “What problems have I seen in my career? How could I apply what I’m learning right now to solve these problems?”
I was an assistant basketball coach for a while at Illinois Tech. One of the things that took an incredible amount of time was developing scouting reports for the team. Coaches spend upwards of 40 hours a week just watching film, scouting opponents, and diagramming plays to develop a game plan.
I realized everything we were learning in my AI classes could easily be applied to take over this grunt work so coaches could focus on what really matters. I built a tool with the help of a couple friends and colleagues that took game film and built out a foundation: What are all the plays that these teams have run? How often have they been run against what defenses? Coaches could then take that and say, “All right, here’s how we can actually attack and strategize against these upcoming opponents.”
What does it mean to you to be part of the first cohort of CAAI AI Fellows?
I’m very honored to be a part of the first fellows group. It’s a great capstone to the work I’ve been doing this year at Booth, really trying to leverage and learn about artificial intelligence. Moving forward, it’s also a great way for me to continue to stay connected to the program, to Booth, and to the next cohort of fellows.
I really enjoy the opportunity to build things from scratch and to develop a foundation for others to thrive and continue to build upon. Being a part of this first class of fellows has been a great way to continue to engage with the AI resources and community that Booth has, and to also think about shaping the future. I’ll be uniquely positioned to help the next cohort understand how you apply what you’ve learned at Booth to the workplace.
Booth is a great space—there’s so much to learn and there are so many resources. There are incredibly smart, intelligent, and hardworking people here who are applying AI to solve business problems in a multitude of ways and industries. Being able to tap into that network and learn from different people, not just now, but on into the future, will continue to be an invaluable resource for me.
Booth News & Events to Your Inbox
Stay informed with Booth's newsletter, event notifications, and regular updates featuring faculty research and stories of leadership and impact.
YOUR PRIVACY
We want to demonstrate our commitment to your privacy. Please review Chicago Booth's privacy notice, which provides information explaining how and why we collect particular information when you visit our website.