The University of Texas announced Bevo Lab on Friday, a 25,000-square-foot sports analytics and artificial intelligence hub on its Austin campus, and athletic officials say the Texas Bevo Lab AI tool has already saved football coaches more than 15 hours a week in game preparation this season.
The lab, housed in Austin’s Innovation Tower, is backed by founding corporate partners Google Cloud, Dell Technologies and SHI International, according to CBS Sports. Texas says all 21 of its varsity sports, including football, will eventually work with the facility.
The Main Development
Kirk Goldsberry, executive director of the Business of Sports Institute at Texas, built Bevo Lab’s first team by hiring 24 undergraduate students. The university plans to expand that group to as many as 40 student researchers in the lab’s first year, with a goal of scaling to 200 researchers annually, according to CBS Sports.
Construction on the physical lab space should wrap in about three months, with full operations expected in 2027. In the meantime, Google engineers have already helped Texas rebuild how its football game-planning reports are produced, per the report.
What It Means For Revenue-Sharing Budgets
Texas says AI data generated through Bevo Lab factors into decisions on what to pay players through revenue-sharing money, a tool athletic director Chris Del Conte described in terms of roster value against a fixed budget.
“It’s being the best player within our budget,” Del Conte said, according to CBS Sports.
Del Conte also framed the lab as part of a broader philosophy of embracing data-driven decision-making rather than resisting it. “It’s not the boogeyman. Let’s lean into this. Let’s lean into analytics,” he said.
Transfer Portal Evaluation Tool
Bevo Lab’s Transfer AI system currently grades basketball players, projecting how transfer targets would perform at Texas against an SEC schedule. The models rate roughly 5,000 men’s and 5,000 women’s college basketball players, and men’s basketball coach Sean Miller and women’s coach Vic Schaefer are already using the tool, per CBS Sports.
The sources do not detail how football specifically will apply AI grading to transfer portal targets, though the university’s stated plan to bring all 21 sports into the lab suggests football will eventually draw on similar scouting infrastructure.
Context: Texas’s Season
The Bevo Lab rollout comes during a turbulent stretch for Texas football. The Longhorns have dealt with recent losses that shook up the College Football Playoff picture, and the program has faced scrutiny over quarterback play and coaching decisions this season. Tools aimed at tightening roster evaluation and budget efficiency arrive at a moment when Texas is under pressure to maximize every roster dollar under the revenue-sharing model.
What’s Next
Texas has not released a timeline detailing when Bevo Lab’s AI tools will extend beyond basketball into football-specific scouting or when all 21 sports will formally integrate with the lab. The facility is expected to be fully operational in 2027, giving Goldsberry’s team roughly a year to scale from 24 student researchers toward the program’s long-term goal of 200.
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