Cole Miller’s (B.S. ’24, mathematics) lifelong passion for mathematics and sports helped him score an ‘awesome’ job as a scouting assistant in the NFL.
For Cole Miller (B.S. ’24, mathematics), a fascination with math and a lifelong passion for college and professional sports—especially football—added up to a career opportunity that his 12-year-old self could have only dreamed of.
“Did 12-year-old Cole, who was sitting on the couch watching all those NFL games, ever think he was going to be working for one of these teams in another 12 years? I might have dreamed about it, but as far as reality? No way,” Miller said. “Even now, it’s hard to believe, but somehow I got here.”
Today, the University of Maryland graduate is living the dream—working in the NFL as a scouting assistant for the Cleveland Browns. After spending two years as an external film analyst for the franchise, he stepped into a new, expanded role with the team--doing math every step of the way.
“My brain is just so math-oriented—that's just always how I kind of view things—and watching the game of football, it's a different kind of math experience. I’m looking at different players and the data points that go with each player, like, how tall are they? How long are their arms? How fast are they? You can kind of create matchups with the data,” he explained. “And whether it's football, like a player running the ball for five yards, or some complex problem I was doing in school in a math theory class, to me it’s all just one big math problem, which I think is pretty cool.”
The path to math
For Miller, who was raised in Howard County not far from the University of Maryland campus, watching Maryland sports—and all kinds of college and pro sporting events—was a big part of growing up. After his older brother Benjamin (B.S. ’20, mechanical engineering) went to UMD, it was no surprise to anyone that Cole chose the same path.
“I've always been a huge Terps sports fan,” Miller explained. “My mom always says, ‘As long as you got in, I knew you were going to UMD when you were, like, 10 years old.’”
Miller always knew he wanted to study mathematics.
“I was always a math and science person versus a reading, writing and history person, so I knew I wanted to major in math. Math just leaves the door open to so many different possibilities, and it's used in everything we do,” Miller said. “One thing I love about math is there’s always a right answer. There's no writing a paragraph and then waiting for the teacher to decide whether what you're saying makes sense. With math, either you got the right answer, or you didn't. And that satisfaction when you finally get it right is something I really enjoy.”
At Maryland, Miller built a strong mathematical skill set thanks to a variety of challenging classes, from Professor Denny Gulick’s “awesome” proof and advanced theory course to a linear algebra course where Miller’s final project made his passion for sports a part of the equation.
“The ‘Applications of Linear Algebra’ class was super cool to me, and the final project was to use something that we had learned and apply it to whatever we wanted to. So, my project was taking this ranking system that we learned and applying it to different teams in Big Ten basketball, like, outside of the wins and losses, looking at the actual points and stats and then developing my own rankings for which teams were the best,” Miller explained. “That stands out as something that made me begin to see the connection between sports and analytics.”
‘The connection that became the dream’
Always a big football fan, Miller landed a job as a student coach with the Maryland Terrapins in his sophomore year, finding common denominators between math and football.
“I was working for the football team and also studying math, and that's when I really found both my passions kind of connecting,” he said. “As I was doing analytics for the coaching staff and taking all these math classes at the same time, it kind of merged the two in my head, and that was when I really made the connection that became the dream.”
For Miller, the next three years were a whirlwind. When he wasn’t studying math and going to class, he was traveling with the team, signaling play calls from the sidelines and collecting data to track player stats and boost recruiting. By the end of his senior year, he knew he wanted both math and football to be part of his future.
“I didn't think coaching was the right path for me, but I wanted to still work in football if possible, so I was sending out resumes, and I was applying to normal 9-to-5 desk jobs as well,” he recalled. “I remember at one point I interviewed at a financial advising place, and I was just sitting there thinking to myself, this job might be perfect, but it’s just not for me.”
After graduation, when Miller landed a position as an external film analyst with the Cleveland Browns’ personnel and scouting team, he knew he’d found the ideal opportunity.
“They were like, ‘We think your background and what you want to do in football could match well with us on the scouting side of things,’ and as I got into this work with the scouting team, I knew I was home,” Miller said. “Watching film, breaking down games of different guys and their play-by-play, then throwing it all together and trying to project who's going to be the face of the franchise, which players are going to be a part of the team’s future and how we think they can make an impact on the team, it was all really cool. I wanted to keep learning more and more.”
Now as a scouting assistant for the Browns, Miller is still learning and developing the skills to evaluate players. And behind every player and every play, Miller still sees math all day long.
“The job is about data analytics, taking the stats and also the player evaluation side of things, and combining all of it to project how you think these players will continue to grow, and how they could be a fit on an NFL-level team. It’s numbers, and analyzing and problem solving, and so yeah, there's definitely math,” Miller said. “For me and how my brain works, everything about this is a big math problem, so I’m grateful for all the things I learned at Maryland that really apply to this field.”
Looking to his future in football, Miller’s still not sure exactly where this path will take him, but he knows that right now, he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.
“Football and what I'm doing now, this is where my heart is; it’s what I really wanted to do, and I know I’m super fortunate to be where I am,” Miller said. “I want to keep working my way up in the scouting side of things in football, and if I can keep learning and building on what I'm doing here in Cleveland, that would be awesome. I wouldn't want to be doing anything else.”
