February 6, 2026

by Lauren Ferguson

Alexandre Olbrecht has spent the last 20 years as a professor of economics at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

In that time, Olbrecht has also become an expert on sports analytics, with his work appearing in academic journals such as the Journal of Sports Economics and the International Journal of Sport Management and in media outlets such as ESPN and Football Outsiders.

“I have always been a sports fan, and I am a statistician … and it just kind of snowballed,” Olbrecht said.

Over the years, he has authored or co-authored research papers on topics such as the economic return of college attendance for Major League Baseball players, whether college athletes earn more in the workforce, and a predictive model of entry into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

Other papers he has co-authored delve into evidence of racial discrimination against Black National Basketball Association (NBA) players from the 1950’s to the 2010’s related to the anonymous electors in the league’s hall of fame, and the significant difference in the percentage of incorrect referee calls in NBA games where there is a narrow betting gap between the favored team and the underdog team.

Predicting NFL Careers

About a decade ago, Jeremy Rosen ‘17, a mathematics major and economics minor, approached Olbrecht about doing a research project for his honors thesis. The pair started thinking about how statistics could be used to improve the selection of quarterbacks during the National Football League (NFL) draft.

Their research yielded an advanced statistical model and mathematical methodology to predict how well college quarterbacks will perform during their NFL careers. It debuted on Footballoutsiders.com, and an academic version of their work was published in Contemporary Economic Policy.

Eventually, their model was combined with another model that predicted quarterback performance, to produce QBASE 2.0, a top quarterback predictor now housed on ESPN.com.

In recent years, Olbrecht said, statistics and analytics have played a greater role in the decision-making of professional coaches.

In the NFL, decisions like “going for it on fourth down,” attempting a field goal, or trying for a two-point conversion, “used to be just kind of the coach’s gut decision,” he said. “Now there are some statistics behind it, essentially feeding into the coaches.”

Creating Meaningful Experiences for Students

Olbrecht also serves as the executive director of the Eastern Economic Association (EEA), a not-for-profit corporation that promotes educational and scholarly exchange on economic affairs, headquartered in Ramapo’s Anisfield School of Business.

Alexandre Olbrecht is a professor of economics at Ramapo College of New Jersey and the executive director of the Eastern Economic Association.

Ramapo students have presented at the association’s annual conference, published papers in its Eastern Economic Journal, and worked as hands-on student assistants for Olbrecht. The experiences have been invaluable. “We have a long list of students who have gone onto PhD programs since the Eastern Economic Association arrived,” he said.

Olbrecht enjoys being a professor at Ramapo, in part, he said, because the college gives faculty the resources they need to be effective teachers, and “it is nice to be around colleagues that love to teach.”

Professors are given the freedom to “really get creative and to create meaningful experiences for our students,” he said.

He has developed a sports economics class, and worked with the nursing program to develop a health economics course, he said. An American Red Cross-certified water safety instructor, he has even teamed with Head Men’s and Women’s Swim Coach Gary Orr and student-athlete swimmers to create and implement a water safety class for Ramapo employees.

Ramapo’s proximity to New York City has also allowed for experiential learning activities, like requiring students studying the economies of different countries to visit their embassies.

Olbrecht said he enjoys working with students, especially first-generation college students, and helping them to thrive.

“As a group, they tend to be very driven. They want to be there. They realize that going to college is a privilege, and is something that no one else in their family has done,” he said of the first-generation students he has taught over the years. “And so you, as a faculty member, really have the opportunity to help them grow.”