By River Mitchell
@rivermitchell27
Throughout his life, Marcellus Bowie has shown an unwavering passion for sports. As an intern with the McDonald’s All-American Game and Virginia State University’s sports information department, Bowie climbed his way up the ladder.
In 2013, he founded Legit Stats. Since then, he has served as its CEO.
Legit Stats tracks statistics for various events across the United States. Since its inception, Legit Stats has provided important data for more than 4,000 teams, games and events. One of those events is the Hoophall Classic, where his company is in its fourth year of providing stats at Hoophall – which a younger Bowie had always dreamed of.
“One of my goals when I first started was to be the statistician for Hoophall,” Bowie said. “At the very beginning, that was one of the goals.”
After graduating from VSU in the winter of 2012, Bowie continued as the school’s unofficial Assistant Sports Information Director during the spring semester. At the same time, he worked for Nike and the EYBL (Elite Youth Basketball League). After the spring semester, Bowie went back home and decided to pursue a career as a statistician.
“I know how to do stats. D.C. has a lot of athletics going on, especially basketball,” Bowie said. “Over the course of the next three-to-four months, I just started working with high school football teams, basketball teams and from there Legit Stats was created.”
After doing that for several months, Bowie got the opportunity to cover his first big event during the MLK Hoopfest in 2014. Someone noticed Bowie at the event and offered to pay for all of his expenses to come to their event, taking place the following weekend.
“That event ended up having a game with a local unranked team playing against a top 25 team,” Bowie said. “Game goes into triple overtime, ends up getting 40,000 hits on the website [and] from there all these people find out about it. Legit Stats kind of just took off from there.”
With many stats on various websites being inflated and illegitimate, Bowie has also found a need to produce a product that is legitimate. Bowie has also seen the company steadily grow since its founding. Now able to go across the country to different events and having employees, Bowie can expand his business from where it started roughly a decade ago. He has also been able to sell data analytics to various teams, growing the business from an analytic standpoint.
“Being able to expand nationally, that’s probably the biggest thing,” Bowie said. “Getting to travel [and] watch basketball, I feel like I’m not working any days of my life.”
Since seeing his brand and platform grow, Bowie has used his standing to help the younger generation get jobs working in sports. Former interns at Legit have gone on to work for the New York Yankees, Washington Wizards and St. Louis Cardinals. One of his former interns, Keshawne Perkins, was working at Food Lion before he was hired by Legit Stats. When the New York Jets reached out to see if Legit Stats had interns who had experience in data analytics. After working for the Jets, the former intern is now part of the statistical team for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“Knowing he was working at Food Lion before and now he’s working for the Steelers, that’s cool,” Bowie said. “That’s probably the biggest thing for me.”
When looking back on how far he’s come, Bowie recognizes he wouldn’t be where he is today if it weren’t for the internships he’s had. Throughout his work, he hopes to inspire the next generation, as he expressed the importance of getting one’s foot in the door and getting involved.
“Honestly, just start,” Bowie said. “Just finding a place to get some experience, even if it’s voluntary. You’re not going to be voluntary forever. Once you get started, you’re going to meet somebody, and they’re going to help you along the way. If you stay consistent and continue to do that, you’re going to elevate.”