I had a similar experience with a personal project. I scrapped NFL player/game stats dating back past 2000 and spent a bunch of time on the data, feature engin

I had a similar experience with a personal project. I scrapped NFL player/game stats dating back past 2000 and spent a bunch of time on the data, feature engineering, and modeling. Although my original goal was to beat vegas models (got to even in some metrics, but not enough to cover the juice), it ended up being the best line on my resume. Every interviewer during my last job search asked about it, and it was very easy to talk about. I did make money in the end however, but only because I was buying bitcoins to gamble with in the 2017 season.