The First Ever College Esports Team by Christian Hotte

Esports has been around for a while, its roots going all the way back to 1972 at Stanford University where the very first official gaming competition was held. Since then, they have become surprisingly popular, especially in more technologically integrated countries such as Japan and South Korea.

Recent advancements in network and graphics technologies haven only made Esports more enjoyable to watch and more exciting to compete in, and the popularity of the medium has been steadily increasing as a result.  This year’s League of Legends Championships, for example, garnered a crowd of over 36 million fans in total (with concurrent viewership peaking at 15 million) and a prize pool of more than $5,000,000.  To put these numbers into perspective, the 2016 NBA finals gathered an average nationwide TV viewership of only 20.2 million people.

Esports are a big deal, and if you know this already then you might be interested to hear that colleges are starting to think so too.  Yes, certain colleges, namely Robert Morris University (the first ever to have an athletic scholarship program for pro gamers), have kicked off their very own varsity gaming teams, complete with all the amenities, funding and attention the more traditional college sports programs receive.

This is a brand new frontier for interactive entertainment media, and if you are at all interested in pursuing a career related to games then this may be an opportunity to take seriously.  I encourage anyone and everyone to help spread the word about programs like this, which allow people to express their passion of competition and gaming while earning an education for doing so.

If you are interested, this link will direct you to the website for the National Collegiate Esports Association for more information:  http://ww.ncespa.com/about