Why One School Is Giving Out League of Legends Scholarships

I'm commenting, too!

For profit schools are the worst.

The article is the kind of quality writing we have come to expect @patrickklepek, thank you for the work. The story itself is pretty interesting too. I am curious to see how this type of thing expands and grows at a collegiate level. While at first it seems like the only response would be "Are you fucking kidding me?" I think that much like traditional sports in their infancy, the question of revenue generation is more about infrastructure and support than about potential and interest. Obviously there is interest in the game itself, and certainly the potential to generate revenue is there. I mean, take The International 4, for instance. Crowd funding and public support put that tournament over 10 million dollars in prize money, is it not possible that a collegiate league could use a similar crowd funding model to build a collegiate tournament, particularly if Riot Games supports the initiative in a similar manner to Valve's support of professional Dota 2 teams and content creators.

@branthog: @amirite: I agree with you guys and share that mindset of "fuck the haters" regardless of terminology. What irks me is when people dismiss the entire activity based solely on that terminology. you even see it on forums like this where people theoretically love and are passionate about videogames. Whenever the topic is brought up people feel the need to bring down competitive gaming as a whole and the players just because of the term that stuck. Taking issue with the term is fine, but taking issue with the scene because of the term is shitty.

On the subject of a better term, I think bringing up poker may have cracked it for me. I was young(middle school I think) when the poker craze hit, but I still kind of got caught up in it. I don't believe it was ever called a sport. I also don't believe it was ever called competitive cards/poker/anything. I do remember The World Series of Poker and whatever else certain tournaments or leagues happened to be named. I think this might be a way to approach competitive gaming. Right now the term "esports" is used far more than the word "sports" is(I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) despite there being more sports that people consider legitimate. It would be simple to refer to things on a game by game basis and even a league by league basis. The big League of Legends thing is already the LCS(League of Legends Championship Series. Though it is called LPL and GPL in Korea and China), yet they feel the need to throw the phrase esports into their presentation of the LCS. Starcraft 2 has the GSL, fighting games have named tournaments throughout the year until eventually reaching EVO. I don't see much of a need for a catch-all term unless you're talking about the entire idea of video games as a competition conceptually. In that case I think something like "competitive gaming" is fine since it wouldn't be the first thing someone hears when being introduced to it. They would hear the name of the game, league, or tournament. If they wanted to know more then the term would come into play as the entire movement was explained.

One final thing(it won't let me tag for some reason, this is for amirite). I don't care if people like or hate it, I just think that a lot of people hate it for the stupidest reason possible. And I also don't like when people diminish what these guys do. As someone who has put a lot of time into Starcraft II(DIamond teetering on Master at one point) and League of Legends(platinum highest reached so far, but man fuck the matchmaking sometimes. I think I'm still significantly better than where I'm at) these games are fucking hard. The pros practice and train just like athletes do. It's absolutely a different skill set, but I don't think one is any harder than the other. The problem doesn't arise from comparing things that are too different, it comes from people thinking that oranges should be vegetables because they're a joke compared to fruits.

I think the word "eSports" itself is one of the big hangups for people when it comes to accepting competitive gaming. Some people tend to get up in arms when you associate video games even remotely with a sport. I can't remember if it was the Bombcast or another podcast, but someone mentioned renaming the term to something like "cyber games" which I think would think go a long way in quelling those who see the word "sport" and automatically become dismissive.

I don't think "esports" is the issue but again just like other sports paying amateurs to be on a team for the school and expecting to do anything with it like "go pro" is crazy. This is stuff schools really shouldn't get into at all.

Riot pretty much controls a lot in terms of their competitive gaming scene. They're the ones who are giving the allowances to the players (even though the players are managed by teams that are not owned by Riot), setting up the tournaments, etc. but since the scholarship program in this school already has a direct relationship with Riot via Ferris Ganzman, they can probably work some things out in terms of any ethical issues that might arise. Riot already has a dedicated team that they employed specifically to research online behavior with their community and how they can manage it, I guess they should also have a small team that is also dedicated to the collegiate scholarship aspect of it as well.

That's why I also subscribe to using the term "competitive (video) gaming" as opposed to the term "e-Sports". David Philip Graham, a prominent fighting game commentator who is also an attorney, wrote about this a year ago and how he is also pretty much against the use of "sports" as a way to legitimize the various competitive gaming scenes. Its the fastest way to get legitimacy but then there are also some associated caveats to it as well and he feels that its better that "competitive gaming" should try to stand on its own merits rather than try to use the term "e-Sports" and trying very hard to associate it with various types of sports in order to gain legitimacy.

It's a very long editorial but if any of you duders got some free time, I suggest reading that article. He tries to frame it from a fictional perspective in the future where "e-Sports" is extremely popular at the start of every section and then proceeds to makes some very good points in terms of the caveats/disadvantages.

Just for my own clarification, what is the harm in schools giving sports/esports scholarships? Yes 98% of college athletes will not "go pro", they just simply move on in life with the education they received while in school. The argument of calling it e-sports or whatever aside, I see this as a step in the direction of having competitive gaming going mainstream, which in my opinion is a good thing.

"I told my athletic director, 'I’m gonna bring an idea to you, and I want you to be open minded.'" he said. "She was! [laughs] There’s a little buy-in [with it], but once you explain it, what goes into it, and what it’s like, it has all the same elements as traditional sports do. It fits hand-in-hand."

Except for... you know, the athletics part...

I wouldn't call sitting down and playing a PC game exactly comparable to other sports that require tons of actual physical training. The whole E-sports moniker is dumb, and should really be renamed.

No you see he said he could care less which means that on some level he cares enough to comment!

("I could care less" is an American phrase I'll never understand. Surely it's "I couldn't care less?")

The same harm that happens when schools give kids who really couldn't handle or afford university a football scholarship. They end up "moving on" but with a goofy degree and end up in a job that isn't even part of the career. The idea that this is okay because it makes it mainstream is farce because in a lot of ways other US college sports is a giant farce!

So again, if Riot, EA, Valve, or who ever wants to give out scholar ships because they play their games then that is fine but unless that school is handing out a degree "Bachelor of Science in Sports" then schools shouldn't pay kids to play their school so a bunch of other people get rich.

This is not even remotely a BuzzFeed headline. If anything, it's more like the title of a research paper. Inserting the word "why" into a headline doesn't automatically qualify it as click-bait.