University of Minnesota’s LoL Team Wants Official Sports Recognition
The fight for recognition of eSports as a legitimate sport at the university and college level continues on as University of Minnesota’s LoL team aims to unlock student-athlete status. In doing so, they would also be getting their eSports competition credited as an official sport. Currently, several North American college and university has official university scholarships for eSports, but eSports, itself, is not a part of the NCAA.
Aside from earning that status, The Star Tribune reports, “The [University of Minnesota’s LoL] team wants the university’s athletics department to grant them a devoted team lounge, open 24/7, with increased internet speeds.” A team member, Jeff Wang, argues that they compete just as hard as traditional university athletics.
Building such a space may be a win-win situation. Afterall, if the NCAA takes in eSports, then the university with the best facilities will look quite appealing to potential eSports prospects too. In case you’re wondering, yes, South Korea does officially recognize eSports as an official sport, and does give student-athlete status. While there’s certainly a critical distance in how both cultures view eSports, it’d be future-facing for North American universities to plan ahead and build such facilities.
While the rise of eSports is not a new issue by any means, the combination of gamer and student-athlete does raise some intriguing issues. Outlined in an article by The eSports Observer, there are some issues that need to be tackled or adjusted as the hypothetical eSports student-athlete would disrupt the current status quo for college students who competitively play eSports. For instance, earning from streaming would be a violation of a student-athlete in this case. More importantly, they’d be would be barred from competing at amateur competitions during any year in which the student-athlete is a member of an intercollegiate squad.
While there are potential hurdles for the University of Minnesota’s LoL team here, here’s hoping this conversation will lead to some serious buffs for the college eSports players.