Scholarships now available at UC Irvine for being good at eSports
League of Legends is one of those rare games that have taken pop culture by storm, joining the ranks of the Minecraft, Call of Duty, and World of Warcraft's of the world as addictive games with huge fanbases that even the most casual of casual gamer at least has a passing awareness of. And like all those other games, the people who partake in dozens of hours of League are often chastised by others, pressured into feeling that the time they spend doing something they love is a waste.
Well listen up League of Legends players: now you can shove all that negativity back into those poor people's faces, because your League play could end up paying for your college education.
That is if you're thinking of attending the University of California, Irvine, which announced earlier this week that they will be awarding scholarships to talented League of Legends players starting in the Fall 2016 semester. The university is also teaming up with Riot Games to create a new PC cafe on campus for all students to use. Well LoL will obviously be a big part of the cafe, it will also support other competitive games as well.
"We think esports is growing quickly. We don't think we're going to be the last school to do this. We think we're going to be one of the schools that really encourages particularly public schools and shows them that this is really a viable thing."
That is a quote from Mark Deppe, the new esports director at the University of California (a title that alone supports Deppe's statement, by the way). We just hope this not only spreads to other colleges, but to other games as well. Man, I would love to go back to school and have it be paid for just because I am godlike at Street Fighter. That is living the dream, my friends.
But do you think this will take off and be viable? We think so, or hope so, at least. eSports is clearly growing at an insane rate, and it's going to be fascinating to see where it goes from here. 10 years from now, will the level of scholarships offered in the eSports realm match that of standard sports? Probably not but, hey, it's a start, right?
