Collegiate esports are growing rapidly, especially on the West Coast. Last month, eleven Pac-12 schools got together to form the Pacific Alliance of Collegiate Gamers (PACG). While not sponsored by the conference officially, every Pac-12 school besides the University of Washington is represented in the PACG.
11 student driven orgs from campuses across the @pac12 conference join together to bring you a semester long season of collegiate gameplay. Schools will fight in @LeagueOfLegends, @PlayOverwatch, @PlayHearthstone and @RocketLeague! #backthepacg
Read more https://t.co/XTgTXN3gJr pic.twitter.com/OnHGG5MeoO
— Pacific Alliance of Collegiate Gamers (@PacificACG) January 31, 2018
Last week, the Mountain West Conference announced its own esports initiative — the MW eSports Showdown — to be held at the 2018 Basketball Championships from March 8-10. Admission to the exhibitions held on March 8-9 in the Strip View Pavilion inside the Thomas and Mack Center is free for ticketholders of the basketball tournament, enabling fans to learn more about esports.
The event will showcase three popular esports – League of Legends, Rocket League and Overwatch – and will pit UNLV’s esports club (8-bit) against the varsity program at Boise State.
Dr. Chris Haskell is an Associate Professor and the Director of Esports at Boise State and believes this event “is just a stepping stone for the future of collegiate esports.”
“We believe that (esports) will, in the next decade, be bigger than every college sport besides football and basketball,” Haskell said. “We have our eyes set on something only a handful of people can see. We want an arena that fills up. Olympic esports athletes coming from our school. Esports broadcasters to graduate and get jobs in the industry. This event is a stepping stone to help us get there.”
For now, the event is only an exhibition between two of the schools but Haskell hopes this event will push other members of the conference towards esports.
“I hope this event will create good natured envy amongst the other institutions that are not participating,” Haskell said. “They say ‘hey what do we need to do to get started here?’ That’s the biggest outcome of this event.”
Conference support for esports has been tepid in the past. Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said in a press release “esports are a natural fit for our universities” in May 2016. However, the conference has fallen quiet since then.
The official stance in the Pac-12 is that they are not pursuing esports at this time. That prompted the varsity program at the University of Utah to align with other universities and help create the school sponsored PACG. Right now, Boise State is the Mountain West’s only varsity esports program, but that hasn’t stopped the conference from offering its support.
“As a Conference, we have never been reluctant to try new and different things, and I appreciate the encouragement and support of our University Presidents in bringing this exciting new initiative forward,” Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson said in a statement. “Globally, eSports is enjoying a boom in popularity – particularly among young people who are in the same age bracket as the students on our campuses. We are also seeing universities add eSports programming, technology and business to their curriculum offerings.”
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“For us it shows that the conference gets what we have been telling them about esports,” Haskell said. “We hope the lasting benefit is that the Mountain West will have an appetite for esports. Eventually we want to build an intercollegiate esports structure within the existing conference structure.”
For collegiate esports to get to that point, there will be plenty of hurdles including dealing with game developers, NCAA involvement and Title IX considerations. In the meantime, collegiate esports are mostly student run. Events like the MW eSports Showdown are important in gaining administrative support in the future.