eSports at SDSU

 


        

    With the current rise of esports around the nation it holds an uncertain future of either success or failure. Many schools have already bought into the rise of esports with college shelling out money to create event stadiums and practice facilities with top of the line computers. There are even some schools that are creating scholarships to draw in esport athletes in their respective games. The colleges can vary from the D1 level all the way down to community college level. Most of these schools take the esports scene very seriously with hiring coaches and designating practice times. The esport athletes are held to the same standard as other athletics are in the academic aspect as well.

           South Dakota State University also has their own esport club here on campus. It is student ran but the club has talked to the university for funding in a room designated to the club and hopefully in due time to also recognize the esports as an official sport at SDSU. The students in the club are currently using their own equipment which may not be top of the line while compared to other schools they might have top of the line which draws them to a disadvantage. Currently SDSU has a team going to nationals in the popular Nintendo game super smash bros. SDSU has seen success in all of their teams as well.

            I am involved with SDSU's Call of Duty team so I will talk about this aspect of the esports team. We are currently enrolled in the College CoD League (CCL). The league itself is fairly new as it is in it's third year of operations. The league features some of the biggest up and coming players. The CCL and Call of Duty League (professional level of Cod). The CCL works very close with the CDL which would benefit both CDL and CCL. The CCL has some support of some of the biggest names in the CDL. The CDL averages around 50,000 viewers a stream with even more attending the event. With some of the biggest teams in the CDL going against each other it can sometime reach over 120,000 people watching the stream. The CCL defiantly doesn't put up those numbers but within this last year they have grown a lot. Last year there was a total of around 40 teams in the league and this year there is 180 plus teams. The viewership in the CCL has gone up as well. It averaged a couple hundred last year while this year they averaged around 5,000 and peaked today at 20,000 viewers! 

        With esports being at a low expense sport it would be easy to maintain with very low cost other than the initial starting up process. SDSU should start creating their esport teams before the boom of what more than likely will happen. It would be something great for the school to start marketing to potential students. 

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