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Culture April 11, 2017
Students at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois could get paid for playing video games competitively.
Illinois College is going to pay students to play video games.
You read that right. The Jacksonville, Illinois institution will offer scholarships for playing video games starting this fall. How’s that for a “waste of time,” mom?
The popularity of eSports – which have even been featured on CNN – has led to a wealth of sponsors as well as large prizes and other incentives. So colleges like Illinois hope to jump on the bandwagon with their own competitive teams.
In addition to offering scholarships, Illinois will employ coach Christian Matlock to lead varsity and junior varsity teams in competition. And to those sticking their noses up at gamers – competitions like the 2016 World Championships boast a prize pool of more than $6 million dollars.
Can’t say my time on University magazine staffs ever helped me out like that. Students competing in the Collegiate Starleague can win even more prizes and scholarships… and I’m seriously regretting not learning how to play more than Crash Bandicoot on Playstation.
They compete in Riot’s multi-player game, League of Legends. And Coach Matlock wants haters to know – they work hard. “The biggest misconception about eSports is the traditional stereotype that seems to accompany video games — the generalization that players are lazy and unmotivated. I have found that top players in our program are equally competitive and disciplined to their craft as any of our top athletes in traditional sports,” he tells Herald & Review.
So… who cares about hitting the books, right? You want that scholarship money, just grab the controller.
