Test 2

The National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE), the group that has seemingly emerged as the premiere governing body for “varsity”-level esports, has swelled to 128 members. It began in 2016 with six colleges and universities. The current slew of member colleges gave out just under $15 million in scholarships this academic year for students to strap on a headset, grab a mouse and keyboard, and enter the digital fray.

The esports allure for university executives is multifold but summed up succinctly for many institutions: enrollment boosts (although larger colleges and universities that are certainly not wanting for students also sponsor programs).

Granting scholarships to play video games, once perhaps just a Red Bull-fueled fantasy, attracts students -- especially men, who are in the minority in many undergraduate student bodies. And so officials have invested in pricey “arenas” for esports, spaces decked out with gigantic flat screens, slick computers and the best gaming accessories. One small private institution, New England College, with an enrollment of around 1,800 undergraduate students, and a prospective esports team of between 20 and 40 students, poured about $60,000 into its arena.

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While industry representatives agree that a regulatory body will inevitably materialize, no one is clear how it will actually come about. NACE seems to dominate the market among colleges, with 94 percent of programs in the country signing on.

But Ohio State University, a major player in NCAA athletics, announced in October it would compete in a league commissioned by the Electronic Gaming Federation, which is separate from NACE. Ohio State also introduced undergraduate and graduate degrees in esports. Its team is not housed under athletics.

And so despite NACE, a subsidiary of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, no universally recognized entity exists to enforce rules or make sure programs are consistent across the country. For all the criticism heaped on the NCAA, it tries to ensure fairness in the collegiate athletics system with certain policies -- limits on numbers of practices, for example. There is no equivalent watchdog for esports.

Whether the NCAA will step in to remedy these inconsistencies remains unknown. Contorting the NCAA model and its stringent amateurism rules to fit esports makes it an unlikely, if not unachievable possibility. For instance: the NCAA maintains a hard line that athletes can’t be paid for their sports skills, but college esports players often participate in tournaments where they can rake in thousands of dollars in prize money. They are often paid for broadcasts on Twitch, an Amazon-owned service for live-streaming.

This punishment is the best thing that could have happened to Penn State. Well, it’s the second best. The best thing would have been for the NCAA to issue a death penalty and for [NCAA President Mark Emmert] to avoid grandstanding about how his organization was concerned that programs like Penn State were “too big to fail” and that “these events should serve as a call to every single school and athletics department to take an honest look at its campus environment and eradicate the 'sports are king’ mind-set that can so dramatically cloud the judgment of educators.” No one takes Emmert seriously when he claims to represent the values of education over athletics. But still, the entire Penn State community has the opportunity to live up to that ideal now. Penn State is a university, not a football program. 

In 1989, the NCAA handed the University of Oklahoma a series of sanctions for recruiting violations and a general culture of mismanagement led by coach Barry Switzer. The big news that precipitated those sanctions included a star player being arrested while trying to sell cocaine to an undercover FBI agent. Five years later, the university hired former Sen. David Boren to be its president. Since then, Oklahoma has grown in stature as a major research university. Along the way, the football team came back to prominence, winning a national championship in 2000. As a Texas Longhorn, it’s not easy for me to say nice things about the University of Oklahoma. But those 1989 sanctions helped the university right itself and focus on rebuilding its academic and athletic reputations. Everyone who has graduated from Oklahoma since 1989 should be grateful. 

Penn State is in a much stronger position than either SMU or Oklahoma was. It does not have to work that hard to convince people that it is a top-flight academic institution. In fact, for all his deep moral failings, Paterno consistently supported the university’s academic mission with his own money. And he boasted about the character of his players. Alabama worships Bear Bryant for his wins. Pennsylvania admired Paterno for his values—until recently. Most importantly, Penn State’s presence across the state offers it daily and powerful evidence of the service it provides and the lives it improves.