College has always been thought of as something that people go to for academics or athletics and to get a degree to help them in the “real world.” Scholarships are handed out for things from athletics and academics to race and being multilingual.

But now scholarships are being handed out for video games. Students are able to attain scholarships based on their skill in certain video games including League of Legends, CS: GO, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm and other games as well.  ESports Scholarships have been handed out for a few years now starting back in 2014 with Robert Morris University in Illinois.

Since 2014, the college eSports scene has grown drastically with over 450 programs and a national governing body known as the National Association of Collegiate eSports (NACE) as the main governing organization.

This year, Riot Games – the creators of the world’s biggest computer game “League of Legends” – has extended their partnership with the Big Ten Network through 2019. Teams from all 14 Big Ten Conference schools will be participating in a competition funded by Riot Games where teams will play against each other with $35,000 given to each team and a big scholarship reward to the team that wins.

College eSports is expected to double in scholarship funds and continue growing and adding more and more programs for eSports in the future. The NCAA is expected to release a report on how they would want to get involved with eSports in college sometime in April.

Some of the colleges that have eSports programs include:

• Robert Morris University (Illinois)
• Georgia State University
• Georgia Southern University
• Miami (Ohio) University
• Maryville University
• Texas Wesleyan
• University of Akron
• University of California-Irvine
• University of Utah
• Western Kentucky University
• Illinois College
• Michigan State
• Etc…

The future is promising for college eSports. To get involved you can visit NACE to find out more.