Esports Impacts Ole Miss

Jeffrey Rodriguez-Cano
HottyToddy.com Intern

Everyone knows how huge football, baseball and basketball are at Ole Miss, but there are other sports organizations on campus that deserve the same attention. One such organization is Ole Miss Esports, the premier esports organization at Ole Miss that was founded three years ago. 

UM exercise science professor Thomas Andre (right) monitors student researchers Gunner Rhoden (left) and Damon Cox while they are equipped with technologies that monitor electrical and muscular functions of the heart, eye movement and pupil size as well as player accuracy and reaction time. Photo by Joey Brent

At this point, you might be wondering; what even is esports? Esports, also known as electronic sports, is competitive video gaming. A seemingly new concept that’s been around for longer than you’d think. The Red Annihilation tournament in 1997 is considered to be the first esports tournament, featuring the computer game Quake and hosting over 2,000 entrants. The first televised esports tournament was a Halo 2 in 2006, hosted by Major League Gaming and shown on the USA Network.

Today, you can find tournaments for esports games such as League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 on TV channels like TBS or even ESPN. However, many esports fans choose to watch tournaments online on Twitch, a live-streaming website where gamers broadcast themselves playing video games to hundreds or even thousands of viewers.

Ole Miss Esports began as a League of Legends club and has since grown into an organization that professionally contracts its players to compete in a variety of esports titles including Call of Duty, Rocket League and Super Smash Bros: Ultimate. Sergio Brack, a Chicago native and recently-appointed President of Ole Miss Esports, gives details about how the organization has grown since he first joined two years ago.

“I was scrolling through the League of Legends category on Twitch and watched a game between two universities’ esports organizations,” Brack said. “I wanted to know if my school had that too, so I googled ‘Ole Miss Esports.’ I found out there was a meeting the very next day, so I went.”

When Brack attended the meeting, there were only eight people there, and none of them played his game of choice, Call of Duty.

“I’ve been competing in Call of Duty since middle school, so when I joined, I immediately asked the president at the time if I could start a team. He approved, and that’s when I starting becoming more involved in the organization. Over time I became the Head of Competitive, and now I’m President.”

Since then, the number of students active in Ole Miss Esports has grown tremendously, and they now travel to compete with different universities in various titles.

“Last semester, we traveled to Mississippi State to compete with them in the Esports Eggbowl,” Brack said. “On March 28-29, we’re going to compete in Volan, a tournament that’s being hosted by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.”

Not only is Ole Miss Esports traveling to compete, but they’re also hosting their own tournament right in Oxford.

“This semester we’re also running an event called LANshark on April 18 and 19,” Brack said. “The event is also in collaboration with Rebel Rumble, an event that’s more focused on fighting games.”

LANshark is an invitational event for Overwatch, Rocket League and Rainbow Six Siege. The event is also hosting a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare tournament that’s open to all college students. Rebel Rumble is an open tournament that will feature fighting games such as Super Smash Bros: Ultimate and Tekken 7.

With this event and the rest of the spring semester on the horizon, Brack hopes that Ole Miss Esports will become a more well-known organization on campus.

“This semester I want to work really hard to be more transparent not only with Ole Miss Esports members, but with the general student body,” Brack said. “I want to students to not be surprised when they hear we have an esports organization. I want students to come to Ole Miss because of esports. Someday down the line, I’m hoping that we can offer scholarships to students and have our own facility on campus.”

Even if students aren’t familiar with esports, Brack wants to make an effort to welcome anyone who is interested in the organization.

“If you don’t know about esports, and you want to get involved, we have a lot of opportunities for everyone and we’re all willing to teach anyone.”

For more information about how to join, you can make a Discord account and follow the link to the Ole Miss Esports chatroom sever, which can be found on their Twitter and Instagram pages.