Welcome to uLoL: The Collegiate Esports Tournament Modeled after March Madness

Video games and post-secondary studies don't typically mix well. Usually it's a pick-one scenario: If you want to do well in university or college, you have to ditch most of the video games you spent Saturday nights in Grade 10 playing. Conversely, if you want to rip PC games all night, chances are you won't mesh well with the thought of an 8 AM lecture. But as John F. Kennedy once said (probably not in relation to video games), "Change is the law of life."

"Changed" is an understatement when describing the shift competitive gaming has seen over the last decade. Professional esports teams now take home multi-million dollar purses. And some matches can draw in more viewers than professional sports leagues' marquee events. In terms of high-level sport, there has to be an in-between—a place where players who aren't quite at the professional level can excel. Something like the NCAA in the United States, or the CIS in Canada. Welcome to collegiate esports.

Go back almost a year ago, to a giant hangar in Santa Monica, California. The sun is shining down, but throngs of fans are packed indoors cheering for ten university students huddled in front of their computers. The computer game League of Legends' second-ever North American Collegiate Championship (NACC) is taking place. A ragtag University of British Columbia (UBC) team is competing against esports powerhouse Robert Morris University (RMU). Bob "bobqinxD" Qin, a UBC student, sits at his computer with a huge grin on his face, despite the fact he just died. Qin sacrificed his in-game champion to turn the tides of the final team fight, resulting in a decisive victory and completing the sweep against RMU in a best-of-five series. As Victory flashes across the giant display above the stage, the five teammates throw down their headsets like baseball players toss helmets to the sky after walk-off homers and jump into each other's arms.

These five students just secured school pride and close to $200,000, simply for excelling at a video game.

In 2016, the NACC is back and rebranded as the uLoL Campus Series. Over 500 teams from across Canada and the United States competed to reach the final 32. From there, teams were divided into East, West, North and South conferences based roughly on location. Five Canadian schools are represented in uLoL—Brock University, York University and the University of Toronto (all from Ontario) are three of the eight Eastern teams, and UBC and Simon Fraser University are two of the Western teams (both from British Columbia).

"We definitely modeled the tournament around the idea and excitement of March Madness," says Michael Sherman, lead organizer of the uLoL series. "From a brand perspective, we would love to be like that."

Every team in each conference plays each other once, in a best-of-two series. If you take both games, you pick up three points, and if you split the series, each school takes home a point. At the end of the regular season, the four teams leading in points from each conference advance. Those four teams enter an elimination bracket, eventually leaving one team per conference. The bracket continues, leaving two teams competing for the championship.

This year's championship will be a little different than prior years—no hangars this time. The company behind League of Legends, Riot Games, flew the final teams out to Boston gaming expo PAX East for the big tournament, running April 22-24. There, the championships will play out in front of 90,000-plus live fans. The match may last up to four hours, streaming live to additional hundreds of thousands of viewers. The winning team will hoist the uLoL cup and bring esports glory to their school. In addition, a cool $30,000 scholarship purse is awarded per winning team member, up to five starters and a sub. The other teams don't get stiffed, either—second place takes home $15,000 per player, and every player in the final 32 takes home at least $1,000. All in all, over $650,000 in scholarships will be won.

The money is there, but what exactly is League of Legends? The game is classified as multiplayer online battle arena, or MOBA. In League of Legends, two teams of five compete to destroy the other team's base, called a nexus. Players specialize in different roles, and these roles directly correspond to the map. There is a top laner, a mid laner, a jungler and two players in the bottom lane, the attack damage carry (ADC) and the support. Players begin a match by selecting one of over 120 champions to control, with each champion possessing unique abilities. These champions are selected during a pick-ban phase, where each team is allowed to ban three champs (usually ones the opposing team excels at) and then selects their own champ in a rotating sequence.

Imagine it as a sort of fantasy draft—mixed with rock, paper, scissors—where the best champs are hotly contested and are picked first. As the game progresses, the champions earn gold through neutral monster or enemy kills to buy items that will help them push and destroy the enemy nexus.

Michael "SoJaded" Bian, the starting support for the University of Toronto team, offers a comparison. "League is like an interesting combo of basketball and chess. In relation to basketball, there's five team members, all with distinctly different roles that need to work together to win," he explains. "Compared to chess, though, one move on one side of the map can have severe consequences on the other side. You need to enter every match with a clear strategy to win."

There's one question that has to be answered in order to further gauge expansion of the game. Is it fun to watch? "The game is friendly to newcomers. Even if you don't play, you can enjoy watching the competition," says Carman Lam, head of the UBC esports association. "There's team play, game knowledge, mechanics and objective control."

Couple this with the high energy from fans and commentators, and the spectator experience becomes pretty distinctive.

All things considered, collegiate esports should be huge—but it isn't. Clearly the problem isn't in viewer engagement, but more in the difficulty to actually watch the games. Out of the 32 games played every week in the regular season, only one was streamed to viewers. After that, only the semifinals and finals will be shown. This makes it hard to follow your school and develop rivalries. Sherman, the uLoL organizer, explains this decision-making.

"Collegiate is still in its infancy, so we need to make sure there's an appetite. I think it's really exciting to have 70-80 thousand people watch one college match than three or four thousand watch each individual match." Every rep from the uLoL teams I spoke with, however, informed me they want more coverage. A balance has to exist, and this increased access is something organizers should strive for in coming years.

Professional players are even taking note. Jason "WildTurtle" Tran is a Toronto native and the ADC on the top North American League Championship Series (NALCS) team, Immortals. "College teams are a great way to build the community," he says. "Considering if I wasn't in the NALCS I would be playing on one of those teams right now."

At this moment, the stage is set for the powerhouses of uLoL to face off on the April 22nd weekend. The four remaining teams are RMU, UBC, University of Maryland and Georgia Tech. You can tune in via the Riot Games channel on Twitch.tv. If we're so lucky, another historic chapter in competitive gaming will be written, securing top schools like UBC and RMU—both of which didn't lose a single regular-season game—as legitimate collegiate esports destinations.