Footballs are being changed out for computer mouses as Esports continues to get more popular. One the most popular Esports games, League of Legends, has a club at Augustana.
The League of Legends club began about two years ago when a student decided to get thrifty in Olin.
“The story that I heard was that a person from Anime club just decided to come into Olin and steal the ethernet cords and used them to play League of Legends,” Thomas said. “Some other people joined in and my freshman year, I joined playing them and said, “why don’t we make this a thing so we could possible be sponsored by Riot (Games)?’”
Thomas said the club is to give people who play League of Legends a place to hang out.
“It’s to create a chill environment where people can play together and work together,” Thomas said. “It’s a lot more fun when you play with people you know and don’t have to play with mean people.”
Beyond the chill environment, the League of Legends club wants to participate in tournaments.
“We are hoping we can get an official, competing team going,” Thomas said. “As of now, we have done one drop-in tournament and we’ll just see where it goes.”
The drop-in tournament was when the club entered an online tournament on a Saturday. Only “solo” players were allowed, meaning that the club couldn’t put together a team for this tournament.
League of Legends club president Brian Hook is hoping to get larger with time.
“Right now our club is a small one, but we know that many people on campus play League of Legends,” Hook said. “Our first step to growing and evolving is getting our club more recognition on campus.”
Esports has been growing since the start of games like League of Legends, Dota II, and Smite. While Esports also considers professional gaming for popular titles such as Call of Duty, Halo, and other online games, League of Legends and other MOBAs, Massive Online Battle Arenas, have been drawing millions of fans.
During the recent LCS, League Championship Series, over 30 million people watched the event from both the stadium that hosted the championship tournament and streaming the game from twitch.tv.
The winnings of said tournament was $2,130,000, the fourth largest amount given in an Esports competition. Dota II gave out winnings of $18,429,613.05 in their international 2015.
Esports have even become so popular that ESPN has played some highlights of Esports tournaments.
Hook believes the reason why Esports continues to grow and become more popular is the appeal to this generation.
“Esports are still fairly new and many people of this generation play video games and/or watch people play them via YouTube, Twitch.tv, or just their friends playing,” Hook said.  “If you look at some of the worlds most popular games, League of Legends, CS: So, Dota 2, the communities only keep growing and show no sign of stopping anytime soon.”