When they escape from the tumultuous world of the video-game industry, some tech specialists are finding, a university looks like a good place to land. More colleges are hiring esports coaches lately, with the hope that they will attract gamers and fans to their campuses, and help prepare students to work in the $138-billion global industry.
“This is a very new field, and there isn’t exactly a rubric on how to do everything correctly,” says Michael Fay Jr., who became head coach and director of esports at the University of Akron this year.
The impetus for adding esports coaches often comes from students, who have long organized clubs and competitions around their favorite games. Esports coaches and program directors provide a formal structure that is expected to take the popular student activity to new levels, including the formation of conferences.
Fay remembers being in the audience for competitions at Robert Morris University Illinois, which he credits as having the first varsity esports program.
In the four years since then, such programs have spread. Four small colleges in Missouri, along with larger public institutions, like the University of California at Irvine, are advertising openings for esports coaches, who may be expected to build programs from the ground up. Fontbonne University, for instance, wants its esports coach to assist in the design of a new gaming arena.
Some colleges ask for experience with specific games — Savannah College of Art and Design is hiring a League of Legends and Overwatch coach — while others seek someone with general knowledge. Applicants are expected to be familiar with the rules of relatively new governing bodies, such as the two-year-old National Association of College Esports, or NACE, and to arrange competitions with other colleges. Like coaches of other sports, they must also foster students’ academic success.
At Akron, Fay oversees student coaches for each specific game and provides guidance “on more of the interpersonal aspects of competing with a team; things like communication, team-building, the psychological aspect of it, like managing your emotional state, mindfulness training.” His coaching is informed by his M.F.A. in emergent media from Champlain College, which was focused on the management of online video-game and esports communities, and a past job as a website search-optimization specialist, as well as experience as an amateur commentator on YouTube and a live streamer on the game-streaming service Twitch.
Student interest is strong. Fay recalls that 1,100 students applied to participate during the first month of the program last winter.
Esports tend to be situated outside the athletics department. At Akron, the program is housed within the honors college. Fay has collaborated with academic departments to build interdisciplinary courses around esports, for example, one in esports broadcasting that was held last summer.
Like other college administrators, esports coaches and directors worry about access — for women and minorities, in an activity that has until recently been dominated by white males, and for low-income students.
At Ohio State University, Deborah M. Grzybowski, co-director of game-studies and esports-curriculum development, and an associate professor of practice in engineering education, has been a longtime faculty adviser for the university’s esports student organization. She says equity goals need to be built into programs from the beginning, and notes that the leadership of Ohio State’s student organization has been predominantly female in recent years.
One of her colleagues at Ohio State, Brandon Smith, director of esports in the Office of Student Life, says the institution realized it needed to invest in an esports facility to make sure that students of all economic backgrounds have the opportunity to “try out some of the virtual reality and augmented-reality pieces,” in spite of their significant cost. Colleges hope that initial investments in equipment and arenas will pay off as their programs grow, he says.
Fay and other esports coaches also aim to raise general awareness about the games. While some faculty and staff members have volunteered to serve as club advisers, the video-game world “seems completely alien” to others in the campus community, says Fay. The opening of three gaming facilities at Akron in October has increased visibility.
Campus administrators hope that the opportunity to compete in esports will not only attract students to their colleges but keep them there. For instance, bringing esports facilities into residence halls may encourage students to live on campus “for more and more years,” Smith says.
Matthew Damschroder, vice president for student life and dean of students at Juniata College, which is seeking an esports coach, says officials hope that a formal esports program “would invite additional interest from students who might not be willing to consider us without it.”
Fay is confident that the need for esports coaches will continue to grow. “As more colleges and universities see their competitors starting to take this leap and seeing the amount of student interest that comes out of the woodwork to support programs like these,” he says, “I think that at one point we can start to see it as commonplace as an athletics program. I wouldn’t be surprised if it got that far.”
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