The University of Pikeville has become one of the small number of American institutions of higher learning to add competitive gaming to the list of sports programs they offer scholarships for.
Yahoo! News spoke to coach and alumni Eric VanHoose, as well as Pikeville’s new media director Bruce Parsons, about the program, which plans to offere 20 scholarships for players matriculating in the Fall 2015 semester.
“It will be a regime a lot like athletics,” Parsons said. “[Students will] have to have a certain GPA. We’ll look at them like student athletes. There will be practice time and video time when they have to study other teams for upcoming competitions.”
Presumably players will also be held to certain standards of behavior in game and out, as are many student athletes in traditional sports. At least for their own sakes, if not so that they don’t run afoul of League of Legends‘ community moderators, who have not hesitated to ban professional LoL players for violations of their code of conduct. And, ladies, as a sport, the scholarships must obey Title Nine rules, so apply, apply, apply.
