What do you think of gamers getting scholarships now?

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IMSilver wrote:

Higher education is an ENDANGERED ANIMAL on life support...! MOST """degrees""" are USELESS and OVERPRICED...! FACT

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k1rage wrote:

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鬼殺し wrote:

So they're probably trying to anticipate a shift then. Might work, might not. Probably worth the minimal gamble.

well like I say 90% of the sports programs dont make money anyway so even if its never successfully monetized some universities may support it especially those that specialize in technology

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Aim_Deep wrote:

Gaming IMO is not a productive activity it's actually unhealthy leading to bad grades, anti social behavior, blood clots, malnutrition, carpel tunnel among other things and should not be promoted. It's unhealthy escapism at worst and entertainment at best.

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FEW CAREERS BURN as intensely -- and as briefly -- as that of an eSports professional. Players are generally in competition by their mid- to late teens, and most are retired by their mid-20s. It's often due to burnout or fatigue: The intense lifestyle and constant hours of work it requires to be a professional gamer just aren't realistic for decades-long spans. But could better physical fitness help prolong the shelf life of an eSports athlete? It hasn't traditionally been a priority, but as the industry grows and the pressures of competition increase, more holistic views are slowly emerging.

"In terms of physical fitness, professional gamers are not going to be top athletes," says Michael O'Dell, the managing director of Team Dignitas, one of the world's largest professional gaming teams. "Mental fitness is the important thing. Our League of Legends team in L.A. live in a house 24/7 during the season, and players play a lot -- that's what they do."

When O'Dell says "a lot," he means a lot. Greg "IdrA" Fields, a former StarCraft II champion, says, "When I played in Korea [from 2008 to 2011], the training schedule excluded any activity that wasn't eating, sleeping and practicing." Basically, Fields said, in 2013 "we played for 12 hours a day with one or two days off a month."

Training in eSports obviously doesn't include jump shots or batting practice. It's more like typing practice. "There was a program that let you enter a series of keystrokes like 1a2a3a4a5a while timing you," Fields says. "I used that to train certain combinations that had to be executed as quickly as possible."

Physical ailments like deep vein thrombosis, carpal tunnel or back strains can be common, a result of a mostly sedentary lifestyle and the demanding schedule. Most teams use chairs that help with posture, and a gamer's equipment -- mice or gaming keyboards -- is equally important ("like a footballer's boots," O'Dell says). At a recent tournament, there was even a physiologist doing wrist massages.

Job Hilbers, the manager of a Smite team for Titan, another large eSports squad, thinks they should do even more. "I would like to see more time dedicated to keeping the body fit," he says. "In the end, your mental and physical prowess are highly co-dependent."

Still, with hours-long practices and training games galore, O'Dell says a player's success as well as longevity come down to skill, not athletic ability. "We'd always look for the talent first over physical fitness."

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鬼殺し wrote:

It's an interesting concept because they're trying to position them as 'athletes' when their field of competition has almost nothing to do with athletic improvement. To me they're just a modern version of chess, go or shogi players -- very highly skilled at what they do but not in any way 'athletic'.

So we have a sort of juxtaposition going on -- on one hand, they're acting like sports stars or athletes, but on the other their bodies are receiving none of the health benefits of being sports stars or athletes.

In other words, it's just not healthy. So of course, to ease burn-out and physical degradation, they'll want to encourage physical exercise...but until some highly advanced form the Wii catches on, it'll always be a secondary thing for eSports competitors, whereas a benefit of doing real sports is, of course, physical health.

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There are healthy and unhealthy ways to pursue any goal,” says Alan Couzens, a sports scientist and coach to Ironman triathletes. Like the overworked corporate attorney or investment banker, elite athletes are put into situations that require them to sacrifice a lot from their mind and body. Overtraining syndrome, for example, poses a significant risk to elite endurance athletes, as do eating disorders—multiple studies have found that the prevalence of eating disorders in elite athletes is two to three times that of the general population. If not tempered, the same drive and determination that helps shape an elite athlete can become harmful. Perhaps this is why, when I asked about his recent tweet, McMillan told me, “I don’t care about comparing elite athletes to the general population, which we know is far from healthy. I care about getting coaches to realize that elite athletes aren’t machines; they are humans that need support far beyond the workouts we write for them.”

McMillan’s sentiment is important because, despite the intensity with which elite athletes live their lives, when approached with sound training, nutrition, and emotional support, it seems that training and competing at that level can be quite healthy—much healthier, in fact, than the alternative. Perhaps six-time Ironman champion Jordan Rapp sums it up best: “I think pushing to see what you are capable of is the fundamental definition of health. That doesn’t mean elite sport is always healthy—it can be physiologically and psychologically depleting, and even detrimental at times—but in total, it teaches you something about yourself. And that’s the very definition of health.