Ready, Player One

Justin White

“It’s fun to watch these guys grow as a team, just getting better and better every week.”

-Joonho “Jho” Hong, Overwatch

The University of Southern California is a premier college in the United States when it comes to sports. With 135 team national championships, 510 Olympians, and 357 individual national champions, the university has established itself as a juggernaut in the world of sports.

But there’s one sport USC has that many don’t think of when looking at the school’s front door. That sport is the sport of competitive video games.

The university has its own esports union where casual and competitive gamers, students and faculty, can come together to play video games, host tournaments, and learn more about the industry. The union has varsity teams in five games: the first-person shooters Valorant and Overwatch; strategy game League of Legends; soccer-arcade style game Rocket League; and Nintendo’s ever-popular mascot fighting game Super Smash Bro. Ultimate. 

Joonho “Jho” Hong is the manager of USC’s Overwatch team.

Last season, Hong said he was unable to play much because of his duties as manager, but this season, he’s been able to hit the sticks (or, keys) a bit more. He said he enjoys playing more than managing.

“Managing is also kind of fun, because from a bird’s eye view, you can see the team improving, but I think being on the ground and playing with the players is more fun than just watching them from the sidelines,” Hong says. “But it’s fun to watch these guys grow as a team, just getting better and better every week.”

A question one might ask themselves, is what sets these players apart from your average player? Isn’t this easy? They can’t be that good to justify all this, right?

Well, this reporter is quite the gamer himself, so I challenged one of the Overwatch varsity team’s members to a one-on-one match. Watch the video below to see me play against Jojo “sawa” Ibalio.

Yeah, that didn’t go as well as I thought it would.

You may have noticed in the facecam background that the setup they get to use is quite nice.

Every Saturday, a team will meet in the basement of Leavey Library, where an expansive array of high-end gaming computers are situated. The setup is arranged like a war room, where the team can work closely to ensure optimal communication. The room, originally intended to be for classes, is mostly used for esports as of now, and it cost USC a fortune.

“I want to say [the room cost] somewhere in the several million,” says Lawrance Lui, student director and president for USC Esports. “Unfortunately the room’s primary purpose wasn’t for esports, it was a pitch to the higher-ups to be a modernized classroom.”

The room is slowly incorporating more classes in the room, but for now, it’s mostly being used by USC Esports, according to Lui.

The computers that USC has in the room are from a brand called Alienware. A popular player in the world of gaming PCs, Alienware has become one of the trademark brands for gamers who want high-end performance without building a computer themselves. Lui says that each PC cost the school around $2,500 each, and there’s about 20 stationed in the room. Couple that with the room’s many TVs on the walls, the numerous PC monitors, keyboards, mice, and entire streaming setup complete with four TVs and a complex control center that would be any Twitch streamer’s dream, it makes sense how the price rose to such a great height.

But while the setup cost USC a pretty penny, as Lui stated, it wasn’t meant for esports but instead for classes. Esports at USC doesn’t get the funding that other traditional sports at USC get. In fact, USC doesn’t even offer esports scholarships.

And this makes it difficult for the program to compete with the best of the best.

Use the interactive map below to see other universities in the United States that offer scholarships.

“We’re closer to club status than we are a team.”

-Sean “Bluuhaku” Trujillo, Overwatch

When asked about the team’s funding, Sean Trujillo laughed.

“We have no funding,” he said as he continued chuckling. “At least as of right now, we have zero funding… honestly, we’re closer to club status than we are a team.”

“Funding is quite limited,” said Hong. “Or… well, none essentially.”

When asked about scholarships, Lui said “we basically don’t have any.”

On top of the lack of scholarships and poor funding, Lui says the esports budget was frozen after COVID. 

What exactly happened? As Lui puts it, the pandemic bred complacency that ended up costing the team their funding. Managers for each team would pay the cost for teams to register for tournaments when funding ran low. Managers would then be reimbursed at a later date. Or, they were supposed to be.

“Reimbursements weren’t being paid back fast enough… everyone wasn’t aware of their responsibilities because COVID was a two-year-long pandemic,” Lui said. “And so after two years of doing nothing, it became very easy to not pick up the responsibilities that you had before the pandemic.”

After that, Lui says the reimbursement system was neglected, and with charges piling up, the university needed to put a halt on funding to fix the situation. Lui says reimbursements are behind by almost two semesters’ worth, and the university felt the freeze was necessary to prevent the situation from worsening.

Hong says the lack of funding has been frustrating, as they’ve been mostly unable to travel to take part in in-person tournaments, especially outside of California.

“We actually qualified for a LAN (Local Area Network) tournament in Boise, Idaho,” Hong says. “But we couldn’t get the funding from USC to actually take our players there.”

“I think if we were to get funding it would be really cool and more motivating to players to actually try their best and qualify for LAN tournaments,” Hong says. “But we could also host small socials to get drinks or a coffee or something after practice or a match which could boost team chemistry.”

Trujillo says he feels the lack of scholarships and recruitment of outside talent was a “blessing in disguise”, at least for him, but he also feels that some support from the university could help.

“I did not play any competitive Overwatch prior to this, so if the team was more established and offered money to come play, there’s a decent chance I wouldn’t even have made the team at all,” Trujillo says.

“Talking entirely selfishly I prefer it this way, just because I got a chance to be on the team,” he adds. “But now as someone who wants to see the program do better and rise, it would be nice if there was some amount of support.”

On top of a frozen budget, with no scholarships to offer to outside talent, USC Esports is forced to find talent that already exists on campus. With little help setting up events, finding such talent is still difficult, making the lack of scholarships felt in full force.

On the topic of scholarships, another question one might ask is what could possibly justify schools giving scholarships to esports athletes?

Well, esports at the college level are unique, because a good number of (though not all) esports players in college are retired, or at least semi-retired, professionals.

Esports athletes begin young, with some going pro as young as the age of 13 (for comparison, Tony Hawk went pro at 14, and signed his first contract with Powell Peralta at the age of 16). Players usually start young because young players tend to improve at accelerated rates compared to older players, giving teenagers who played their game of choice as children a major advantage. This, along with new players quickly overtaking older ones, serves as reasons why the average retirement age for esports players is around the age of just 25.

Use the interactive timeline below to see the average career of an esports athlete.

Because many players go pro before they turn 18, those who retire earlier than average tend to use their ability to fund their education, as is the case with schools like UC Irvine, which give scholarships to former pros, and as a result has become a juggernaut in the realm of college esports on the West Coast.

Because of this, USC’s Esports teams have been in the dark. Stuck with the talent they can find on campus, they’re forced to do the best with what they’ve got.

But there has been one exception this year; USC’s League of Legends team is good.

“Undefeated in the regular season” good.

“Pushing the West Coast juggernauts to their limit” good.

And good enough to qualify for nationals, all with little funding and no scholarships.

“Watching them grow every single day… it brings me to tears when I watch them play.”

-Joe Jacko, League of Legends Head Coach

Former League of Legends professional Joe Jacko oversees the esports program at USC. He’s also the head coach for USC’s League of Legends team, and the only head coach on USC’s esports union.

“Coaching is vastly different from playing because ultimately, as a player you have so much impact on a game,” Jacko says. “When you move into a coaching role, your impact is definitely lessened but it’s still there… I would say the closer the game is the more the coach’s impact is felt.”

Salaries for head coaches at USC are difficult to find because of USC’s designation as a private institution, but it’s believed that football head coach Lincoln Riley is making over $10 million a year over the course of his contract.

Jacko’s salary as USC’s League of Legends head coach is $0.

Despite the difference in medium, Jacko says coaching esports is quite similar to coaching a traditional sport.

“There’s a lot of traditional overlap, and I think that once you’re involved in esports at a high level you realize that your role becomes, ‘how can I support these players’ like a traditional coach,” Jacko says.

On April 6, the League of Legends team lost to UC San Diego (awards 15 scholarships of $1,500 each for esports, according to UCSD), one of the premier esports schools on the West Coast. 

Competitive League of Legends matches usually work on a “best of five” basis. USC lost 3-2, pushing UCSD to the brink.

“[UCSD] is traditionally ranked in the top 20, as far as League goes,” Jacko says. “Bringing it to five games is noteworthy. I think on a different day we could have even brought home the series.”

Jacko spoke on the issue of scholarships, and said he felt his team works harder than schools that put more funding into esports.

“I used to think the students would be more driven receiving scholarships and things like that… but when I look at these programs and I look at these teams that have a lot of money put in [to esports], I’m not concerned at all with them and how they practice,” Jacko says. “Our team practices harder than those teams. Our kids want it more. They want to show up and they want to play just as much as the next student.”

On the day this interview was conducted, the League team was preparing for another match against yet another West Coast giant: UC Irvine. Jacko noted the importance of the match, saying nationals for esports works similarly to the playoff committee in college football. He said beating UCI would give USC a fighting chance to make it into nationals.

“The goal for this entire season was to beat UCI,” Jacko says. “They recruit students to come and play, they have ex-pro players, they have a lot of talent that a lot of our players, when they were younger, even looked up to.”

Joseph “Levitate” Hong, who aims to pursue a career playing League of Legends (and who many in the union said was the best player in USC Esports, regardless of the game), shadowed his coach’s statements.

“Ever since the beginning of the school year, Irvine was the school we really wanted to beat,” Joseph says. “Being able to take down a school that recruits and gives scholarships would be a huge milestone for us.”

“I look at this like a milestone match, and I think it’s one that, if we can bring home will make these last four years for them worth it,” Jacko added. “I do think there’s an extreme likelihood that whoever wins this match will go on to [nationals], and I’m hopeful that will be USC.”

On April 13, USC fell 3-2 to UC Irvine.

“Personally, not too happy about my performance,” Joseph says. “But given the circumstances, I think we played and exceeded expectations.”

With the loss, USC finished fourth in the west. To make it to nationals, they’d have to rely on the committee to vote them in, similar to college football.

Despite this, Jacko was hopeful and saw the finish as a good sign of the direction the team was headed.

“A fourth-place finish is nothing to scoff at. At the end of the day it is a success,” Jacko says. “And those two games we almost won, those two best-of-five series, were just incredibly close.”

Joseph also was confident, saying the finish showed them who they were.

“Overall, we’ve made huge improvements as a team,” Joseph says. “I think we made huge strides, it’s just really unfortunate that we fell so short.”

After the match, Jacko spoke on what he hoped the esports union could improve on. He wanted to use it as a platform to promote the players’ presence and potentially use content creation to recruit talent, rather than enticing them with scholarships, and he wanted to use the platform to build up their personal brands.

“These are players, like in the case of Joseph, who have a shot of going pro. And I want to make sure we’re building a good brand for them,” Jacko says. “I think this year was a good start to that… I think the thing we’re going to gain the most from this year is the pursuit of content, and figuring out, ‘what is USC Esports content?’”

Jacko also spoke about his players, and what seeing them grow has meant to him. 

“The players really have a special place in my heart. I’ve known some of them for four years, I’ve watched them come in…really I’ve watched them grow and become men,” Jacko says.

“I watched them perform. Making it to your conference semi-final, that’s about as far as I made it as a player. And so it’s very rewarding to look at these kids and have them succeed and fly higher than I did,” Jacko says. “Watching them grow every single day… it brings me to tears when I watch them play.”

On April 25, USC’s League of Legends team was voted into nationals. On April 28 in a best-of-three against the Western University Mustangs, they were swept and eliminated from the tournament.

Joseph spoke after the match, saying he was apologetic for not playing better, but thanking those behind the scenes and fans for their support.

“Despite losing in the first round of nationals, I’m very proud of my teammates and my coach, and I’m really thankful for all the people in the back… the casting crew, production team and the fans in general,” Joseph says. “I feel very sorry because we could’ve went a lot further.”

When thinking about next season, Joseph didn’t believe there was a point in setting a bar.

“I don’t really want to place too many expectations because I think they’re unnecessary,” Joseph says. “All you have to do is put your head down and work hard, and your efforts will lead you to success and it will lead you to results.”