Ease up on the wedgies, Alpha Beta bros, it appears that the nerds have taken another huge step forward in driving the stereotype of the jock into extinction. Earlier this month, the United States government officially declared that the annual League of Legends tournament was no longer just a gathering of competitive video game enthusiasts. Gaming is now, in fact, an actual professional sport. The world is finally a little bit closer to being a utopia for the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies and dickheads.
So what does this mean now? Will Under Armor start making compression sleeves with straps to hold Mountain Dew and Cheetos? Will Kate Upton dump whatever athlete or Dancing with the Stars fella she’s dating this week and Dougie her way into the heart of a teenage boy with asthma and corrective lenses? Will Dwight Howard back out of his new deal with the Houston Rockets so he can spend his days talking trash to 9-year old Chinese kids over games of Halo?
Nah. But it’s still a pretty huge deal for gamers around the world.
In an interview with Gamespot, Riot Games’ eSports Manager Nick Allen revealed that the United States Government has officially recognized League of Legends as a professional sport. The U.S. will now award visas to international players competing in the LCS (League Championship Series). While this is huge news for LoL, as Allen says in the interview, “this is groundbreaking for eSports,” as a whole. Allowing visas for professional players simplifies the process of travel and makes international tournaments far easier to conduct.
Allen reveals in the interview that the process of convincing the government to issue these visas was long and arduous. Eventually, however, officials had no further reason to say no and granted visa rights to all competitors in the LCS. (Via War Cry, H/T to Planet Ivy)
Long and arduous? You mean a guy didn’t just walk into Congress, take a bunch of papers out of his briefcase, tap them on the desk, pour himself a glass of water, take a sip, clear his throat, lean into the microphone and declare, “Yo, freaking poker is a sport” and then walk out? Seems pretty easy to me.
