While there are still some traditionalists who believe that games like football, basketball, hockey, cricket, golf, and etc. are considered “sports”, there are more modern views which have recently considered video games to be a form of competitive sports. In fact there are universities which offer scholarships for being good at sports, and recently gamers have also been granted visas to the US under “pro athlete” status.Unsurprisingly not everyone is thrilled with this direction and one of those people is ESPN’s Colin Cowherd. Recently ESPN2 provided a two-hour long live coverage of Blizzard’s Heroes of the Dorm tournament which is a competition based on the company’s upcoming Heroes of the Storm MOBA. However it seems that Cowherd wasn’t particularly happy about the coverage and went on a rant.
According to Cowherd who went on a rant during his own show, “Here’s what’s going to get me off the air. If I am ever forced to cover guys playing video games, I will retire and move to a rural fishing village and sell bait. You want me out? Demand video game tournaments on ESPN because that’s what appeared on ESPN 2 yesterday.”
Safe to say that many were not impressed by Cowherd’s rants, although in all fairness he probably has his share of fans and other more traditionalists who agree that perhaps ESPN should stick to “real” sports as opposed to video games, but what say you? Are you in the camp that believes that sports has to involve physical activities, or do you accept that the competitive nature of video games makes it just as intense as a game of football or basketball?
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