The Cotter International Collegiate StarCraft Cup

The CSC will bring together 8 internationally-renowned universities in the US, Europe, and Asia to battle it out in an online tournament from May 7-9 for glory and $1,000 in cash prizes.  Sponsored by a Princeton alum who came forward after the Princeton-based Collegiate StarLeague was featured in the New York Times for organizing a showmatch between the Princeton StarCraft team and Qinghua University in Beijing, the CSC promises to be a competitive StarCraft treat for SC fans and fans of collegiate sports competitions alike.  While the CSC will not be an official part of the CSL, it is notable that in particular the American schools which have stepped up to the challenge were all participants in the inaugural season: Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Princeton.  Qinghua University is also another confirmed participant, and the remaining three slots are awaiting confirmation from a Swedish university, a Korean university, and one which remains slightly up in the air as of this time.  Several of the games will be livecast online (time zones permitting), with English commentary likely to be provided by YouTube luminaries Cholera and Diggity.  If replays are made available, commentated VODs will be produced as well.

While something like the CSC does seem at first like an unexpected windfall for competitive StarCraft, in my opinion it's an astonishingly good value proposition for all parties involved.  Given that online StarCraft tournaments have incredibly low fixed costs (no venue fees, no big academic or other entities who'd take a cut) and that university students are accustomed to organizing events with no tangible financial benefit to themselves, $1,000 can go a much longer way when you're sponsoring intercollegiate StarCraft than, say, a lacrosse tournament.  $1,000 is chump change to your typical Ivy League alumnus, and yet the rarity of any sum of money in the first place being invested into eSports by people outside of the industry and the up-and-coming status of the foreign StarCraft community means that any person who ventures such a commitment earns eternal gratitude and their name emblazoned on a historical event.  It's easier than ever to get students involved in creating interesting, innovative content they are passionate about, and when you're talking about a trailblazing phenomenon like eSports, a little goes a tremendously long way.   

The schools which have confirmed participation in the CSC may not be the most elite in terms of StarCraft ability (with the exception of the Korean university tentatively set to participate), but the point of this tournament and related events in the nonprofit sector does not seem so much to organize the highest level of StarCraft play as it is to just get something going that people will pay attention to.  eSports needs to gain more recognition as a legitimate arena for exciting competition, and the CSC (as well as the CSL) seems set to take steps in achieving this very goal.  I am personally very hopeful that the success of the CSC will inspire other non-eSports entities to sit up and take notice of something we all already can feel intuitively: eSports isn't going anywhere, and perhaps in the hands of the college student demographic with the passionate ambition many of us show in our interests, it can actually become "the next big thing" very soon.