I’m sitting here on my computer deafened by the roars of my family watching the Superbowl in the other room. Anyone makes a ten yard run, the room erupts in an explosion of enthusiasm and testosterone unequaled by any other media outlet.Tomorrow the score will be pasted on the front page of every morning newspaper across the States, and I’m damn sure that if I turn to ESPN sometime between now and the next major sporting event, somebody will be throwing in their two cents about the long over-reported game. Tomorrow at school, I’m going to get quizzed at least twelve times by my sports-loving peers, and at work, if I can’t recite the score by memory, I’ll be called something reminiscent of the phrase “nancy-boy.” So one could beg the question, why am I not currently in that room watching every play, shouting at every penalty, and criticizing every decision made by the Giants’ coach?

The answer is simple; I don’t care. Football, although a major part of my community, has never really interested me. I live within walking distance of the famous OSU Horseshoe Football Stadium, my High-School’s team has been to the state championships at least thrice in the last decade, and I can name twelve teachers that wear Browns’ clothes at least once every other day. I, despite my indifference towards the sport, played it for eight years straight, and still I can’t say that I have any passion whatsoever for the most popular contact sport in America. I’ve searched for a while to try to come up with an answer to this conundrum, and I think I’ve figured it out.

The reason that sports don’t excite me is because of the realism. I’ve seen a good hundred clips of some super-fast half-back run through a big bunch of about eighteen beefy, muscular men, come out the other side unscathed, and run eighty yards for a touchdown. It’s amazing, isn’t it? I could never do that, I’ll tell you right now. I could never make a basket from the other side of the court. I could never hit a home-run when down by three runs in the bottom of the ninth. I could never… I don’t really know soccer, but I’m pretty sure that whatever it is, I couldn’t do it. However, despite these amazing feats of athletic ability, they all seem to be constrained by one immovable object in the world of sports - Reality.

Reality seems to be my biggest problem. I can only see so many thirty yard field goals before the whole idea of kicking a ball between two metal prongs seems like a bit of a bland idea. Sports, to me, are too solid. There are a vast amount of different playing styles, but the end result is very much the same, and unless some chaotic event occurs on the field, leading to general havoc, the game just seems to be too straight-forward. It is likewise very much ruled by the plays called. Of course, deviation does occur - if it’s a pass play and nobody’s open, the quarter-back might just tuck it and run. However, I’d say at least three times out of four, the exact same thing occurs. Who gets passed to, who gets the ball, from where the basket is thrown, these things can vary, but only by some portion.

So this leaves me in a bit of a pickle, I’m not entertained by sports, yet I love the aspect of competition, so I could either start watching the World Poker Tour on ESPN, maybe even competitive Debate. How about the Spelling Bee? That’s exciting, right? No. It’s not. Not at all. Not that I don’t like Poker, but it’s just not exciting to watch, all that they’re doing is sitting there, not really moving, it has to have something more of an active basis.

So now I’m really in trouble, right? I don’t like sports, because of the lack of variation based on the premises of reality, and I don’t like the less active competitive activities as a result of their lack of activity. For the greater part of my life I didn’t have the answer to this question, and it wasn’t a very exciting time for me. However, a few years ago, I was introduced to the notion of Competitive E-Sports, and the first thing I ever saw was the bomb exploding, sending the hopeful Counter-Terrorist flying into the air, even though he had a mere inch of defusing left to go.

E-Sports had changed my outlook on competition. It was exciting, it was active - or at least the output was. It was something that could be followed, and the best part of it: It was as chaotic as I could ever dream about. The players weren’t some big-time, out of reach, over-paid, idealistic figures; they were people like you and me, most of them between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. Most of them have a day job, a good amount of them go to school. They have normal girlfriends, have normal bankrolls, drive normal cars; they’re completely average people in reality, but in the ever-expanding Universe of gaming, they’re super-stars.

I’ve been challenged on my favorite part of e-sports - infinite variation - quite frequently. Every critic that I’ve ever encountered makes that complaint: “But the same thing happens every time. The Terrorists plant the bomb, the Counter-Terrorists defuse, and they kill each other throughout.” I’ve got to say that not only is this description extremely basic, but it’s also very much wrong. Place the map de_dust2 in your mind. The Terrorists have about three choices from which to choose each game - B, Short A, or Long A. Granted they could go Middle and get to either bomb-site, but in most cases the general idea is one of these three choices.

So already there’s more deviation in e-sports than in football. One direction, one goal versus three directions, two goals, with another option if you’re in for some more intensity. But that’s not the half of it, within each map you can change the outcome as well. The basic Terrorist goal is to plant the bomb, but killing all of the opponents is just as good. Within that, there’s some variation still. You could rush the enemy and hope to overcome their more spread-out defenses with your direct attack - a blitzkrieg of sorts - or you could play it slow and creep around the map picking off the enemies one by one. Not only that, but the defense has some options as well. The Counter-Terrorists can stay back, pick some nice camping spots with a good vantage point and watch for enemies, or they could try to guess what direction the enemy is going and flank them. Likewise, they could just as well rush right into enemy fire and corner them. The options are vast.

Now, that would be great and very entertaining on its own, but that’s not even close to all of the variation within e-sports. Within each game, you have numerous different maps, all with different vantage points, rushing points, places where you can see this area, but you can be seen by this other one. Places to rush, places to stay, places to kill, places to reload, places to sprint, places to crawl, obstacles to jump over, obstacles to go around, obstacles to crouch behind, obstacles to peer from within. Now the options are becoming exponential.

If that were all, sports-fans would have something to talk about. However, simply in First Person Shooters, there are multiple games from which to choose, and even if you concern yourself with one game, there are expansions, updates, new maps, new mods, configurations to try out, different sensitivities, even new hardware can make a difference in the outcome of the game. And outside of First Person Shooters is a whole ever-expanding, infinite Universe of gaming genres, each with their own games, their own maps, their own objectives, their own weapons, and so forth. Gaming is the outlet of the truly chaotic mind; there’s always change.

Now one can simply dismiss my arguments as a nerd’s babbling on about stupid little video games, but critics listen in, gaming is not going dormant. Gaming is expanding with time - one can see this simply through the rise of organizations like CGS, giving away millions to gaming champions. The only problem is between sports and e-sports, which will be the victor. It is this blogger’s opinion that the innate ability for e-sports to have infinite outcomes, and never ever stop expanding, that will allow it to surpass the outlet of sports. Sports are fun, I’ve got nothing against them, and I love to go out and throw a ball around occasionally, but as far as competing with the valley of never-ending e-sports, sports can only hold on to its edge so long, before e-sports takes its place as the #1 competitive activity in the world. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your opinion, this day is not far off.