As part of their eSports initiative, Riot Games has announced they will be hosting the North American Collegiate Championship, giving university teams a chance to play on the big stage for pride and scholarships.
After a region-wide playoff, the top four collegiate teams will be flown to California to play on the LCS stage in the Riot Games studios, with a prize pool of $100,000 in scholarships on the line. The matches will be broadcast on the LCS stream and commentated by the Riot casters following the LCS games on February 22nd-23rd.
There are several stages to the event before making it to the finals however — first, the Collegiate Open, then the Qualifier and then finally the Championship.
Registration (January 6th-22nd) comes with several rules:
- Multiple teams can register from the same university
- Players must be full-time students and all enrolled at the same university
- Your university must be officially accredited
- Each team needs a roster of between five and seven players
- You need proof of your enrollment for the university you register with
Afterwards, the North American Collegiate Open, presented by IvyLoL, kicks off on January 25th and runs until February 2nd, with randomly assigned seeding. The tournament consists of single-elimination best of 3s where the top eight teams with be seeded into the North American Collegiate Qualifier, which begins on the 8th of February and will be broadcast by NACL
Collegiate Open (Jan 25th-Feb 2nd)
- Single-elimination best of threes with random seeding
- Top eight teams advance
Those teams will be joined by four teams pre-qualified from IvyLoL’s fall season, and an additional four teams pre-qualified through the Collegiate Star League. These sixteen teams will be divided into four groups for a round robin, with the top two teams from each group entering into a quarterfinal stage. The four teams who emerge victorious from this rigorous event will be the ones flown to Calfornia to compete in the main event.
Collegiate Qualifier (Feb 8th)
- 16 teams divided into four groups for round robin (8 from Collegiate Open, 4 from IvyLoL Fall Season and
4 from Collegiate Star League)
- Top two from each group placed into quarterfinal best of three
- Final four advance
Collegiate Championship (Feb 22nd-23rd)
The current standings in the IvyLoL Fall Season can be found here, while the Collegiate Star League ladder can be foundhere.
More information about the Collegiate Championship as well as registration can be found here.
Source: Riot Games
