Not joining professional League of Legends teams in the LCS, many North American players chose to go to college instead of “tryhard” and risk their future.
Over the years, the North American LCS has always been considered the weakest of the four major regions of League of Legends. Many fans also consider this a place to “retire” for international players, because LCS teams often pay quite high salaries but have extremely low achievements.
Even after many years of playing, the “old” players in the LCS continue to hold important positions in the teams, many foreign players from all over the world often flock here. Therefore, the LCS is considered to be a scarce place with almost no young talent. Recently, a Vietnamese gamer analyzed that problem.
To summarize this analysis, the North American region has too many tournaments with the same size as the LCS. Typically, CLOL 2022 (College LoL Championship) – the tournament is considered as the “American World Championship” for the student community.
According to research, this CLOL tournament is professionally organized no less than the LCS.
CLOL is considered as “Worlds for American students”.
In terms of scale, it’s an annual tournament with qualifiers from each state, each region, etc., just like Worlds. Teams will have to compete with rivals in the school, in the state, in the region, etc., and then choose the regional (or state) representative team to participate in CLOL, then compete in the Group Stage and Playoffs similar. like Worlds. In particular, the matches were also held spectacularly with a huge stage and audience (compared to the LCS).
The CLOL 2022 League of Legends tournament has up to 32 participating teams divided into 4 groups.
As for prizes, the most recent LCS season has a total prize pool of 200,000 USD (about 4.72 billion VND), while CLOL is 190,000 USD (about 4.48 billion VND).
According to the author of the analytical article, players and students consider playing in CLOL an experience not inferior to LCS, so they don’t need to “tryhard” but will consider League of Legends as a “side activity”. like recreational sports compared to college.
League of Legends players and college students can also participate in the “Champions Queue”, so their skills are not too different from the LCS representatives.
Therefore, no one would risk their best effort just to enter a tournament of the same size as CLOL like the LCS. Not to mention having to compete with foreign soldiers and “soldiers” who have close relationships with professional teams.
For that reason, the NA LCS, which was already low in talent, is becoming increasingly scarce.
See also: League of Legends: Fiddlesticks players are ‘cursed’ by the community for ‘blocking the game breaking gate’ in ARAM
