1. The Notre Dame of eSports
 It’s not often that Ohio State enters a sporting event against a smaller school as an underdog, especially when the competition comes from a recently founded science and technology college with an undergraduate enrollment of just 750 full-time students.
But that's exactly how Ohio State's student newspaper, the Lantern, described its team.
"With no jerseys, scholarships or prior practice as a team, Ohio State League of Legends was the underdog heading into its semifinal match against Harrisburg University Team A," student reporter Aaron Lien wrote in a recent article about a college esports tournament. Through a traditional sports lens, it's a ludicrous scenario: A school that has no other varsity sports teams is expected to beat a competitor that has an NCAA Division I athletic program with a budget of $175 million or more and a student body more than 10 times its size. But there is nothing traditional about esports, nor Harrisburg University. >> Situational Awareness: The eSports training facility is 2,500 square feet - a gamer's haven. The annual budget is estimated at $2 million, including coaching and staff salaries, facilities, technology, travel and event production. >> The Big Picture: Harrisburg can establish its brand through gaming while other, better-known institutions with deeper coffers aren’t involved. If the university can establish a brand of excellence in college esports similar to what traditional powerhouses such as Alabama or Duke have done in football and basketball, the thinking goes, it can elevate the profile of the school as a whole. >> They Said It: And in some sense, [the goal is to] become the Notre Dame of esports - a smaller, private, independent [university] that can keep pace and, on any given day, beat the big guys." - Eric Darr, president, Harrisburg University>> Go Deeper thanks to Alex Andrejev, Washington Post | 
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