At one point, Adam Antor laughed at a career in esports.
Now, Antor is the head coach of the Florida Southern College esports team and the success he has had is definitely no laughing matter.
"Not before three years ago," Antor said of his thoughts of having a career in esports. "I don't know what the latest numbers are, but the estimate is 400 colleges and universities (with esports) at this point."
The National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) has 170 member schools with more than 5,000 student-athletes participating in programs across the United States. This number is continuing to grow as the entire esports industry is expected to top $5 billion at the professional level in the next few years.
At the heart of this growth is the collegiate esports scene, which, has nearly $16 million in scholarship monies spread across its 170 member schools.
Florida Southern is one such entity, with 30 students on its esports teams and 12 of those student-athletes on partial scholarships.
"There's excitement around esports," Antor said. "There are administrators willing to support it from athletics to business management and admissions. The fact we have an esports management minor is a testament to it."
The Esports Management minor is designed to meet the growing demand from the gaming industry for graduates with skills in the esports discipline. While still a relatively new industry, jobs will be at a surplus in the coming years. The minor is comprised of courses that cover topics such as esports tournament design, sponsorship activation, and fan engagemeAntor, who much like the student-athletes he coaches, grew up playing video games, but his first job out of college was in marketing.
Before he took the job at Florida Southern in 2021, Antor remembered receiving an offer he laughed off before eventually taking the position as the esports coach at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Mich.
At the time, Antor saw a lot of success in esports as he was three-and-a-half years into a coaching stint at West Catholic High School in Grand Rapids where he launched the state's premier high school program. Antor helped develop West Catholic's state-of-the-art gaming lab and led the Rocket League team to a top-five finish nationally.
Still Antor was unconvinced of the future of esports.
"Even six months before the Aquinas job I laughed at a position at one point," he said. "There was no way I'd leave a career in marketing. Then I got offered the job (at Aquinas) and I took it and went for it. It's been awesome. The growth has continued. At the time there were four colleges in Michigan (with esports), in two years it jumped to 25."
Antor built Aquinas into a powerhouse. In the team's inaugural season (2019-20), Aquinas was national runners-up in the NACE Rocket League championship, and his squad also won the League of Legends Michigan Esports Conference (MEC) title in 2020-21.
That success has continued at Florida Southern, which competes as a member of the Peach Belt Conference (PBC) in Rocket League, League of Legends and Overwatch. The team won this past Fall's PBC Rocket League title and was second in the PBC in League of Legends. Florida Southern also won the Battle for Florida at the University of South Florida in League of Legends.
In the spring semester, the Mocs are hoping to win the PBC League of Legends title for the first time, and do well in the Overwatch standings as well.
Antor said coaching his student-athletes is just like any traditional sport in that they have their ups-and-downs even if the ball they are playing with is a digital one.
"I have students who deal with mental adversity just like traditional athletes," Antor said. "What's uniquely different is that gaming was an escape from class or stress, and now we've taken it and made it a part of their responsibility. It's a unique transition and something I have to be aware of."
While the trio of games his team practices playing is stable for now, the next big game can be just around the corner.
When that happens, Antor will have to recruit or help train his team to the new trend. That's where Antor relies on his expertise in finding ways to provide the team with material that will help them perform better, whether that's through direct or indirect coaching methods.
"We have some alumni that help coach," Antor said. "I'm more in a supportive and administrative role. I'm average at best in most of the games, but if I need to find more Xs and Os, I go to Youtube.com or Twitch.com. I don't need to be the expert in the games. I find resources for them somewhere else. I need to be an expert on building a team and the environment that produces growth. That's where I put my resources into."
