In Fall 2016, research and discovery began with the simple focus of finding energy on campus in students and seeing what they were interested in specifically. This all spawned from one simple question from the CIO of IT at the time, "What is Twitch?". From the beginning to now, Mike "Moog" Aguilar, started exploration of the topic and finding paths.
At the time in U.S. & Canada there were less than 25 institutionally supported esports programs in higher education versus over 250 in 2020. For the first several months pinging other institutions, researching the industry, and coupling it with general gaming and OU specific cultures resulted in a singular event in April 2017 that served as the kick off.
The April 2017 event had over 100 students attend and helped discover the originating Vice President of the upcoming org, Alex Tu, a 2018 Alum, as well as Jack Counts, a 2020 alum, the originating President. Over the summer of 2017, we sat down to build the strategic plan and roadmap that is still 90% in execution today and highlighted in Moog's 2019 TEDx Talk challenge to higher education to do more with gaming and esports development.
We looked at three metrics for all development ideals as our compass for intentionality and scope:
In September 2017, The Esports Association at OU, an interest-based student org was founded with a strategic six pillar rollout plan that is highlighted in our programs portion of this site and the above TED Talk. It is still the strategic roadmap utilized today. In November 2018, OU IT endorsed elevation of the student organization from an interest-based classification to a competitive club classification resulting in a rebrand to the OU Esports Club and affording us brand likeness as one of the energies in the entire nation to still have it's university brand likeness versus an esports centric derivative.
In September 2020, Moog was appointed the Director of Esports & Co-Curricular Innovation by Dr. David Surratt, the VP of Student Affairs and Dean of Students and placed under Student Affairs. What you see now in the department of Esports & Co-Curricular Innovation is planned milestones and the byproduct of intentional strategic design since 2016 with plenty of analytics and documentation along the way. (ref: Sooner Esports) In January 2021, the OU Esports Club org sits at 1.7K+ members and is the largest student organization on campus by more than three fold.
Each milestone is full of student buy-in, ownership, and intentionality. As a highlight and showcase of execution of all this from start to Fall 2020, the OU Esports Club has raised $8.9K in charitable contributions for youth in need in Oklahoma. The University of Oklahoma has only invested $8.1K through miscellanous expenditures and odd and ends in the same duration.
The power of strategic planning with student leadership fully realized. Instead of venue we partnered with preexisting resources on campus to build relationships, instead of asking the university for money we leveraged sponsorships and industry resources, instead of waiting for things to happen we went to work and made them happen ourselves. This is entrepreneurship coupled with community coupled with passion and sacrifice and even with elevation we still have tons more we want to prove as we built the next chapter of OU legacy in a brand new industry.
In July 2021, The OU Esports Club was renamed and rebranded to the OU Gaming Club. Since the beginning we knew we wanted to foster community over everything. However, the world wanted the word "esports" to help push the topic and industry forward. Esports can sometimes intimidate people from getting involved as it emphasizes competition versus community. With this rebrand it focuses it back to the initial intentions of day one as we split the free-spirited gaming community goals and the industry development focuses of OU Esports & Co-Curricular Innovation.
To keep everything connected all of our programs are fed through the natural community pipelines of the OU Gaming Club. This means the only way to get involved with actual development is to be a member of this organization which fosters community over all. Community is everything and it will remain the core foundation for which we continue to elevate further.
R&D began in November 2016
Registered Student Org founded in September 2017
(Interest-Based)
Student org elevation by OUIT in November 2018
(Department-Based)
Department created in Division of Student Affairs in September 2020
Student org component rebranded in July 2021
Now sponsored by the very department that it inspired
To clarify our licensed brand variants and their intents here is a quick summary of their purposes.
ESPORTS & CO-CURRICULAR INNOVATION is the departmental home of everything. All brands after this are subdepartments and subsets of OU ECCI. It is the formal name of the department home of everything we represent. For the athletics fans, this is the department of Intercollegiate Athletics.
OU GAMING CLUB is the home of our community efforts, venue resources, and the epicenter and doorway into anything students, fans, and supporters can access to get more involved or just be a member of our community. It is the celebration of all things gaming and inspires pathways into esports NOT the other way around. For the athletics fans, this is Sooner Club and Fit&Rec combined in equivalency.
OU ESPORTS is the formal nickname license our competitive teams wear to represent OU in competition against other universities through organized team development, compliance, and development. For the athletics fans, this is OU Athletics equivalency.
SOONER ESPORTS is our media outlet home at sooneresports.org and is home to our news and media artifacts and documentation as well as our esports teams and all things competition. For the athletics fans, this is soonersports.com equivalency.
Licensed in tandem with the 2020 departmental formalization of OU ECCI
Founded in 2018 as our media outlet arm of our efforts.
OU Esports:
OU Gaming Club: