HELLO EVERYONE!!!
It’s time for us to reintroduce ourselves and give a snapshot of our mission, vision, and current state as the world around us has changed. This is a lot of content to go over so we’ll summarize right off the bat and leave you to explore the rest of the article if you want more of a deep dive. Thank you for stopping by and we hope what we’ve done excites you and interests you regardless of being an OU fan or not!
MISSION STATEMENT
Our mission is to advocate, educate, and entertain our community and our viewers on the energies and topics of esports and gaming cultures as well as support our teams and the games we love in the state of Oklahoma.
WAIT! WHAT IS ESPORTS!?
In a nutshell gaming and esports aren’t entirely the same thing. Gaming can best be described as playing a pickup game of basketball with your friends at the local court. Esports, however, is the NBA finals with all the production, team development, venue operations, and marketing. We are first and foremost a gaming community with extensive esports practicum. These industries represent current wildfire growth in all segments and as an institution of higher learning, we have built our programming to align with many missions within the walls of The University of Oklahoma. This means student engagement, academic curriculum development, relevant practicum for experience opportunities, intercollegiate competition, and much more! This is more than just playing video games!
TL;DR Summary
The OU Esports Club is a competitive classified registered student organization of 3.5+ years in development. It is focused on catering to the community needs of gamers at OU first and foremost as well as our surrounding networks while having a deep interest in philanthropy and giving back. It develops intercollegiate competitive teams to represent OU, creates media and news for general consumption and as a showcase of who we are all while developing professionals for the ever growing gaming and esports industry segments. Anybody can be a member of our discord but only OU students and alumni can be registered members at the time of this article.
OU XP DOCUMENTARY
If you don’t care to read a ton of text and would rather get an overview of what we’re doing and what we’re all about take a look at this documentary we pushed out in Spring 2019 by OU Creative Media students Zachary Satz and Stingray Schuller. It showcases our organizational goals, mission, and structure.
OU XP DOCUMENTARY

Our Rocket League team competing at Dreamhack Dallas 2019 at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Arena for the AVGL Collegiate Exhibition series against Texas A&M – San Antonio.
OVERVIEW
We are a 3.5+ year old officially licensed development at OU now with a community of over 1100 gamers across OU, the region, and with our collegiate peers. OU Informational Technology serves as our sponsoring department as a prerequisite to gaining registered student organization “Competitive Club” distinction. We have several ways to get more involved beyond being a member with event programming, competitive play, news & media creation, streaming, and shoutcasting. Instead of rewriting content we have elsewhere already on our website, we are going to link to those segments directly and also share up to three of the most recent events or milestones to give you all a better idea of what each of these pillars does.
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
When we started research in Fall 2016 we approached developing our infrastructure by looking at the macro view of the esports and community-centric gaming segments of the overall gaming industry. We isolated 6 specific pillars of development that all have academic tie-in opportunities within the various preexisting academic missions across The University of Oklahoma. We launched staging each of the 6 pillars in tandem to build our response to the growing need for structure around these energies. They are Leadership, Community, Intercollegiate Competition, Media & News, Shoutcasting, and Streaming Entertainment. We will highlight each in the next section as well as link you to direct highlights and achievements during our ramp-up.
LEADERSHIP
Our leadership is in charge of each of our 4 departments and 6 pillars creating a diverse and complex representation of a professional esports company. They represent the often thankless jobs that keep the machine moving and set the tone and pace of development moving forward. These achievements often go unnoticed at the top level but are the core of how we operate. We meet with university administration, coordinate strategized marketing campaigns, and seek fundraising and financial sustainment opportunities. The primary accolade of the Leadership department is strategic planning, policy creation, and enforcement.
COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY EVENT ARTICLES
PHILANTHROPY ARTICLES
MEDIA & NEWS
EVENT MONTAGES
OPINION PIECE
Filter
SHOUTCASTING
OKLAHOMA K-12 EXHIBITION
2nd ANNUAL BEDLAM
STREAMING ENTERTAINMENT
- First, the undeniable truth that many households consume content from sites like those mentioned earlier.
- Second, that many high school students think about becoming influencers, content creators, and personas(Reference THIS).
- Third, these are money-generating opportunities that can absolutely sustain a financially stable lifestyle or augmentation to another career when approached strategically, consistently, and intentionally.
- Finally, successful streamers, if reverse engineered, could easily be a use case for topics in academic curriculum specialization and evolution in speech, marketing, advertising, business, broadcast journalism, and more.
From Mario Brothers speed runs, streamed party games, and talk shows, we treat our streaming energies coupled with our shoutcasting developments to create the foundation and mission of developing a TV station filled with programming for a broad audience and grow those interested in streaming underneath our banner.
SOCIAL TRIVIA PARTY
OFFICIAL TWITCH CHANNEL
INTERCOLLEGIATE COMPETITION
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Cross-platform)
- A long running first person shooter.
- 1 Team
- Counterstrike: Global Offensive (PC)
- A long running first person shooter.
- 1 Team
- League of Legends (PC)
- A fantasy based 5v5 battle arena.
- 3 Teams
- Overwatch (PC)
- A fantasy based 6v6 first person shooter.
- 2 Teams
- Rocket League (PC)
- Take soccer, add cars put them on a soccer field with a giant ball.
- 1 Team
- Super Smash Brothers Ultimate (Nintendo Switch)
- Nintendo’s monster fighting gaming where iconic characters predominately battle in 1v1 combat.
- 1 Team
All of our teams compete primarily in collegiate only tournaments with scholarship prize pool incentives. They are also welcome and pushed to participate in other tournaments both public, pro, and hosted by other universities.
OFFICIAL JERSEY RELEASE
PHOTOS
(OTHER ENERGIES) OU FIT & REC - INTRAMURAL ESPORTS
FINAL REMARKS
In closing, the OU Esports Club developments represent a macro view approach to developing an objective-oriented infrastructure that serves many different purposes. We have been intentional and deliberate in building a community and culture that echoes OU. Additionally, we have thoughtfully and strategically referenced preexisting academic program overviews and efforts to build our job descriptions and opportunities for collaboration. We want to personify that this is more than just playing video games and the analytics of the strong gaming and esports industry segments continuously grow stronger proving the need is only growing. Prior to the COVID-19 impacts, esports was already growing at an exponential rate, but with the current pandemic, the topic is elevated further. We aim to push our agenda as an incentive to being a student, employee, or fan of our university while we uplift the entire scene through execution, education, and personification of what being a gamer in the modern-day truly means. This is more than just playing games!
Sincerely,
-The OU Esports Club
OTHER SIGNIFICANT MEDIA
TEDx TALK ABOUT US
This TED Talk discuses the strategy and approach of our development aligning with our specific universities mission, goals, and culture.
PODCAST WITH STUDENTS
This video features a co-hosted discussion and podcast with Joe “Rakaul” Belousek as he uncovers how we operate, our vision, and our impact alongside several of our students. You can check out his podcast HERE.