Southern clicks its way to glory with an esports national championship

Earlier this year, as the Southern University Jaguars football team hit the gridiron for spring practice, the school’s esports team was deep in the throes of another kind of competition. Led by sophomore computer science major Coby Robinson, the team maneuvered its way through a best-of-five game series to win the Eastern College Athletic Conference Division II EA Sports College Football National Championship in April, a first for a historically Black college or university.

Yes, this competition is centered around video games. And while older generations might scoff, digital natives see them as fundamental to the college experience as mainstream sports, says Chris Turner, founding director of Southern’s Esports Digital Gaming Ecosystem, or EDGE.

“We do tryouts, just like any other sport,” says Turner. “We’re coming up with plays, studying playbooks and trying to find videos on our opponents so we can analyze their games.”

Southern is one of hundreds of universities across the country that have added esports to either athletics, student life activities or even the academic curriculum itself. According to the National Association of Collegiate Esports, an accrediting body, the field is one of the fastest-growing college sports out there, with more than 300 funded, staffed programs across North America since 2016.

Turner created Louisiana’s first dedicated esports and media lab at the Southern University Laboratory School in 2021. Since then, he has helped formalize a collegiate-level program at the university.

In 2022, he worked with the administration to raise a half-million dollars in private donations and unrestricted federal COVID funds to create the EDGE lab. The program is part of the College of Sciences and Engineering but is situated in the Smith-Brown Memorial Union to make it more accessible to students. Turner is still working on dedicated funding for the program.

The 2025-2026 school year was the first time Southern’s esports teams had the benefit of a full season of sanctioned, national competition, Turner says.

The games they play, including Madden NFL, MLB: The Show, FIFA and others, seem straight out of an American den. But Turner and his counterparts nationwide see an educational upside. They cite academic studies suggesting that gaming hones many skills employers want, including quick decision-making, spatial recognition, critical thinking and adaptability.

“The Army is even recruiting gamers to fly drones,” Turner says.

The national championship has helped bring attention to the EDGE lab, but Turner says he has a bigger vision that includes helping Southern graduates enter the video gaming industry. African Americans currently occupy about 5% of that field’s jobs, despite them being robust gaming consumers, he says.

“There are a lot of possible partnerships across the curriculum, including game development,” Turner says. “That is my dream when all this is said and done.”

This article was originally published in the August 2026 issue of 225 Magazine.