Chance the Rapper, in this Saturday Night Live sketch from last night, does a virtuoso job impersonating a regular sports reporter assigned to cover an esports event. Then again, pretty much everyone would, because let’s face it, do you really have any idea what’s going on in a League of Legends grand final?
“This looks like how a seizure feels,” says Chance, portraying a misplaced, autograph-hunting MSG Network sideline reporter. It’s the best line in an otherwise tropey riff on professional video gaming, unhip sedentary lifestyles, and nerds actually gettin’ down like rockstars.
Funny thing is, there is an actual professional program training sports journalists in broadcasting esports, had anyone asked me — or Dan Patrick, the longtime sports radio, ESPN and studio personality who leads the project down at Full Sail University. “Who’s to say that esports is not under the umbrella of being a sportscaster?” Patrick told Polygon last spring. “If that’s what you want to do, I’m going to make you a better broadcaster. I’m going to make you a better interviewer.”
Somebody enroll Chance, then, because he completely missed how Echo was trying to defend their Nexus with two heroes on respawn. That seems to be an obvious topic for his stand-up with an oblivious S3X PANDA 99 after Shadow Gaming’s big blowout win.
