Inside a sleek new arena on the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga campus, the pulse of competition beats strong.
Two squads enter, charged with tension – every movement calculated, every decision carrying the weight of victory or defeat. As they collide, bursts of chaos give way to brief silence. Precision, instinct and trust converge as teammates call out coordinates, cover angles and fight to seize even the smallest advantage.
Momentum shifts like a storm and, as the clock winds down, the competition becomes a contest of skill and will. When it ends, only one team stands triumphant.
The arena isn’t the hardwood of a basketball court or the turf of a gridiron, but a battle-torn 3D landscape within Microsoft’s “Call of Duty” (CoD), a video game built from ones and zeros and rendered onscreen with liquid fluidity.
Only a handful of spectators are physically present – a sharp contrast to the Mocs football team competing before thousands of electrified fans at a packed Finley Stadium. The rest watch online, a livestream complete with play-by-play and color commentary drawing them to the action.
The competitors wear no helmets or pads, though UTC’s team proudly sports T-shirts emblazoned with the Mocs name. And instead of gripping bats or gloves, players wield mice and keyboards, while others command game controllers with near superhuman precision.
This is the world of competitive video gaming – better known as esports – where all the tactical brilliance and reflexive agility of traditional athletics come alive inside digital arenas filled with remote rivals.
A new kind of arena
On a weekday morning in October, UTC’s new esports facility hums with the steady whir of 25 high-performance gaming PCs, each powered by a Ryzen 9 processor and paired with a 280-hertz monitor built for split-second precision. When players settle into their chairs for a match, a direct fiber connection from EPB delivers lightning-fast gameplay, with pings to Atlanta servers that hover in the single digits – a benchmark most gamers can only dream of.
At the far end of the room, a lounge-style viewing area offers a change of pace: plush chairs, deep couches and several large screens mounted before a row of gaming stations, each powered by its own computer. It’s part competition hub, part living room – a space designed to make UTC’s gamers, along with the family and friends who come to watch in person, feel at home.
Overseeing the action is Chase Daffron, UTC’s esports coordinator and the architect of the program’s rapid rise. A recent UTC graduate in business analytics now pursuing his MBA, Daffron knows the esports landscape inside and out. He competed collegiately in “CoD,” helping to launch a nationally ranked team before transferring to UTC, where esports existed only as a small student club.
“When I arrived, we weren’t an established program,” Daffron says. “So I brought in a few friends and we started competing.”
Their early success turned heads on campus. Within a year, UTC’s “CoD” team ranked No. 15 nationally – a breakthrough that convinced the university to invest in the program’s future.
That investment led to scholarships for players and the creation of a permanent facility, now operated under the university’s Information Technology department. Open daily from morning until evening, the center serves as both training ground and gathering place, with teams reserving computers for late-night scrimmages and weekend competitions that connect UTC to campuses across the country.
With that foundation in place, recruitment is the next frontier.
“This year will be the first time we’re recruiting externally, not just from the state but across the country,” Daffron says. “We even have a student from Japan who wants to come to UTC.”
The goal, he adds, is clear: to break into the top five programs in the Southeast and keep climbing.
Building a culture
For Daffron, UTC’s esports program is about more than competition. It’s also about creating a culture that blends the discipline of academics with the community of gaming.
“Students have to have the right mindset,” he says. “They can’t come here just to play video games. School comes first.”
That message is as much a cornerstone of the program as the games the students play. Team members are expected to keep up their grades, meet practice schedules and represent UTC with professionalism both online and off.
“My job isn’t just to help them compete,” Daffron explains. “It’s to help them develop their careers through UTC.”
The program’s structure mirrors that of traditional college athletics. Players earn their spots through open tryouts, both online and in person, and their performance determines placement on rosters.
“There has to be a certain level of skill for the leagues we’re in,” Daffron says. “They need to meet that threshold.”
What might surprise outsiders is how many players come from athletic backgrounds – not from gaming setups in their parents’ basements.
“Most of our team, and even esports in general, comes from sports,” Daffron notes. “We’ve all grown up in competition. We still have that mindset.”
That mindset shows up in how the teams train. Scholarship players practice several nights a week, often logging five-hour sessions that include scrimmages and match reviews.
“It’s the same thing as an NFL team watching game film,” Daffron says. “We go back and study what we did wrong. It’s essential to getting better.”
The path to pro
As UTC’s program matures, its competitive ambitions are taking shape, too. For many players, the ultimate goal lies beyond campus – earning a spot in a professional league and competing on the world stage.
UTC’s esports program fields six competitive teams – “Call of Duty,” “Overwatch,” “Valorant,” “League of Legends,” “Rocket League” and “Super Smash Bros” – with roughly 60 students participating and two teams on scholarship.
Among the program’s rising stars is Austin Mendoza, known online by his gamer tag “Corona,” one of the top 75 “Call of Duty” players in the world. He joined the team from Mississippi last year and quickly became its centerpiece, helping UTC climb to a No. 12 ranking.
“Austin has the right mindset, the skills and the talent,” Daffron says. “He could easily go pro after college.”
UTC’s commitment to hosting major events has also helped elevate its players. This fall, the university hosted the Scenic City Invitational, a 20-team “Rocket League” tournament that drew competitors from across the country, including 13 of the top 20 programs in the nation. For two days, the lab buzzed with activity as players rotated through matches, spectators gathered in the lounge and commentators provided play-by-play coverage online.
The event spilled beyond campus, as well. UTC partnered with Chattanooga Comic Con to extend the tournament into the downtown convention center, where fans crowded around a massive projector screen to watch teams battle it out.
“All 20 of the teams that came loved our space,” Daffron says. “Some students even started talking about transferring to UTC after seeing what we have here.”
For players like Mendoza, opportunities like these can serve as stepping stones toward the professional scene. Daffron says the collegiate esports world now serves as a direct pipeline to pro leagues, with teams in “CoD,” “Valorant” and “Counter-Strike” scouting top college talent.
“One of our former players from 2021 is now a top-eight challenger,” he notes. “I’ve played against people who went pro. When our players compete at that level, it gives them confidence – it makes them believe they can get there, too.”
While the spotlight is often on the players, Daffron is quick to point out the many career paths that surround them. Students studying broadcasting, marketing and design contribute to the program through commentary, social media and production, learning how to apply their skills in a rapidly expanding industry.
“There are a lot of different opportunities within esports beyond playing,” Daffron says. “We have shout casters, graphic designers, social media managers – all getting real experience here.”
The business of esports
Long before millions watched tournaments online and crowds filled arenas for the biggest events, esports began in a college lab. In 1972, students at Stanford University gathered for the Intergalactic Spacewar! Olympics, a modest competition with a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone as the prize.
The 1980s brought arcade contests like Atari’s Space Invaders Championship, which drew more than 10,000 participants, and the founding of Twin Galaxies, an organization dedicated to recording high scores and legitimizing competitive gaming.
By the 1990s, the rise of the internet moved the action from arcades to home computers. Games like “Doom” and “Quake” helped pioneer the first-person shooter genre, while South Korea transformed esports into a national spectacle, broadcasting professional matches on television and launching global tournaments such as the World Cyber Games.
The modern era arrived in the 2010s with streaming platforms like Twitch, which made it possible for anyone to broadcast their gameplay to a worldwide audience. Esports rapidly evolved into a professional industry with organized teams and international leagues. What began as a niche pastime now rivals traditional sports in scale and visibility, with college and high school programs feeding the professional ranks.
Today, esports is a multibillion-dollar global industry. In 2024, worldwide revenues were estimated between $1.4 and $1.6 billion, and forecasts suggest that number could reach $6.6 billion by 2032.
At the professional level, the financial potential is significant. Earnings vary widely – from around $30,000 for entry-level competitors to more than $100,000 for mid-tier players, with elite gamers and streamers pulling in hundreds of thousands or even millions annually. Revenue typically comes from multiple sources, including team contracts, tournament winnings, sponsorships and streaming.
That’s where UTC’s program takes a broader view. While the university trains its teams to compete, it also helps students develop the marketing and digital media skills that underpin modern esports careers.
“We help them build their brand,” Daffron says. “Their marketing, social media, Twitch stream – all of it. When they leave here, they have that foundation, and they can keep growing from it.”
Next five years
Daffron has no illusions about how competitive the collegiate esports landscape has become – or how quickly it’s evolving. Still, he believes UTC is poised to make its mark. With national recruiting underway and new partnerships forming, he envisions Chattanooga becoming a regional destination for both players and events.
“In the next five years, I can see us being a top-five team in the Southeast and a top-10 team in the nation,” he says. “We want to make Chattanooga an esports destination for high school kids and college transfers.”
That vision depends not only on talent but also on community. Daffron and his team are working to connect with local sponsors, businesses and schools, building relationships that can sustain the program’s growth.
“Our main goal this fall is to work with local sponsors and get some backing from the community,” he says. “Now that we have the space, it’s about showing what we can do.”
With its gig-speed network, deep talent pool and growing enthusiasm for gaming, Chattanooga is well positioned to play a central role in the next chapter of collegiate competition.
“It won’t be easy,” Daffron says, “but it’s the kind of challenge our players love – the beginning of something big.”
Inside UTC’s new arena, the contests will continue – not on hardwood or turf, but within digital worlds where reflex meets strategy. Each match adds to a growing tradition that reflects the same competitive spirit found in Finley Stadium and McKenzie Arena.
For UTC’s players, it’s another way to test their skills, build community and carry the Mocs name into a new kind of space – one where the pulse of competition beats as strong as ever.