Fresh from moving back to Waco, Adam Stanley reflects on the personal connections he made in his four years at Brewton-Parker College in Georgia, where he coached several championship teams until April.
“That’s the really cool thing about sports and competition, is you develop these kinds of relationships through manufactured adversity,” he said. “It’s all pretend. It’s not real struggle. But because of that artificial nature, it’s really valuable to us as people. We can grow through it and grow with it and grow alongside it.”
Artifice is especially relevant in Stanley’s chosen sport, where the action unfolds on a screen instead of a physical field. As Baylor’s new esports director and coach, he is responsible for recruiting and guiding top competitive gamers to play under the Bears banner. Esports was an estimated $2.13 billion global industry in 2024, and the university’s decision to build out the Baylor esports program is a nod to gaming’s power to engage and develop students.
“Baylor is being quite brave in a way of saying, you know, this is a new developing industry, and we want to be at the forefront of it,” Stanley said.
With the new hire, the university deepens its embrace of a field that has almost only ever known growth. Live competition has long been a staple in the world of video games, but the rise in dominance of online multiplayer games in the late 2000s supercharged esports as a spectator team sport with parallels to traditional sports like football and basketball.
Today, corporate-sponsored gaming leagues based on titles like League of Legends, Valorant, and Dota hold contests in sold-out venues, replete with commentators and live entertainment. At the most elite professional levels, champs earn million-dollar prizes, sponsorships, and fame. Developers often design games with tournaments in mind, and an industry of online content—stats, analysis, and streams on Twitch and YouTube—thrives off live and virtual competitions alike.
Esports also flourishes at both the K-12 level, where thousands of middle and high school programs have cropped up nationwide; and at the collegiate, where conferences like the Big 12 have begun holding officially sanctioned events. The National Association of Collegiate Esports, the sport’s largest membership association at that level, boasts 260 member institutions across the U.S. and Canada.
Baylor’s latest moves build on years of grassroots momentum. In 2017, students established a club-level team, Oso Esports, which has been active on campus and in competitions ever since. Team members competed this spring in the first official Big 12 esports event, a virtual Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tourney. Partnering with Oso is a priority for Stanley, who has met with club representatives and begun watching games since his hire in March.
“My primary goal is just to support them, give them encouragement,” he said. “We’ve been invited to some really cool opportunities already, and I want to be sure that Oso has more resources, more opportunities, more availability for competition. But in no way do we see Baylor Esports overtaking or exerting my authority over what they do.”
The university has also been raising its profile as an esports event hub. About 450 middle and high school students converged on the Hurd Welcome Center last December to battle in the fall Texas Esports League Finals. In May, the center hosted the Texas Scholastic Esports Federation’s Undisputed State Championships, where 1,500 high schoolers faced off in Overwatch 2, Fortnite, Street Fighter 6, and more.
That strong K-12 pipeline speaks to the accessibility of video games, Stanley said: “There’s a responsibility that we have to give this a little bit of life.”
Stanley, who earned his Master of Divinity from Baylor in 2012, has been prepared for this moment by both his professional and personal lives. He spent 12 years in leadership at Live Oak Classical School, where his roles included basketball coach and athletics administrator. In his youth, he logged thousands of hours playing the first-person sci-fi shooter Halo, an experience that informs his empathic approach to coaching gamers today.
“It was very easy for me to put the headset on and tune out the world to my own detriment,” he said. “Not all of it was bad, but I can confidently say that by doing that and isolating myself, my physical health suffered, my spiritual health suffered, my mental health suffered. I think what encouraged me to transition into the world of esports from my path in traditional sports was that fact of, ‘Man, I really wish I had [a program like] this when I was their age.’”
Accounts of the training regimens of top pros in esports often mention brutal practice hours, sprained fingers, sore bodies, and strained mental health. Wary of these pitfalls, Stanley set up a well-rounded daily schedule for his teams at Brewton-Parker College: two-hour practices consisting of 30 minutes each of drills, film review, team play, and a general meeting. The training structure emphasized routine, teamwork, and character building—a strategy that he learned from traditional sports.
“We want to have team meals before our matches,” he explained. “We want to work out and lift weights, not because that’s important to our games, but because it’s good for the whole person. It’s good to be well. So, when we took this approach of being a whole person in a holistic program, we found that they actually had better competitive results because they’re of sound body and mind.”
His BPC teams went on to win nine conference championships, earning titles like 2022-23 Rocket League Champs of the Georgia Esports League and Spring 2024 Eastern Collegiate Athletics Conference Champs in Fortnite (trios) and Valorant.
So, what games will the Baylor Esports program focus on? Stanley will only begin building teams in the fall, but he is eyeing Rocket League to start with. Popular in collegiate competition, the arcade-style game where cars play soccer holds appeal for general audiences. Other games currently dominating collegiate spaces that are in the running are Valorant, Overwatch 2, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Stanley says scholarships will be on the table as a recruitment tool, although specifics have not been worked out. “For a program like Baylor [that] wants to have an institutional esports program, the scholarships will be robust, is the best I can say,” he said, adding that scholarships will “mirror traditional sports in a more profound way.”
More certain is the program’s emphasis on player development. Stanley, a married father of three boys whose personal favorite game these days is Pokémon GO, says his career highlights lie outside the game.
“I’ve been a coach long enough to know that all of this is fleeting,” he noted. “Championships are great, and wins are wonderful, but the best moments as a coach are when you get that text message years later, and it says, ‘Hey, coach, thinking about you. You meant a lot to me and I’m grateful for you,’ or, ‘Hey coach, I’m getting married soon,’ or, ‘Hey coach, I’m having a little boy of my own.’ Those kinds of moments, they transcend anything that these games can provide.”
