Last year's League of Legends North American Collegiate Championship drew 540 teams from more than 300 schools across the US and Canada, which may well be what convinced Riot Games to break things down a bit for the 2014-15 season. This year's competition will be divided amongst four continental regions, creatively named North, South, East, and West, and will span the entire academic year.
Riot has announced that this season's NACC qualifying events will be run by four "community partners": Ivy League of Legends (IvyLOL), Collegiate StarLeague (CSL), TeSPA , and WellPlayed Productions . Each of them will run league-format qualifiers to award one playoff spot per region—16 in total—who will then battle for regional titles. Once the final four are settled, they'll duke it out for the NACC crown in front of a live audience at an event in Los Angeles, currently expected to take place in April or May of 2015.
There's more on the line than just fame and glory, too: Each member of the first place team will earn $30,000 in scholarship money, the second-place finishers will each take home $15,000, while the third and fourth place team members will get $7500 each. Riot is looking into covering other educational expenses for winners who are on full-ride scholarships or have already paid for college.
IvyLOL and CSL are taking registrations now and will continue to do so until October 16, TeSPA registrations will begin on January 15, 2015 and will run until February 13, and WellPlayed will open its doors on February 23 and continue taking sign-ups until March 5. Details, regional breakdowns and other such information is up now at the League of Legends NACC FAQ ; this is also probably a good time to remind everyone that Riot recently announced that "toxic players" will be banned from ranked queues and earning end-of-season rewards. So do your school proud: Play hard, but play nice, too.
