The Start Of A New CDL Season!

You smell that in the air, of course you do it’s the smell of your dirty laundry basket filled with your Taco Bell-stained Taylor Swift Era’s tour sweatshirt, sitting next to your over heating PC because you haven’t done anything but order Taco Bell Crunch Wrap Supremes and Baja Blasts from Door Dash while you game the new Call Of Duty Modern Warfare III. Incase your wondering Logan are local door dash driver is doing well, he just had his third kid, we kind of chat every day when he drops off my food… With every yearly release of Call Of Duty comes a lot of anger and complaining towards the game, “it’s same game as last year, these guns all suck, we don’t need 98 attachments for each gun, how come these 13 years olds are so much better than I am but more importantly why the hell are they not in school at 11am on a mother fing Tuesday…” but what also comes with a new Call Of Duty besides the rage quit, is fast paced fun that is hard to beat, no matter our complaints, so much so that year after year we still end up buying the game and playing for a lot more hours than we probably should. Now I know what you’re thinking "but Brett this is a sports blog why are you talking about playing Call Of Duty against some goated 13 year old kids?.." Well I’m getting there… With every release of a new Call Of Duty means about a month later after you have wiped the red out of your eyes, brushed the crusty shredded cheese off your lap from three door dash orders ago and stepped outside to breath in some fresh air for the first time since release, you realize it’s the start of the new Call Of Duty League season, CDL for short.

Now I know what you’re thinking again, “Brett gaming isn’t a sport.” Well, you wouldn’t be wrong… or would you? Have you ever tried gaming for more than 8 hours and still have the focus and ability to hit a 360 no scope from 800 meters away? I think not! These guys are athletes just like Patrick Mahomes and Lebron James, it’s just in a different way. So, I would argue that it’s not only a sport but it’s one of the fastest growing sports in the world and one of the most entertaining to watch. It’s growing so fast that NFL Franchise team owners are getting involved by buying teams so they must see some value in the future of Esports. But, Let me tell you, that you haven’t lived until you are sitting in a dive bar somewhere off Grand Ave in St. Paul Minnesota with a group of strangers that haven’t seen the light of day in months getting up off their chairs, high fiving the guy next to them and screaming in joy at the TV when Attach hits a quick-scope, no-scope, head shot from halfway across the map to give the Minnesota Rokkr the lead in the match. The place goes bonkers, with people chanting at the top of their lungs “LETS GO ROKKR… LETS GO ROKKR”, I swear it’s louder than any sporting event I’ve ever been to. Well besides the old Metrodome back in the day when they used to “allegedly” pump sound into the stadium to make it impossible for the opposing teams to hear each other yell from 3 inches away.

It’s not just Call Of Duty that has created entertaining gaming leagues, Fortnite and League of Legends have created gaming tournaments that millions of people watch across the world on YouTube or in person. It has been amazing to watch Esports just sprout from the tiniest of seeds to a full meadow of sun flowers in no time at all. These gaming leagues even host tournaments inside of sold-out stadiums and arenas which is just remarkable considering the fact that NBA Franchise like the Orlando Magic can’t remember the last time they sold out an arena. But out of all these Esports leagues I think Call Of Duty does it just a little bit better than the rest of these leagues. CDL did this thing right when they decided to set it up by using cities and states across multiple countries to give your region of the world a team to cheer for. Just like a sports franchise. Some of the teams in the CDL include, Alanta Faze, Boston Breach, Seattle Surge, Toronto Ultra, Texas Optic and our favorite the Minnesota Rokkr. My brother got a group of us into the CDL lifestyle when we thought it was so stupid to go watch people play video games when we could be at home playing ourselves. My brother who hasn’t cheered for any sports team in his life, to be honest he actually hates sports. So, when he told us about this Call Of Duty League and the Minnesota Rokkr with so much excitement and glee in his voice, I was surprised and curious at the same time. He dragged us reluctantly to a watch party at some bar in Minneapolis and the second we stepped foot inside that watch party and felt the energy of all the fellow gamers gathered around in support of the hometown team it was like the first time that you have been to a sporting event all over again. We couldn’t help but instantly become Minnesota Rokkr fan boys and we aren’t ashamed to admit it. We also aren’t ashamed to admit that, well some of us aren’t ashamed to admit that we even have custom made Rokkr jerseys with our gamer tags embroidered on them. I have my gamer tag RonsBentWand which may or may not be a sexual inuendo about Ron Weasley’s Wand from the Harry Potter series, embroidered right above my heart on my purple Rokkr jersey for the world to see. Yes, I’m a grown ass man, leave me alone…

But Something sad has happened this year… There are no more watch parties. The Minnesota Rokkr have decided to put a kibosh on those. Now everyone just goes back to what they did before, hiding their fandom in their houses with their jerseys on watching the team play alone. The energy that once filled all us gamers with joy when the Rokkr made a great play in search and destroy to make a comeback vs Beans and his Boston Breach squad to win the match is gone. It has now turned into a quiet fist pump in our living rooms with a subtlest of “Let’s Go Rokkr” chants, it’s just not the same… But In the Rokkrs defense they were very generous with what they provided at these watch parties. They moved the parties out of bars and opened the doors to their facilities at the lavish, voted best in the NFL Minnesota Vikings headquarters, fed us pizza and soda pop and didn’t charge us a dime which was beyond anything I could have expected. But we don’t need anything like that, it’s just not necessary, we would be happy just being stuffed in the corner of a greasy bar, on the smallest tv in the building, paying our own tabs and watching the match as a community just to feel the energy of our fellow gamers and fans of the team.  

Even though the pageantry of the watch parties is gone for now, I will still sit in my living room with my purple Minnesota Rokkr jersey on and tune into the matches because they are truly entertaining and fun to watch, these guys are good, really good at what they do and its beyond impressive to watch especially through the eyes of someone that has .54 lifetime K.D. (kill to death ratio) some would say that’s average… I’m more of the capture the point kind of guy anyways… But hey if you have never tuned into a CDL match before, give it a shot. It’s the opening weekend of the CDL, turn off your infrastructure videos for 10 mins, switch on over to a CDL match between the Miami Heretics and the Carolina Royal Ravens and get immersed in the CDL world. What can it hurt? And here’s a funny concept you may find out you actually enjoy watching it. I was reluctant at first but with anything in life food, drinks, sports, activities, how can you hate something if you have never tried it.