ANNOUNCEMENT
Oklahoma City University Esports and The University of Oklahoma Esports & Co-Curricular Innovation announce inaugural Great Plains Showdown hosted at the Black Box Theater at OU in Norman, OK and presented by McDonald’s Gaming. This event targets a late Fall event that has a philanthropic foundation coupled with a pride fight for the region benefiting The Ronald McDonald House. Year one features an exhibition series between these two universities in VALORANT(5v5), Rocket League(3v3), and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six(5v5). In 2025 and on, this event will expand with more lead time to include an invitational format for regional schools.
RUN OF SHOW
Sunday, Nov. 17th, 2024 (OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!)
at The Black Box Theater is Cross A
MAP TO VENUE (Look for Yellow McDonald’s Flag)
10PM VALORANT
12PM Rocket League
2PM Rainbow Six
Streamed live on Twitch!
(Matches may move up in schedule by 30 minutes if finished early)
WHAT IS THIS AND HOW DID IT COME ABOUT?
In October 2024, the leads from OU and OCU’s R6 Teams came together and asked administration on both sides if they could host a tournament. The answer was a unanimous, “ABSOLUTELY!” Immediately we collectively got to work and found which team alignments we shared between the two universities. We then secured the venue, resources, and started building our communications, marketing, and logistics to execute. This event does have an extremely quick launch time and is why we decided to keep this as purely an exhibition style event and started establishing the standards for future installments of this event.
“My hope is that this event will be the spark that will ignite a tradition that will last for decades. A way to build up a community and form a friendly rivalry between two universities while creating a chance for team improvement alongside individual growth.”, said Landon “Rush” Schmidt, Captain of OCU Rainbow Six
Because both schools share partnership with McDonald’s of The Southern Plains, we approached McDonald’s to come in and support which also resulted in The Ronald McDonald House of Oklahoma City as the supported charity. For year one this exhibition will host an publicly available event to attend on top of live streaming it from the venue for all supporters. While this event is only half a day long, future iterations will be less about exhibition and more about a pride fight for the region while keeping a philanthropic call to action. Additionally, the goal will be to scale the event up to multi-day and more regional universities.”
“This event means a lot to me as the match that sparked the flame that will hopefully continue to grow in the future. As a student/captain for my team, I can only thank the directors from OU/OCU so much for helping bring my idea to life. Also, as the years go by, I hope to see this event continue to expand to include other nearby schools, and more developments involved as well. Of course, this event would have never been possible without Rush, the captain of OCU R6. We came up with the idea of this event together, after essentially having a trial LAN where our R6 teams competed against each other in the OU venue. Now, this idea has spurred into a full LAN event, with production, support from administration, multiple developments involved, etc… I am very excited for the first year of this event, and hope there are many more to come.” – Kenny “Blizzy” Bartel, OU R6 Captain
GIVEAWAYS AND HOW TO SUPPORT
The inaugural Great Plains Showdown presented by McDonald’s Gaming is benefiting the Ronald McDonald House. Aside from the feel good energy we want to bake in some perks for you the fans, supporters, and family of all parties involved.
For those in attendance:
– $5 per entry. No limit on entries or wins.
– Drawings will happen before the day starts, after each series, and one finale after the last match.
– Refreshments served all day.
For those online:
– If a match ends extremely early we will open up a window of time to pick a FUN modifier from the highest donor. Winner will be sent a $10 Steam Prepaid card digitally.
Giveaways for physical participants ONLY:
– 2x $150 Gift Cards for custom keyboards from Computer Connection in OKC
– 3x ($150 Value) Hyper X Cloud Alpha Headsets (Blk/Red)
– 3x ($130 Value) Logitech Pro X Mice (Black)
– 3x $50 McDonald’s Arch Cards
How to Contribute:
CLICK HERE or scan the code below to go to our venmo. We will accept cash on site as well. If you are just interested in supporting our efforts and providing warmth for kids in need in the region then please contribute. This event will only happen year over year if our call to action to support kids is part of the equation.
WHY THIS IS HAPPENING
As scholastic esports, including both K-12 and collegiate alike, continue to grow and expand, stabilizing regional efforts in tandem with national and global efforts is a natural opportunity for programming. Oklahoma is home to one of the nation’s strongest K-12 organizations in Oklahoma Scholastic Esports, or OKSE, as well as having national and globally recognized collegiate esports programs. This includes Oklahoma Christian being ranked a top 10 collegiate esports program in North American in 2023, The University of Oklahoma winning global program of the year 2023, and multiple Oklahoma based universities being in the top 25 rankings competitively in various national leagues. The future of this event can go many different ways from educational panels, K-12 inclusion, various talent pipeline materialization as well as more robust tournament structures. Some formalized programs in Oklahoma (Those with dedicated departmental and/or dedicated director/coach/lead staffing) including CU, ECU, NWOSU, RSU, SWOSU, TU and more!
“Events like the Great Plains Showdown represent so much of what esports, and particularly collegiate esports, are about at their best – creating unity and pathways for competitors to build community. OCU and OU are two programs that I believe are built on these principles, so it is inspiring, but not all that surprising, to see us naturally come together for this great cause.”, said Connor Knudson, Director, Esports, Oklahoma City University.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The Great Plains Showdown follows the format OU launched with it’s Bedlam series with Gamers of OSU in 2018 and Red River Clash series with Longhorn Gaming in 2019 which have both been indefinitely cancelled in 2024. These can be revisited again once all universities are on departmental equal footing. Meaning, it needs to be OU vs OKST and OU vs UT-Austin to push the needle further. Originally this event structure served two purposes, first, to tap into cultural ties through athletics for these three brands and push our developments forward. Two, to leverage a philanthropic call to action to support kids in need in our regions before the holidays. In 2021, OU’s energies moved into full departmentalization, and in 2019 the RRC event specifically raised over $3K for the Children’s Miracle Network. Additionally, doing this in the name of helping kids in need before the holidays serves as an opportunity to create real-world use cases and examples to use against any arguments about violent video games in society by showcasing that when structured gamers are contributors.
“Pride fight type events like Bedlam and RRC served as a way to make up ground for the gaming and esports topics by tapping into the preexisting rival cultures at OU. However, we see tons of universities of all sorts of classification in league play throughout the year. The Great Plains Showdown now serves as an opportunity to build stronger ties in Oklahoma and surrounding states while sharing resources, sponsors, and networking to highlight ourselves.”, said Moog, Director, Esports & Co-Curricular Innovation, University of Oklahoma
While each university has varying targets to hit to define “success” for the administrations the culmination of OU’s combined developments achieved those goals and despite trying to keep those esports versions of those venerable cultural showcases alive failed to be met with the same load sharing and scope of intention that originated them when attempting to keep them going. The Great Plains Showdown now signifies those intents for our specific region where OU can contribute and be more of a part of our Oklahoma based initiatives alongside our epic Oklahomies without adding more onto the plate of an already stressed esports schedule.
Historical Bedlams: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
Historical RRCs: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022
