Riot Games 
has named the six members of the advisory board to the new Riot Scholastic Association of America (RSAA), its standalone division to handle college and high school League of Legends esports.
The advisory board members are: Big Ten Network VP/Marketing Erin Harvego; Mountain West Conference Senior Associate Commissioner/ Government & Legal Affairs Carolayne Henry; Intersport Executive Director/Esports Kurt Melcher, who also leads esports at Robert Morris University; UC-Irvine Director/Esports Mark Deppe; University of Utah Director/Esports Operations A.J. Dimick; and MIT Professor T.L. Taylor, who also is director of research for the diversity advocacy group AnyKey.
The RSAA will have an open mandate to pursue initiatives that will help establish League of Legends as a long-term presence on campuses throughout the US, instead of relying on possibly short-lived student-run clubs. Michael Sherman, head of college, and Matt Birris, head of scholastic esports, will continue to lead the college and high school operations teams, respectively. They will both continue to report to North American Director of Publishing Chris Wyatt.
The creation of the RSAA, first reported by Sports Business Daily May 17, comes shortly after the NCAA Board of Governors decided not to pursue its own esports plan. However, Sherman said, this was not a response to the NCAA’s decision. Riot always intended to create an entity to control its own game, and had the NCAA pursued esports, it would have pushed to make the RSAA comparable to the NCAA’s sports-specific committees.
The top priorities of the RSAA, Sherman said, are to better develop Riot’s brand in the collegiate world, and to improve communications with schools that field esports teams or might be interested in joining. “We want to have a better communication layer that focuses on one-to-many communications with schools,” Sherman said. “That’s been a struggle with Riot in the current capacity.”
The advisory will hold its first meeting Thursday, when the college League championships begin.
Ben Fischer is a staff writer for Sports Business Daily, where this story first appeared.
