Pro Athletes are Gamers, Just ask Gilbert “Cheats on Xbox Live” Arenas

Similarly to the rest of us, pro athletes take gaming seriously, perhaps a little too seriously. Don’t believe me? Well, they care about their gaming enough to cheat in order to gain more experience and achieve higher levels.

Just consider Gilbert Arenas, who has openly admitted to cheating at Halo. The idea that he plays a “social-doubles” game with a friend where they each play with phony teammates in order to drive up their experience points is appalling to many gamers.

Arenas is guilty of the gaming equivalent of using steroids, and should be punished accordingly. That said, the fact that Arenas cares enough to resort to using this “performance-enhancing” technique demonstrates a new trend: the intermixing of gaming and athletic cultures.

Competition doesn’t only happen between athletes on the field, but also in various virtual arenas. One of the more heated examples is the recent Madden Rookie Bowl, a competition between the recently drafted NFL rookies sponsored by EA Sports. For the competitors, winning the trophy wasn’t the real prize, although Redskins rookie Devin Thomas seemed happy enough to take it home.

At the tournament, their player ratings for Madden ‘09 were revealed. Obviously these rankings matter, as Chris Johnson complained throughout the night about his “lowly” speed rating of 97 to EA Sports representatives. In case you were wondering, he wasn’t able to convince them that he deserved a higher rating (I have a feeling that if he had managed to get out of the first round, they might have been a little more receptive to his pleas).

Pro athlete’s obsession with video games has reached the point at which they have even begun forming competitive gaming leagues!

For instance, the Professional Baseball Gaming League, is a competitive league in which professional baseball players battle in various game titles across a whole season. Red Sox pitcher Craig Hansen took home the league’s inaugural title, and it’s clear that the success of this league isn’t a one-season wonder: the battle for this year’s title has been even more fierce.

With the attention being brought to gaming competitions through such events as the Madden Rookie Bowl, the time is ripe for e-sports competitors to finally receive the recognition as pro athletes that they deserve. I think that it’s about time, don’t you?