The official, publisher-backed Collegiate League of Legends (CLOL) competition has seen many issues in this semester’s iteration – which can be boiled down to technological issues, human error, and potentially a lack of resources.
The issues began even before the tournament matches kicked off – and one could also argue that the issues began well before even this current season of CLOL.
About Riot Collegiate & GGTech
In the summer of 2023, Riot Games sought bids from companies looking to run the official, publisher-backed scholastic tournament series for League of Legends and VALORANT. James Fudge for The Esports Advocate (TEA) reported on the matter, identifying GGTech as one of two final bidders.
Riot’s request for proposal allegedly included one key detail: Working capital on hand.
In his report, Fudge claimed sources said that “Riot would prefer that bidders show that they have at least $3 M USD ($1M per year) in working capital on hand to administer a proper program; but another source claims that the $3 M is a payment to be made to Riot over the three year period instead.”
Not long after Fudge’s original report, GGTech announced that they had “secured a $12.4 million investment” and their press release emphasized a desire to expand into the North American market.
And to complete the trilogy, less than 1 month later, on July 18th, 2023, Fudge published yet another article announcing “Riot Games Confirms 3-Year partnership with GGTech.”
Through the release shared with TEA, Riot claimed that not much would change in the collegiate competitions, sharing that the seasons would “remain largely the same as previous years, including dates, formats, a live final event for both games, equal scholarship prizes as previous seasons, and the same overall goals of each competition.”
And, in Fall 2023, GGTech took over CLOL and CVAL under their UniEsportsNA brand.
For a more in-depth look at the first two seasons of College VALORANT, check out “What happened to College VALORANT?”
The end of in-house RSAA
It’s important to mention that just after UniEsportsNA’s first semester running CLOL and CVAL, Riot Games laid off over 500 employees in January 2024.
These layoffs affected J.T. Vandenbree also known as “Tiza,” a staple of the Riot Scholastic Association of America (RSAA) and CLOL Community.
Additionally, in April 2024, John Gallagher, who worked in Scholastic Operations at Riot, announced that he was promoted to Head of League Operations for VCT Americas, writing: “I’ve been gradually transitioning my CLOL/CVAL/College Club responsibilities and helping gear up everyone at UNIVERSITY Esports over the past several months, but today’s officially my last day on the college esports team at Riot.”
It is unclear if there is anyone still remaining as part of the RSAA team.
Changes over the years
The 2026 Spring semester marks UniEsportsNA’s final semester running CLOL and CVAL.
See year-over-year registration numbers:
| CLOL Season | # of Registrants |
|---|---|
| 2024 CLOL Spring | 439 (North, South, East, West only) |
| 2025 CLOL Spring | 331 (North, South, East, West only) |
| 2026 CLOL Spring | 244 (North, South, East, West only) |
| 2023 CLOL Fall Warm-up | 250 |
| 2024 CLOL Fall Warm-up | 240 |
| 2025 CLOL Fall Warm-up | 176 |
| CVAL Season | # of Registrants |
|---|---|
| 2023 CVAL Fall | 448 (North, South, East, West only) |
| 2024 CVAL Winter | 336 (North, South, East, West only) |
| 2024 CVAL Spring | 368 (North, South, East, West only) |
| 2024 CVAL Fall Warm-up | 240 |
| 2025 CVAL Fall Warm-up | 176 |
| 2025 CVAL Spring | 316 |
| 2026 CVAL Spring | 246 |
See year-over-year prize pools for the Championship Stage of the tournaments:
| CLOL Season | Prizing |
|---|---|
| 2024 CLOL Spring – Championship Stage | $190,000 (8 teams earn) |
| 2025 CLOL Spring – Championship Stage | $35,000 (4 teams earn) |
| 2026 CLOL Spring – Championship Stage | $17,500 (4 teams earn) |
| 2023 CLOL Fall Warm-up | 1st: 25x Event Chest Bundle (6250 RP) 2nd: Ultimate Skin (3250 RP) 3rd-4th: Legendary Skin (1820 RP) 5th-8th: Epic Skin (1350 RP) 9th-16th: Standard Skin (975 RP) – All prizes are distributed by RP value |
| 2024 CLOL Fall Warm-up | 1st: 30,000 RP 2nd: 15,000 RP 3rd-4th: 9,000 RP 5th-8th: 6,000 RP 9th-16th: 4,000 RP (Roughly $851.95 real world value in total) |
| 2025 CLOL Fall Warm-up | 1st: 10 Tshirts + 10 Poro Boxes + 10 Custom Art Posters + 10 Custom Bags 2nd: 10 Poro Boxes + 10 Custom Art Posters + 10 Custom Bags 3rd – 4th: 10 Custom Art Posters |
| CVAL Season | Prizing |
|---|---|
| 2024 CVAL Fall Warm-up | 1st: 25,000 VP 2nd: 12,500 VP 3rd-4th: 8,000 VP 5th-8th: 5,000 VP 9th-16th: 3,500 VP (Roughly $895.37 real world value in total) |
| 2025 CVAL Fall Warm-up | 1st: 10 Tshirts + 10 Rubber Duckies + 10 Custom Art Posters + 10 Custom Bags 2nd: 10 Rubber Duckies + 10 Custom Art Posters + 10 Custom Bags 3rd – 4th: 10 Custom Art Posters |
| 2024 CVAL Spring – Championship Stage | $18,250 (16 teams earn) |
| 2025 CVAL Spring – Championship Stage | $35,000 (4 teams earn) |
| 2026 CVAL Spring – Championship Stage | $17,500 (4 teams earn) |
Participation in CLOL has decreased steadily year over year, nearly cut in half from the amount of teams that competed in Spring 2024. Similarly, CVAL has also seen decreased participation.
Prizing has also decreased from $190,000 across 8 teams in the CLOL Spring 2024 Championship stage to $17,500 across 4 teams this semester. CVAL’s prizing has fluctuated, though 2024’s season awarded prizing across 3 splits plus a championship, versus only the championship stage in 2025 and 2026.
Teams have pointed out that even the fall warm-up prizes have decreased. Where teams once earned RP or VP (premium currency for Riot titles), this past semester, teams competed for t-shirts, posters, and bags.
In a statement to College Esports News in 2024, Riot Games addressed the concerns around prizing:
“Our goal is to create a sustainable ecosystem for collegiate esports, which requires us to scale and adjust the prize pool accordingly,” said a representative on behalf of the organizations. “As the sport evolves, we continuously evaluate and adjust various aspects, including prize pools, to maintain a balance that supports long-term viability and growth. We are committed to supporting collegiate esports and will make further adjustments as necessary to foster a thriving and sustainable environment for all participants.”
Additionally, it’s important to mention that many of the tournament admins interfacing with teams or even delivering some of the announcements are not the same individuals making the decisions around how to handle issues around seeding, the mis-matched pairings in the format, and the silent rule changes. Many of the tournament admins are contractors, and do not work for GGTech directly. As a result, contractors are the ones dealing with the backlash publicly first-hand, rather than those who may have made the decisions in the first place.
It started with seeding
At the beginning of any tournament, teams are assigned seeds (a numerical ranking) based on skill or past performance. According to Wikipedia, the purpose of seeding is to “separate the most skilled competitors from each other in the early rounds of a tournament.”
The CLOL rulebook (section 1.3) details pre-season seeding: Teams are divided into a Championship Division (top 32 seeds) and Open Division (remaining teams) “to create better skill-matchups.”
The rulebook states:
Teams will be seeded based on the Ranked Solo tier and division of the five highest-ranked members of the current Active Roster at the time of registration closing. Players removed from the roster before the seeding deadline or added after will not be included. Ties will be broken by the highest player division and tier, then 2nd highest player, through 5th player. If multiple teams have the exact same distribution of player ranks, the tie will be broken by highest individual player ranking, including LP.
During the registration period, every student on a team’s roster must sign into the universityna.riotgames.com using their Riot account. After registration closes, the tournament organizers capture a “snapshot” of players’ current ranks.
GGTech then converts each player’s rank to a number in order to compare players, then calculate a points total for each team.
This process is vulnerable to a couple of issues:
If a player changes their in-game name, it isn’t updated in the UniEsportsNA system unless they sign out and sign back into the website – which could lead to players missing or not counted for seeding. If registration is extended, depending on when that snapshot is taken, it can be difficult to get accurate rankings for players.
In this case, CLOL 2026 registration was extended by 3 weeks. During this extension, the current LOL Ranked season ended and the next season began. Which meant that a large number of players would be unranked due to the new season.
Initial seeds and brackets were released on Monday, January 19th – with teams expected to play their round 1 matches by the following Sunday at 11:59 pm conference time.
Following the announcement, teams pointed out seeding issues in the #help channel, with many teams sharing that their rank snapshot was incorrect. Additionally, some pointed out that teams were incorrectly placed in the open division when they had more point totals than champion division teams.
Initially, tournament admins stated that the seeding would be final – but later shared that they would be investigating the issue.
On Tuesday, January 20th, Lawrence “KhazixMayJump” who oversees competitive operations for GGTech made an announcement: “Apologies for the recent snapshot seeding issues caused by an API data pull error. The team is currently working to retrieve the correct ranks so that all teams receive accurate seeding for the upcoming season.”
On Wednesday, January 21st, tournament admins announced that reseeding was complete: “All teams have been re-seeded using the corrected rank data, and new brackets/groups have been generated accordingly.”
Very quickly, teams hopped into #help and pointed out more issues with seeding, some teams even sharing that their ranks were even more inaccurate than the initial seeding.
T from Calvin shared that their team wasn’t even in the bracket anymore – which an admin clarified they were in the MEC, writing: “I’ve been told that we were instructed by MEC to move some teams to MEC conference, so your team would be joining the MEC conference.”
Roughly two hours later, Lawrence made a final announcement: “Following the updated snapshot we are aware that some ranking data may still appear inconsistent across different sources. At this time, all brackets and matchups that have been published are finalized and locked for this weekend’s matches.”
The end of the announcement states: “We will continue working with the dev team to review snapshot accuracy and improve the process for future events. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”
And thus, the CLOL season kicked off.
Double forfeits
Throughout the tournament, instances of double forfeits were recorded despite the fact that a match was played.
Typically, double forfeits refer to an instance where neither team shows up for their scheduled match – considered a double no-show, and both teams are marked as FF (forfeit) as a game did not occur. A double forfeit can also happen if the match is played, but neither teams submit the match results. Or, sometimes, a double forfeit can happen if the website players submit scores on (allegedly) doesn’t submit results properly.
Across multiple rounds, teams reported that their matches were incorrectly marked as double forfeits despite the match taking place. In many instances, these teams identified a website issue as the reason.
Double forfeits, especially in swiss, affect the reseeding and record-based match-ups for later rounds, creating a snowballing issue.
Swiss Format issues
dekkar, the former Lead Admin for CLOL, designed the regional format to be simple for teams to understand: Win 3 (or more) games and you’re headed to the playoffs. Lose 3 games and you’re out.
Section 1.3.2.2 of the rulebook echoed that: “After 5 rounds, teams with a match record of 3-2 or better will advance to the conference playoffs.”
Mathematically, in a mistake-free execution of swiss, this would result in half of the 32 teams qualifying, for a total of 16 teams.
Issues in CLOL’s swiss format popped up in round 4 of the South, East, and West regions – with teams being paired up incorrectly.
About the swiss format
For those unaware, swiss is a tournament format where competitors play against opponents with a similar record for each round of the tournament. So in round 4, 3-0 teams face 3-0 teams, 2-1 faces 2-1, and so on.
Parka from St. Clair LoL, pointed out the mistake heading into round 4:
Parka edited the south graphic, originally posted by UniEsportsNA, to include the listed teams’ records.
In the 2 wins versus 1 loss section for the South region, there are multiple incorrect pairings:
- 2-1 Texas League Premiere vs. UH Chungus 1-2 (in this case, UH Chungus should be in the 1 win – 2 loss category)
- UF Blue (2-1) vs. UST LoL (1-2)
- Georgia Tech Gold (2-1) vs. Virginia Commonwealth University (1-2)
Not to mention incorrect pairings with every single 0-3 team in the south region:
- Mary Washington (0-3) vs. North Texas (2-1)
- Clemson (0-3) vs. FSU Garnet (1-2)
- Auburn (0-3) vs. Brewton-Parker (2-1)
- UCF (0-3) vs. MSU Maroon (1-2)
Every 0-3 team was matched against a 2-1 or 1-2 team despite none of the 0-3 teams having faced each other in earlier rounds – meaning there was no rematch conflict preventing them from being correctly paired together.
Round 4 match-ups were announced on Monday, February 9th, and within an hour, teams pointed out in the #help channel that there were match-up errors in CLOL South.
Teams reportedly did not hear from the tournament organizer on this issue until Friday, February 13th – 1 day before the default day for CLOL matches – far too late for these issues to be resolved.
Silent rule change
This mistake in round 4 snowballed into more incorrect pairings in round 5 which snowballed into an issue around the number of teams qualifying for Champs playoffs.
Remember, in a perfect iteration of CLOL’s swiss format in their champs division, only 16 teams could achieve a 3-2 record or higher. However, due to the issues in round 4 and round 5 – in some cases more than or even less than 16 teams achieved a 3-2 record or higher:
- South: 17 teams
- East: 15 teams
- West: 15 teams
- North: 16 teams
College Esports News consulted with a couple of different tournament operators who confirmed that it is mathematically impossible for more than 16 teams or less than 16 teams to qualify in a swiss format (executed perfectly) with these constraints (32 teams, 5 rounds, 3-2 record or better = playoffs).
Following the mishap in rounds 4 and 5, without proactive communication, UniEsportsNA updated the rules on February 18:
Before – in 1.3.2.2. Swiss Stage, the rulebook stated: “After 5 rounds, teams with a match record of 3-2 or better will advance to the conference playoffs.”
After – in 1.3.2.2. Swiss Stage, the rulebook now states: “After 5 rounds, the top 16 teams from Swiss Stage will advance to the conference playoffs.”
dekkar was one of the first to point out that the rules had been changed without communication:
According to rule 6.2. “Rule Changes,” UniEsportsNA does reserve the right to update the tournament rules – but the timing of the rule change heavily coincided with the issue of more than 16 teams qualifying.
22 hours after dekkar’s tweet, Lawrence “KhazixMayJump” who works on competitive operations for GGTech made an announcement addressing the rule change, stating that “the change was added to eliminate ambiguity and ensure structural consistency.”
“As the Swiss Stage progressed, it became clear that these two clauses could conflict depending on how results shaped out. In a 5-round Swiss format, the number of teams finishing 3-2 or better can vary slightly depending on outcomes,” the post reads. “This could theoretically result in more or fewer than 16 teams qualifying under a strict ‘3-2 or better’ threshold.”
The announcement made no mention of the mismatched pairings in round 4 or round 5.
If it’s (allegedly) mathematically impossible for more than or less than 16 teams to qualify in a 32-team, 5-round swiss tournament – then this rule was changed (allegedly) to paper over the fact that rounds 4 and 5 had incorrect match-ups.
When asked for a list of teams that may have been impacted by these seeding and swiss mishaps and the sudden rule change, dekkar identified a couple of teams in particular:
- George Mason
- Carleton University
- Stony Brook University
- University of Alberta (2-2) vs. CAL Golden Bears (3-1)
- University of Arizona Wildcats (2-2) vs. UW Esports (3-1)
- New York University (2-2) vs. University of Toronto (3-1)
Yet with many issues across both CLOL and CVAL, there could be many more affected teams.
For the teams at the top, this rule change and incorrect pairings would not have necessarily affected their run in the tournament. Perhaps it could alter their playoff seeding.
But for teams that fall in the middle to lower skilled range, it puts teams in an unfair situation. Teams compete for five weeks, lose because they were seeded incorrectly or matched up incorrectly against a team with a different record, and that would be the end of their season.
Or they might’ve qualified for playoffs based off of the original wording and incorrect swiss execution and now their playoffs spot is revoked as a result of a snowballing issue.
It just creates a poor experience that teams may not want to participate in again.
Technical difficulties
In every league, after a match concludes, it is on the teams to report their match scores. Each league handles this process differently:
NECC, which uses tournament platform LeagueOS: For each game, teams must take a screenshot of the external draft screen and the ending scoreboard screen. All of these screenshots must be submitted by both teams, regardless of who wins.
NACE, which uses LeagueSpot: Both teams are responsible to report scores, manually entering the scores into LeagueSpot. For NACE League of Legends – the tournament organizer has an API integration that auto reports scores with full game stats. NACE only requires screenshots if the teams have a dispute over the match score.
With CLOL and College VALORANT which utilize a Riot Games-owned website for their tournament, teams are responsible for uploading screenshots of their match scores. Despite being Riot’s official publisher-backed tournament, CLOL does not utilize the API integration to auto report scores with full game stats.
Screenshot-based reporting is standard in collegiate esports – but across both CLOL and CVAL, players claim that the website is buggy, especially when it comes to uploading results.
One example of this issue comes from the Carleton Ravens CLOL team. Their round 1 match against RIT in the East region, was originally reported as a double forfeit for both teams.
Honor, a friend of the Carleton Ravens CLOL team, claims that the Ravens submitted the match’s score and the website “told the [team’s] manager that the submission went through” when it allegedly hadn’t.
He went on to share with College Esports News that the Ravens didn’t see the match marked as a double forfeit until round 2 match-ups were posted.
Honor pointed out the double forfeit and website issue in a strongly worded message in the CLOL Discord general chat on January 29th, 2026:
[It’s important to note that Lead Admin Insanity may not work directly for GGTech and is instead a contractor, delivering a response based on what higher ups may have told them.]
Part of his message reads: “Our guys played the match with tourney codes, uploaded screenshots, did everything according to the rules and are now given a loss because your site doesn’t work.”
An admin responded to Honor’s message, discussing points around the UENA website and how to flag issues:
“Tournament admins do not control the functionality of the UENA website or its backend systems. We do not have visibility into whether a submission “appeared successful” on a user’s end and because of this, we rely on teams to open a ticket as soon as an issue occurs, not a whole day after seeding has finalized (despite us posting many reminders on the deadlines)
With over 600 teams competing across conferences, it is not feasible for staff to individually confirm match completion or reschedules unless a ticket is submitted. This is why the process exists and why unreported matches are marked as double forfeits once deadlines pass.
In this specific case, the match was not flagged in time before Round 2 seeding was finalized. Once seeding is locked, results cannot be retroactively changed without causing cascading issues across the Swiss system and affecting other teams’ competitive outcomes.
I recognize this isn’t the outcome anyone wanted, and we appreciate that the team followed through with screenshots and communication once the issue was identified. Going forward, the best way to protect your team (or maybe not your team in this case cause you never opened a ticket) is to submit a ticket immediately after the match if there is any uncertainty with reporting, even if the site indicates success.”
The core issue: after uploading screenshots, the website allegedly shows a success notification regardless of whether the submission actually went through. Meanwhile, tournament admins can only see successful submissions – not failed or attempted ones.
This creates a tricky situation, eroding trust between both the tournament admins and teams. When the success indicator is unreliable and admins have no visibility into failed attempts, reporting scores can become a problem that snowballs into larger problems.
Once the technology fails, according to the tournament admins, it becomes the team’s responsibility to ensure that their results are accurate before the next round of competition.
The timeline of match score reporting to admin verification appears to be as followed (for Champs division):
- Matches must be played by Sunday at 11:59pm (conference time)
- Match scores must be reported by Monday at 2:59am (conference time) – 2 hours after the match deadline
- Admins manually review the results
- After this review period, admins re-seed and release the next round of match-ups
In the #faq on the CLOL discord server, a message states: “Always confirm that results appear correctly on the website after submission. (OR ON MONDAY)”
Another message in #announcements states: “If you experience any issues with match uploads or result submission, please #create-ticket ASAP before 3:00 AM so we can assist you.”
This can leave little time for teams to identify an issue – especially if they had no knowledge of there being an issue in the first place.
From the tournament administrator perspective, processes need to be enforced equally, and with a competition of this size and an admin team much smaller, chasing down individual results isn’t feasible. Nearly every tournament has score reporting issues, whether from tech failures, user error, forgotten submissions, or fabricated results. When tech fails, it’s impossible for an admin to distinguish a true failed submission from a team falsely claiming they uploaded. Hence the admin’s instruction to “submit a ticket immediately after the match if there is any uncertainty with reporting, even if the site indicates success.”
There is an argument to be made that tournament admins should be able to use other tools at their disposal such as a League of Legends or VALORANT tracker, in order to confirm the match was truly played. But then you fall back into the issue of man hours, the amount of teams, and the overall ability for these solutions to be put in place.
Yet from the team perspective, it is problematic to be expected to continue to use a website that allegedly indicates submission success regardless of if it was truly successful or failed since that indication can be untrustworthy.
Both NACE and NECC use an official Riot API integration that auto-reports scores with full game stats and screenshots serve only as a backup for disputes or API downtime.
This then begs the question…why is the official, publisher-backed CLOL tournament not utilizing the same League of Legends API? And could that solve a few of the issues teams faced in the competition this semester?
At this time, it is currently unclear why UniEsportsNA is not utilizing the League of Legends API to verify scores for the official, publisher-backed Collegiate League of Legends competition.
GGTech’s Response
Reiterating from the beginning of the article: It’s important to mention that many of the tournament admins interfacing with teams or even delivering some of the announcements are not the same individuals making the decisions around how to handle issues around seeding, the mis-matched pairings in the format, and the silent rule changes. Many of the tournament admins are contractors, and do not work for GGTech directly.
As a result, these contracted tournament admins are the ones dealing with the backlash first-hand and publicly, rather than those who may have made the decisions in the first place. This puts these contractors in a difficult position and they may be unable to speak out or defend themselves in fear of retaliation or it affecting other work.
College Esports News reached out to GGTech/UniEsportsNA for a statement on this season’s issues, asking the following questions:
1. Can you address issues surrounding the tournament website?
– Can you address why match results may not appear correctly on the website?
– Can you address why a submission to the website “may appear successful” but not actually be uploaded onto the website?
– What tools do tournament admins have at their disposal to address completed matches that were reported as double forfeits? Are they able to use tracker websites if they’re informed that the match did occur – if not, why?2. In the South, West, and North regions – teams encountered uneven match-ups (playing teams that were not the same record as them) in swiss stages 4 and 5. When were you made aware of this issue and how come it was not addressed?
3. Does the CLoL competition utilize the Riot API for match results – if not, how come?
4. How come the rule book change regarding the number of teams qualifying for the playoffs bracket was not communicated proactively to the players?
A representative for GGTech shared: “Thanks for the inquiry. We have shared updates in the CLOL and CVAL Discord channels that address several of these topics. Thanks again for reaching out.”
Conclusion
With GGTech/UniEsportsNA’s contract wrapping up this season, players can hope that Riot will look into resolving the issues the community faced this past semester.
Whether or not Riot will be bringing the competition back in-house or will be looking for another third-party company to outsource the league to currently remains to be seen.
The Collegiate League of Legends landscape has changed a lot in the past few years, as a result of outsourcing, yes, but also as a result of changes at Riot Games, changes within the economy, and countless other reasons.
Only time will tell what’s next for this publisher-backed competition. The community only hopes that they’ll be consulted in the future.
