When you think about tuning in to a Big Ten sports contest, you probably think football or basketball — not a bunch of guys hunched over computer keyboards, gaze riveted to video screens.

But the Big Ten Network recently announced it will stream college competitions in the multiplayer online game "League of Legends." That game involves teams of contestants who vie to destroy their opponents' "nexus." If you don't know what a "nexus" is, we surmise you're not a video game aficionado.

And that's OK. For many among us, memories of competitive video sports start at the prehistoric dawn of the Pong age (Google it) and don't advance much past Pac-Man. Yes, there were pinball wizards, masters of another ancient art that required superb hand-eye-flipper coordination and a honed tactile sense of how sharply a player could thump the machine without causing a tilt. Those gaming relics reside now in scattered basement rec rooms or in certain nostalgia-oriented bars, where millennials learn how their parents (or grandparents) wasted untold hours.

Remember how your elders told you — or how you've heard from your annoying elders — that playing video games would never pay off? That all those hours shooting, maiming, slashing, stealing and otherwise outsmarting rivals in games such as World of Warcraft wouldn't give you anything more than thumb blisters and sleep deprivation?

Turns out those admonitions, or many of them, were wrong. Here's how wrong:

Competitive gaming is so mainstream on campuses that clubs from many Big Ten universities — including Northwestern, Illinois, Purdue, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, and Michigan — will compete in the Big Ten Network broadcasts. The schools will be split into East and West divisions. Matches will be streamed live on Mondays. The Big Ten championship game is slated for late March online and on the cable network. The winner advances to the North American championships later in the year.

The payoff? Each of the six players on a "League" team will take home $5,000 in scholarship money provided by Riot Games, creator of "League." That's not chump change.

Other tournaments offer even more scholarship money.

And then there's Robert Morris University Illinois in Chicago. In 2014, the school began offering athletic scholarships to accomplished "League of Legends" players. The varsity scholarship covers about 70 percent of a student's tuition, or roughly $25,000. The varsity reserves get about $10,000.

A potential sports cash-cow in which gamers get a share of the fame once reserved only for football, basketball and baseball stars? With a huge worldwide audience and crowds that have filled arenas such as Madison Square Garden? No wonder the Big Ten Network is getting in the game.

FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE