Bullard Academy opens "Esports Arena"

Today in Tampa, it's game on at the Bullard Academy at Sly Middle Magnet School. The academy, named after WWE superstar Titus O'Neal, is opening its brand new esports arena. Our Matthew McClellan is there live for the ribbon-cutting. Oh, he's there. I see him behind you. I see him behind you. I don't think I've ever seen as many cameras and screens and speakers and gears and headsets and stuff. In one room. It is truly, truly incredible. We just got our first live demonstration of... JP, what was this game called again? Rocket League. Rocket League. JP was calling the game. Akia was helping him with Spectrum. They were calling this game. How would you describe, before I go to Thad, how would you describe... This game to anybody who's not familiar. Okay, so you guys know obviously soccer, right? You kick a ball around, you got to score, you have 90 minutes to score. It's just the same team, except you have, like, what, five minutes, I think, five, six minutes to score and get as many points as you want. It's like soccer, but just with cars, you know? You got to play, you have to have good community skills, you know? If you can't speak to your teammates, then... You might not win, but if you have good leadership and good mentality, you can win. I love what you're telling me right now. Now, some of us at home missed the demo that you just kind of showed us, but what were you doing during the demo? So during the demo, obviously our students here at Sly, all of them being in either 7th grade or 8th grade, being brilliant students, obviously they're obviously good, they're top. So what they were doing is they were playing Rocket League, which is obviously the game I just described to you. And they were having good communication skills, scoring on each other, talking to each other, showing leadership to each other. And I'm uniting them, you know? Bring them together like a community, like how Sly does Okay, we're going to look around the room for just a second. This is the giant panel. I'll move it out of the way because we've got to show the panel. This is really cool as I bring in Thad here. The namesake of this place, Thaddeus Fullard, a.k.a. WWE superstar Titus O'Neil. This big screen, what is the technology they were just telling me where you can do like a virtual reality set on this thing? Yeah, so basically this is an LED volume screen. It was ran on a gaming engine called Unreal Engine. And so we can put these kids anywhere in the world without them having to travel anywhere in the world. Anytime you ever see a Marvel film. This is basically the replacement to green screen technology so now everything that they shoot is in real time and so it cuts down editing if they're producing something by 50%, but it also helps from a standpoint of... budgeting, it also takes down costs. So major movie studios are using this same technology. ESPN does it? ESPN just built a multi-million dollar facility up in Bristol with this same technology. This is the first one in the entire country on a K-12 campus. There's a lot to be excited about in this room. I'm looking at all the different stations. There's where all the gamers are lined up here at the eSports kind of area, but I guess it's all it's eSports and many other things. The broadcast section, what can you tell me about the broadcast like area over here Yeah, so the broadcast section is exactly that. It's a main control room, just like you have a main control room in any media center or news station that's running the whole entire operation. They're going camera one, camera two, camera five, et cetera. They're learning how to do a switchboard of cameras. But don't forget, we also have a barbershop here, too. I saw the barbershop. The lights are out right now. I went in there to see if I could get a cut. Well, we don't have a barber on campus today, but we do have a barber that comes in on a regular. This is a place where, you know, for me, I wanted to have a, I mean, throughout this entire campus, if you walk this entire campus, everything here we want to be one of one. And we've been successful in doing so, but also not only that, just bringing up the school grade from an F school for 18 years in a row to now we're a B school for the first time in 25 years. And it's not just the gaming component that we're looking at here. It's the educational opportunities that come about. People are getting scholarships in e-sports and just the variance of ways that teachers and educators can come in here and teach math, science, reading, social skills, et cetera. So for me, that's the bigger win. I didn't expect to feel so moved as I did a little while ago hearing you speak about, you know, we talk about your childhood a lot, but I feel like you, through this, are like doing some kind of inner child work, you know? Can you talk about that? And you said, you know, this is a school built entirely for kids by kids. Yeah, yeah. So we constantly tell... The world is constantly telling us that the kids are bad and that the youth of today are lost and et cetera, and they're really not. I was told I was a bad kid for years and at the Florida Sheriff's Boys Ranch in Live Oak, a conversation I had with a 12-year-old changed that whole perspective. There are kids that are in bad environments around bad people making bad decisions and having bad outcomes. You put those same kids in a good environment around great people, they have a greater chance to succeed and therefore they have greater outcomes. I've seen it year and year. I've been here, not just here at this school, but with thousands of kids that I've had the opportunity to touch, and so a lot of times adults get into the room and they say, oh, we should do this, and there's no input from the children and the youth that are actually going to be using the facilities or learning in those spaces, and so for me, I wanted to do the reverse. The adults can change. Somebody can get burned out and don't want to be in the teaching profession at all. The adults change, too. But these kids are constantly going to have a space to come to, and I want to make sure that they know that when they leave here and they go to their respective high schools, that they can say, we helped build something special. Yeah, and somebody saw me, somebody noticed me, somebody thought I was important enough to invest in, and this is what we're seeing play out here. I can't wait to talk to the principal. I think I'm going to talk to her at noon. I don't know if you caught any of what JP was saying, but he was so impressive. I mean, all these kids are brilliant, but JP, when I first When we first talked about putting this space here last year, I've known him since he was in the fifth grade because he came right over from Foster. Just a very bright kid like a lot of our kids are here. To watch him in action, not only broadcast, but even just to do this interview, that's what it's really all about. A lot of these kids don't get a chance to show their shining star and how great they are. I'm just glad that JP got a chance to show that. The entire region, and hopefully the country, there are some special things going on here with some special human beings, and he's one of those special human beings. Well, listen, I'm not a gamer myself, but I'm so impressed by what you guys have built here. This is really phenomenal, and I'm just really happy for everybody here and just to get to be here with you guys today. So congratulations. It's a lot of fun. It's leadership. It's teamwork. It's accessing learning in a different way. Sometimes the best way to reach kids is through what they are drawn to, and a lot of times that's technology and gaming and screens, and they can be reached that way too. So, big, big day here at Sly Middle Magnet School and these kids are just all in. They're so excited. Very nice. Tell Thad hello. Tell him we love him and we'll see him soon. See you soon too, okay? Thanks. You were talking about those chairs, how cool they are, that they vibrate. Oh, some of those chairs will vibrate and make noise. Got some speakers right here. We were talking about this when we were kids and you played the Atari or Pong, which I had. You just kind of sat there by yourself. And now it's a much more social setup for these kids. And, you know, they work together. They have friends in different, you know, parts of the city. It's communication skills. It's organization skills. Yeah, so. It's hand-eye coordination. And you say... Someone to get scholarships to colleges for eSports now. So it's very different than when we were growing up. It is a thing.