When the Syracuse men’s basketball team reached the Sweet 16, Kris Burgos rooted a little bit harder than the rest of campus.

Earlier in the year, Burgos, a sophomore film major, won the Hoop Madness II Tournament, a competition sponsored by ESPN and Xbox Live that pitted students against each other in the ESPN College Hoops video game. For his victory he received a new Xbox and copy of the game, which he had never played before the contest.

‘I picked up the controller for the first time and did some tooling on everyone,’ Burgos said. ‘I just gave it a chance and ended up winning.’

Though Burgos won the tournament, he hadn’t even planned on playing in it. He worked the event in Schine Student Center, and his boss offered him the opportunity to play. Burgos accepted, and – much to his surprise – he won.

Then Burgos bested the champion of a tournament held at Marquette University over Xbox Live, the system’s online gaming network.

The win over the Marquette champ made Burgos eligible to compete for the ESPN College Hoops national championship. But there was a catch: each tournament champion’s fate was bound to the success of his school’s basketball team. For Burgos to participate as one of the final 16 competitors for the national title, SU had to make it there first.

‘Obviously I was rooting for our team,’ he said. ‘But it gave me a little more incentive for them to go a little further.’

Once a part of the Sweet 16, Burgos kept winning. He beat players from Kansas and Stanford. He earned a $500 prize and an all-expenses-paid trip to San Antonio to compete against the other three tournament semi-finalists.

‘That’s when he blew up,’ said Burgos’ roommate Chris Reid, a sophomore computer graphics major. ‘He didn’t think he was going to do anything big. He was hyped.’

On Friday, Burgos continued his successful run by beating last year’s champion, Dave Muellerweiss of the University of North Carolina, by six points in the semifinal. Immediately after the win, Burgos and Alex Carroll of Georgia Tech met in the final. Carroll proved to be a less-than-worthy opponent – as Burgos beat him, 99-71, in the final.

‘I tooled on him,’ Burgos said. ‘It was great. It was nuts.’

Again, the win earned more than pride for Burgos. Along with the championship, Burgos won $1,000 in cash, $2,500 in scholarships, tickets to tonight’s NCAA Championship game and a meeting with Jay Williams, a former Duke star and current point guard for the Chicago Bulls.

‘I got to play against (Williams), and we became real cool together,’ Burgos said. ‘We were joking around and everything. It was great.’

Not bad for someone who had never played the game on Xbox before entering himself in the tournament.

‘I wasn’t really surprised,’ Reid said. ‘This is his thing. This is what he does. He just went to work and entered, and now he’s in San Antonio a national champ. This kid is getting a scholarship for playing video games? Come on.’

‘I play video games as much as I can,’ Burgos said. ‘My friends will tell you I play nothing but video games all the time, but it’s not like I practice the game all the time. Am I surprised that I won? Yes. I was surprised because I wasn’t expecting to be the best in the nation.’

Burgos’ parents, however, weren’t shocked at his success.

‘He’s been playing video games for a very long time,’ Burgos’ mother, Carol, said. ‘He’s accomplished a lot with his little fun.’

‘He practices a lot,’ said Burgos’ father, Fred. ‘As long as he keeps the grades up, how can we complain?’

And Burgos hopes to accomplish more. He hopes to use his film major to venture into the screen writing and directing of video games.

‘I used to tell him to knock it off,’ his father said. ‘And he basically showed me all of the things relative to playing video games, like hand-eye coordination and how much money was being put into the industry. He wants to make a career out of it. And I don’t think he knows how good he is with this sort of thing.’

Though proud of their son’s victory, Burgos’ parents were happiest to hear of the scholarship prize involved with the winnings – especially since Burgos had decided to keep that information from his parents so he could surprise them with it if he won.

‘Literally, my mom freaked out on the phone,’ Burgos said. ‘She was screaming in the earpiece.’

‘I was ecstatic,’ his father said. ‘It’s the ultimate boo-yah.’

Published on April 4, 2004 at 12:00 pm