01.28.2025 // By: College CoD

Week 1 of College CoD Recap

Week one of College CoD came and went in the blink of an eye. It was packed with school debuts, familiar faces, and major upsets to kick the season off. Let’s get into what happened in the first week of action.

Marshall Aims for the Top 25, While Newberry Holds Strong

Marshall University and Old Dominion University faced off in Week 1 of the CCL. Marshall University is fresh off a LAN win at the Edinboro University Home Series. This year, a familiar face returns to the team after competing for Concord University two years prior. Paraylxsis spearheads the Marshall roster alongside Action, alexcarr24, and Hitz. Old Dominion lost Midnite and Love with their last season being MW3, but ODU returns with a full roster in Black Ops 6. ODU put up a fight in the hardpoint but couldn’t come out on top, ending with a final score of 250-146 with Marshall University taking the first map. Marshall University won the series with a clean 3-0 sweep after not dropping a round in the Search and Destroy and Control.

UT Chattanooga clashed against Newberry College for another Southeast Appalachian battle. UTC recently won the Southern Miss U.S. Army CoD LAN in November. The roster is RedChase, Corona, Shinobii, and Yōkai. Newberry Esports is a roster with familiar faces like Sells, Eternals, Diff, and new addition Bookie. Newberry Esports took the map one Hardpoint with a 250-216 finish with Sells going on a 12 kill streak during the map. Newberry Esports won the Search and Destroy 6-2, but UT Chattanooga bounced back with a 3-2 Control win. The Newberry squad closed out the series 3-1 with a 250-116 win on Hardpoint.

Wichita State Edges Out Texas State, NWOSU Gets Statement Win

Both Wichita State and Texas State experienced some turnover this off-season. The former added new recruit Deucer, and the latter added Furg and Astonish to their respective rosters. After trading maps back and forth in the first match of the season, TXST found themselves with a 5-3 lead over WSU in game five. Off of a huge offensive victory in round 9 and Xotic’s 10 kills, Wichita clawed all the way back to a 1v1 in round 11. There, WSU’s Zep bled out the clock with the bomb down and secured the victory for his squad.

Northwestern Oklahoma State University came into the season with a moderate amount of hype, with some putting them inside the top 25. Regardless, NWOSU felt like they had something to prove, and they certainly achieved that in week one. With victories over Independent Community College and Texas A&M International, the Rangers ended night one with a 6-1 combined map count. Their two opponents are projected to fight for the top cut, so two big wins early on should set the stage for a successful first split for NWOSU.

Cincinnati Comes Out Swinging, Maryville Earns First College CoD Victory

Yet another school with top 25 projections and bigger expectations for this season, the University of Cincinnati kicked their season off exactly as planned. Their 6-0 map count included a 3-0 sweep of Indiana on the CCL stream. Led by Faytal and Ferda, this Cincy team has a real chance at making some noise in the Midwest region down the stretch.

Maryville University is a prominent name within the collegiate esports space. Most known for their teams in League of Legends, Overwatch, and Rocket League, the powerhouse program had not yet dabbled in College CoD. Finally, Maryville Academy entered into the CCL for the 2025 season. They dropped their first series to SIUe, a prominent school in the CCL for the past 3 seasons. However, they managed to bounce back, taking down the University of Nebraska-Omaha in a dominant 3-0. They close out week one at 1-1.

Central Maine with Huge Upset Over Fisher College

They did it! M-U-S-T-A-N-G-S! Watching this series just had me picturing CMCC's coach channeling his inner Dwayne Johnson from Gridiron Gang. Can you imagine what first year coach, Andrew "Relck", would have been saying to his team before the match started?

"You don't have to be an athlete to be a Mustang…You've just gotta have heart"

"...you're somebody and you are worthy of something…"

"You got nobody but yourself but, dang it, that's all you need! Believe in yourself…"

Coach "Relck" is a former CCL JUCO player of Navarro College before he transferred to St. Edward's University where he helped lead them to their first CCL Academy League National Championship and ultimately pursuing his collegiate coaching career in Auburn, Maine. His CCL coaching debut could not have come against a tougher opponent than Fisher College, a school known to bring in powerhouse names into the collegiate scene to compete at the highest levels. This Falcons squad featured a solid returning player in Hunnit, and three (yes, three) former professional Call of Duty players: Ramby, Temp and MajorManiak.

The Mustangs' roster included three freshmen, Delo, Ethan and Asylum, and Johnson C. Smith University sophomore transfer, Zay. The series started hot with CMCC shocking the Falcons and taking the first two maps. The Falcons didn't take too kindly to the beatings and came back firing in a control match that wasn't even close. This momentum took them into game 4 where they were able to even the series behind Ramby's 28-20 showing. The Search and Destroy on Vault for all the marbles started off with an even 2-2 score before CMCC started to pull away with an extremely balanced effort by Ethan, Delo and Zay, ultimately defeating the Falcons in this David vs. Goliath matchup.