Mental Health: An Ongoing Battle for Storied CDL Pro Scump

For many professional players in physical sports, maintaining mental health is beginning to be a constant challenge. Whether it be trying to maintain their own play to play at the best of their abilities or to help keep a clear and open mind throughout the long and hard seasons in their respective sports. With this, mental battle for Scump, Seth Abner. 

For professional players in esports, it is a completely different battle. As the season is basically year-round with only two months worth of break, mental health is beginning to be a major issue. This is due to the constant eight-hour days many pros have to go through in order to be able to compete to the best of their ability. 

This means that they have to sit down and stare at a screen for hours on end without doing anything else, just playing. Which led to many professional players retiring at an early age. It also led to many players confessing their frustration of having to compete at the highest level in their respective esports regardless of how they are doing mentally. 

For players within the Call of Duty League, however, mental health is quite possibly the most important thing pro players need to maintain in order to play at the highest level of Call of Duty. This is especially hard to maintain if you are some of the most popular pros in your respective esport. 

The Weight Scump Carries is Huge

Many players in the Call of Duty League and community alone already have a lot of things going for them. Whether it be keeping up with their following by streaming or making videos or their practices, each pro always has something to do during the season that does not have anything to do with their social life outside of gaming.

For Seth “Scump” Abner, one can argue that it is at a whole new level for the king himself. Scump has the biggest following out of all of the pros in the Call of Duty League. He is the most popular and talked-about player. One can argue that he has been the face of Call of Duty for nearly half a decade. 

Due to this following, however, comes negatives. One specifically being the constant battle he faces with expectations his fans have of him doing well on the main stage of Call of Duty. This, in turn, does not help when his team, which is so beloved by the fans, is not doing well. That team being OpTic Chicago. 

This was all apparent shortly after the team was knocked out of this past major by the Dallas Empire. Scump later decided to make a statement on Twitter displaying the issues he has been facing with the constant failures he and his team has faced and how it has been affecting him mentally. 

“Sad. I’ve been sad for months and months. I want to win so badly. I gave up personal content to try and improve just to get the same result. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Really just lost atm. I never talk about my mental health but damn it’s been rough recently,” said Scump on Twitter. 

Reaction to the Tweet

Many other pros, as well as influencers, decided to reach out to the Call of Duty king as they all had something to say to one of the greatest Call of Duty players of all time as they all knew the type of weight he carries on his shoulders and how it could be affecting him mentally. 

With this, many professional players and people within the Call of Duty community are calling for a players association in order to combat issues such as mental health so players like Scump can have people to go to instead of having to deal with it on their own. 

Featured Image Courtesy of Dexerto and OpTic Chicago

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