The second annual Steel City Invitational presented by Andrews Sports Medicine and St. Vincent’s Health System will run Dec. 19-22, 2014.

Times were, you only worried about two things regarding your seat at sports events: how close you were to the action, and how far you were from the rest rooms. Then a new priority muscled its way in: what type of connectivity the stadium had. No signal? A weak one? Might as well be a losing game.

At a time when nobody seems to want to throw their hat into the Olympic bidding war, there has been a most unlikely contender -- the District of Columbia. And it’s banking on unity to win the day. Yes, unity. Yes, in DC. No, don’t bother to adjust your monitor. You read it correctly the first time.

Admittedly, it sounds like a plotline out of the movie, “Revenge of the Nerds,” but it’s true: one college is offering student-athletes scholarships based on their work not with a lacrosse stick but a joystick. And with a full ride dependent upon how well they can manipulate the controls of Madden, it’s in their best interest to keep those thumbs in shape.

High school students with an athletic scholarship to college have a dark and abiding fear: an injury that causes them to lose that ride and have to drop out. A new type of insurance policy, however, is offering kids (and their parents) a safety net – and a sense of peace – should they become injured and unable to play.