Video games have come a long way since Michael Irvin was a kid. The graphics are incredible and now they're even helping hospitals.
"To think all those years of growing up when your mom tried to get you to stop playing games like, 'Boy you're wasting your time. You're wasting your brain. Your wasting. Stop wasting away.' Now you can go tell mom, 'You know what mom? You were wrong,'" Irvin said.
The Cowboys's legend sat in at Children's Medical Center in Dallas as Madden champion Drini Gjoka teamed up with patients and their families for an esports tournament.
"Hearing about this opportunity to help out these kids and then do it alongside Michael Irvin like you can't really turn that down," Gjoka said.
The event was streamed live on Twitch, and people who tuned in were encouraged to make a donation toward the renovation of the hospital's emergency room.
But the biggest contribution benefited another part of the medical profession. Those watching online were linked to another video game called Omega Cluster where gamers use a spaceship to gather crystals, and in the process, mirror what scientists at SMU are doing to identify drugs that help in the fight against cancer.
"If they just play that game, that's just as impactful to us because that's actually helping us try to find these compounds that can actually make incurable cancer treatable and that's what the goal is, what we're working towards," SMU cancer researcher Corey Clark said.
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And a Cowboys' legend is happy to help after his recent cancer scare.
"To come out of it without anything, to me is a miracle. But now what do you do with that gift and that miracle?" Irvin said. "Do you continue to sit on the sideline even though I don't have cancer or do I jump in the fight? And I chose I'm going to jump in the fight."
