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This column is about why my roommate Billy is a huge nerd.

Yet, I’m beginning to wonder whether in the future he may be one of sports’ great superstars.

Last week, I walked into my room to the usual sight of Billy hunched in front of our TV with his mobile PlayStation 2 controller clenched in both hands.

I sat down at my computer and glanced at the TV to check the score.

Only, there was no score. In fact, there were no teams playing. There was just a quarterback throwing balls at targets.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

“Training camp,” he responded, in all seriousness I might add.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

Here is a healthy 21-year-old biology student at a prestigious university not spending his free time cracking the human genome or discovering new species. Rather, he devotes his free time to improving the accuracy of a fictitious quarterback so that he may perform marginally better in a fictitious game to win the glory of a fictitious championship.

Now you understand what I said earlier.

Playing actual games is fine and dandy.

Virtual practice though?

There is something eerie about how art is increasingly imitating sports down to the mind-numbing details.

Sports games are becoming more and more like reality – you can design your own stadiums, negotiate player salaries, and even help players choose their posses (coming to you in NBA Live 2007!).

And games will only get progressively more realistic.

Eventually, this may lead to something that can level the playing field for all of us whose athleticism hit the genetic wall sometime before signing an eight-figure contract:

The emergence of professional sports video game players.

As sports video games become more and more nuanced, hard work and talent will separate gifted virtual athletes from the rest.

There will be virtual leagues, teams, coaches and championships.

Fat, bald, 50-year-old former computer software technicians will be on the covers of magazines, guys like Billy will be the first pick in the virtual football draft, and there is bound to be an illegal thumb transplant scandal.

But would this be a good thing? Do these people deserve any acclaim?

Billy also plays a computer game called The Sims 2, a simulation of life for those out there whose own lives are too hopeless to waste time improving.

The simulated lives are supposed to mirror people’s lives down to minute, tedious details, allowing players to have their characters work out or find a job, which can be quite ironic especially when jobless roommates play this game in their magician pajamas until four in the afternoon.

A future filled with these glorified virtual athletes would be a kind of reverse Darwinism, a survival of the nerdiest.

That’s why I consider this column to be a preemptive strike.

I call on everyone in the UCLA community who has a Billy as a roommate to stop the trend before it’s too late.

Petitions need to be started demanding that sports video games return to the classic days of TecmoBowl and NHLPA 92.

These people are begging to have their minds liberated and to experience actual human interaction.

You may ask, is this really a worthwhile cause?

Consider the alternative:

A Sports Illustrated cover shot of Billy in his magician pajamas with the title “2015 Sportsman of the Year.”

Trust me, not a sight you want to see.

E-mail Peters at bpeters@media.ucla.edu.