Jeopardy’s visit to UW only second to college campus

By Vince Stricherz, News & Information

A: The popular game show taped in Meany Hall. Q: What is Jeopardy?

For two days my brain conjured Weird Al Yankovic.

“Art Fleming gave the answers

Oh, but I couldn’t get the questions right.

I lost on Jeopardy, baby.”

Now the tape was starting. Aerial images of Rainier Vista flashed on the oversized TV screen. Next came the Husky marching band spelling out the show’s title, as members marched in place and yelled the familiar words: This - is - Jeopardy! Then producer Johnny Gilbert was on his feet, waving his hands and bidding me and the rest of the studio audience to cheer, applaud, show some gusto.

The enthusiasm was real when host Alex Trebek appeared. In the 16 years since the No. 1 quiz show was reborn, Trebek has become something of a television icon. But there was a little puzzlement this day as he strode onto the Meany Hall stage with a small satchel under his arm.

He explained that when he mentioned his baseball cap collection on the air eight years earlier, he started receiving contributions from all over. One of them was so outlandish, so over the top, he said, he doubted he’d ever have the occasion or the courage to actually wear it.

“I was wrong. Today I have the opportunity, and I have the guts,” Trebek said as he reached into the black bag and whipped out a University of Washington cap - the kind with a Husky snout protruding prominently. He carefully set it atop his meticulous coif for just a moment, then it was down to business.

Thus began Jeopardy’s annual college championship, 10 programs taped on Sept. 15 and 16, and scheduled to be aired weeknights Nov. 8-21 (locally the show is carried by KOMO-TV, Channel 4). It marked only the second time the college championship was taped on a campus - the first was last year in Berkeley at the University of California.

Jeopardy came to life in the UW’s Meany Hall. UW student James Giesen is the contestant in the center. Photo by Kathy Sauber

Fifteen contestants from 14 schools (the UW had two) competed for the $50,000 first prize. The winners of the five shows in the first week, along with the four highest non-winning moneymakers, went on to the semifinals. Those winners competed in a two-game final to determine the overall winner. Second place got $15,000 and third was worth $10,000. Semi-finalists are awarded $5,000 and those eliminated in the first five shows get $2,500.

Iyesatu Kamara, an 18-year-old sophomore from Seattle, and Jim Giesen, a 21-year-old junior from Spokane, represented the UW. Both acquitted themselves well (but you didn’t think we were going to tell you the results, did you?).

Giesen acknowledged a few jitters during rehearsal and at the beginning of the real game before his nerves finally quieted. “It’s a lot easier sitting in the audience,” he said.

Throughout the taping, there was bad luck and good, light moments and serious.

All contestants were asked what they thought they would be doing a decade from now. “In 10 years I’ll be a professor of electrical engineering right here at the University of Washington,” said Suzanne Riviore. That response earned applause for the 19-year-old senior at the University of Texas at Austin.

On the other hand, Dave Sabath, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, got a substantially less enthusiastic response when he claimed to be from “the other U-Dub.”

The very first contestant introduced ended up being the first one eliminated, failing to have any cash at the end of Double Jeopardy and so unable to take part in Final Jeopardy. The young lady happened to be from my hometown in South Dakota, and losing that way clearly was a difficult experience for her.

That made me think of Art Fleming, the original host of Jeopardy from1964-75 and again during a reprise in 1978-79. It was midway through that first incarnation of Jeopardy, when Fleming was quite popular on college campuses, that a friend and I made a pact to one day appear as contestants. The friend made it, nearly 30 years ago, and he did quite well before finally losing his last game on the last clue.

Unlike my friend or the young lady from my hometown, I haven’t lost on Jeopardy.

Yet.

The Jeopardy College Championships will air Nov. 8-21 on KOMO-TV (Channel 4).