College Bowl is back

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jonah
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College Bowl is back

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Re: College Bowl is back

Post by AKKOLADE »

rashes also return sometimes
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Re: College Bowl is back

Post by meebles127 »

AKKOLADE wrote: Tue Nov 24, 2020 5:33 pm rashes also return sometimes
so do infections
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Re: College Bowl is back

Post by cchiego »

I've been hoping ever since I played at UGA that there could be some kind of college football/quizbowl crossover (the SEC Network needs 10 AM on a Sunday morning material after all) and any kind of televised quizbowl-ish event has the potential to be good for quizbowl. College Bowl, despite the many issues with the 1980s-2000s partial revival that are documented here, at its original GE College Bowl height laid the foundation for the future of quizbowl in many ways.

Unfortunately, with Richard Reid Productions behind it, my expectations for this are pretty much at rock bottom. I expect something similar to the current Honda Campus All-Star Challenge format with a lot of new gimmicks along with questions straight out of the Questions Galore garbage can. Honestly, the 2000s-era College Bowl questions and format would exceed my expectations.

On the off-chance that anyone associated with the show or some enterprising reporter in need of a story about this revival sees this, a few thoughts on what should be done to make this successful:

- The questions must be fair to the players. They can be short--2 sentences max would be fine--but should contain multiple clues arranged pyramidally from hardest to easiest. But there should be no swerves and no hoses; nothing in the question should deliberately mislead players, especially with real money on the line. Do you really think it's entertaining to see smart students look dumb because of misleadingly-written questions (actually, maybe we shouldn't give them any ideas...)? University Challenge's style of questions are probably about the best we can reasonably expect, though they often start off with random quotes and other vague lead-ins instead of stating clearly what's being asked for (which can easily be corrected with a bit of rewording--i.e. "who said 'X quote'"). Fair questions would attract the best quizbowl players to the show, make it a better competition, and overall make it a better product for viewers.

- Treat the players with respect. I have a bit of hope here with all the college football-associated stuff that they might focus on school spirit and tie the players in with their schools (mascots in the studio would be fun), but it seems all-too-easy to style this as a "laugh at the nerds" gawk-fest with bad jokes and stereotypes. Instead, I hope that they focus on the huge amounts of preparation and teamwork that go into playing quizbowl, just like any other athletic competition. Top quizbowl players practice hard and spend countless hours learning new things in preparation for playing. Good quizbowl teams require extensive teamwork both in preparing for competitions and during matches. These are things that can provide storylines and players that the audience can root for.

- Include recent quizbowl competitions as context. Schools have quizbowl histories, rivalries, and great players that would provide all kinds of stats, stories, and interview fodder. Use this! This is a huge part of college sports broadcasts and adds to the product on the field. Unfortunately, if they do anything like this, I fear they're going to only refer back to "official" College Bowl records here and pretend that the past three decades of pyramidal quizbowl competition never happened (or, even worse, would they blacklist quizbowl team members from being on this show at all? I wouldn't put anything past the people behind the infamous 2004 CBI nationals speech).

Of course, this could all be terribly wrong--it may be even worse than expected (will there be physical challenges? The Chair-style gimmicks? a gratuitous Manning family trivia question each match?). And it sounds like from the articles that there may be a lack of internal confidence behind the project.

But I hope that it turns out to be decent product and helps promote quizbowl at more schools and boosts the popular image of quizbowl writ large. Quizbowl could use some positive national publicity for once (i.e., not a cheating scandal). If anyone out there cares to ask, the quizbowl community--from which ideally a good portion of the show's contestants would likely be drawn!--could be a valuable resource to help the show succeed and the tens of thousands of current and past participants in quizbowl would be a ready-made core audience.
Last edited by cchiego on Thu Nov 26, 2020 5:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: College Bowl is back

Post by Stained Diviner »

The bar this needs to pass over is low.

Many quizbowlers are fine with Jeopardy despite its obvious flaws as quizbowl because it seems to have been run by decent people (Trebek and Richards), and it doesn't claim to be something it's not. It's a game show, and it's better than other game shows, so you can watch it or not, but very few people are actively mad at it.

If this show is run by decent people, keeps itself in perspective, and doesn't punish knowledge, then it is OK. So far it is 0 for 1.
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Re: College Bowl is back

Post by eacov101 »

Do we know if this is legitimate? My teammates at Auburn and I have gotten several emails/messages from people saying they are casting students for this show. One of my teammates actually went through with the audition and said it was legit. I talked to the casting guy on the phone and it didn't seem like a scam, but I want to be safe. I don't want them to fly me out to LA and then it turn out to be a human trafficking ring or something.
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Re: College Bowl is back

Post by neilbreen »

eacov101 wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 3:01 pm Do we know if this is legitimate? My teammates at Auburn and I have gotten several emails/messages from people saying they are casting students for this show. One of my teammates actually went through with the audition and said it was legit. I talked to the casting guy on the phone and it didn't seem like a scam, but I want to be safe. I don't want them to fly me out to LA and then it turn out to be a human trafficking ring or something.
I just participated in a test run-through of the show on zoom for people at NBC. Can confirm it is legit.
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Re: College Bowl is back

Post by JTakang21 »

Well, it looks like we finally have a premiere date and a list of participating schools.

University of Alabama
Auburn University
Columbia University
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota
Ole Miss
Morehouse College
University of Tennessee
University of Southern California
UCLA
University of Virginia
Xavier of Louisiana



https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/colleg ... um=twitter
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Re: College Bowl is back

Post by matthewspatrick »

Having watched the premiere...

1) Question content was (mostly) fine. A few clunkers, but that was always going to happen.

2) The tsunami of Cooper Manning dad jokes made me want to break stuff.

3) The dumb Cooper banter stuff aside Peyton was fine as the host, but I wish the producers would have found a host who isn't a garbage human.
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Re: College Bowl is back

Post by cchiego »

Ratings seem solid enough at 0.5 in the 18-49 demo and 2.79 million viewers. Maybe the audience will grow too as word of mouth seemed fairly positive on Twitter (outside of Minnesota fans, who learned firsthand about the wonders of teams getting different two-minute rounds). Also, while the two-minute rounds are generally good TV, the incentives for getting through more questions definitely outweigh the "talk with your teammates first" vibe they seemed to be trying to stress.

The biggest thing is that the schools are all-in on advertising this and playing it up on social media. Columbia winning ICT this year gets literally no media coverage that I could find (despite sitting in one of the biggest media markets of the world and having at the very least an interesting angle in terms of an all-online competition this year), but the official Columbia twitter account is happy to advertise an upcoming appearance on College Bowl.

I was looking for a well-filmed college quizbowl match to show what good quizbowl looks like and there's basically nothing even remotely on the same level of the College Bowl show outside of this quite solid UK Quizbowl video from 2019. Organizing perhaps an exhibition match of some kind that's well-produced, lightly annotated to help explain what's going on, and shot somewhere besides a dim hotel basement or dingy classroom would be a great tool to have out there in spreading knowledge of quizbowl to more people and making quizbowl look like a respectable activity.
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