Out of Cheese

I watched Jeopardy! for the first time in a few years tonight. Normally when I start to see articles about someone winning lots of money on the show I’m content to read them and move on, but not this time. The champion at the moment is Ken Jennings, who as of tonight’s show has won 29 shows in a row and just a bit less than $1 million. Ken was also a member of BYU’s quiz bowl team in the late 90’s. I was a member of Stanford’s team at the time, and we played BYU at least five or six times a year. I wasn’t particularly good, but I had a lot of fun, at least until silly bickering on my part and others on Stanford’s team prompted me to leave quiz bowl and spend more of my time programming.

It’s interesting to note that Ken, while good, probably wouldn’t have won a vote at the time for the best player in the country. He was in the top rank, to be sure, but there were a few others who could outplay him. That said, in quiz bowl, any reasonably good team can beat a top-notch team given the right questions and a bit of luck. It’s entirely possible that on one of my and my teammates’ luckier days, we managed to eke out a victory over BYU’s A team. (Actually, Stanford’s A team was well-matched with BYU’s A team at the time, but I only played on Stanford’s A team when we didn’t have enough other players.) If only I could find a record of one of those wins, I could say that I’ve beaten the all-time Jeopardy champion in a game of knowledge!

Jokes aside, I wish Ken the absolute best of luck, and I’m really happy for him. He and his teammates at BYU were always among the nicest people in quiz bowl. Also, he’s a member of the staff at NAQT, a quiz bowl organization that started while I was on Stanford’s team. (I was the tournament director for the first NAQT West Coast Sectional tournament.) NAQT has done terrific things for quiz bowl nationally. If some of Ken’s winnings allow him to spend more time on NAQT or to support NAQT’s work, that’s terrific for quiz bowl.