Jeopardy! College Championship

The Jeopardy! College Championship is one of the traditional tournaments held each season on the TV quiz show Jeopardy! Contestants in this tournament are full-time undergraduate college students with no prior degrees. The existence of this tournament does not disqualify college students from auditioning for the regular shows.

Format

The College Championship uses a ten-game format similar to that used for the Tournament of Champions: 15 players, in groups of three, play in five quarterfinal games; the winners of those five games, and four wild cards, the highest-scoring players who did not win a quarterfinal, become semifinalists. There are three semifinal games, whose three winners advance to the finals. In the two-day finals, contestants play two separate matches, with the contestants' combined scores for both matches determines the champion (contestants start with $0 each day).

Prizes

Cash

All College Championship contestants receive cash prizes, based on their progress through the tournament. Contestants eliminated prior to the finals receive fixed payouts, while contestants in the finals receive guaranteed minimums, but can earn more. Over time, the prizes have increased in value, as shown below:

Vehicles

From 1993-2004, the winner also won a new car (Dodge from 1993-1995, Volvo from 1996-2003, and Volkswagen in 2004), and the company who manufactured the car matched each finalists' totals and set up scholarships in those amounts earned for the finalists' schools.

Trophies

Winners also receive a small replica trophy of the larger College Championship trophy, which is retained by Jeopardy! in Southern California. On the larger trophy are engraved the names of every year's winner, in the fashion of the Stanley Cup. (A number of former College Champions have reported that the replica trophy is fragile and arrived broken from shipment.)

Tournament of Champions

In addition to the above-mentioned winnings, the winner earns an automatic position in the next Tournament of Champions.

List of participants

The following is a list of contestants and where they placed in the tournament. Finalists who earned more than the minimum guarantee are as indicated.

Note 1: Milo Dochow was a losing contestant in the Winter 1999 Teen Tournament but was returned to the show after being potentially disadvantaged by a questionable judges' ruling.

Trivia

• Stanford University is the only college to have two winners. The 2007 runner-up was also a Stanford undergraduate.

• The finalists for the 1992 tournament previously went up against each other in the quarterfinals.

• Two tiebreaker clues were played during two different tournaments, the first one in the first match of the 1992 tournament. Three separate clues were played, but the first two were edited out of the broadcast. Even though one player won, the other player involved advanced to the semifinals as a wild card. (Neither one made it to the finals.) ^[1] The second occurred in the first semifinal match of the 1997 tournament to decide one of the three finalists. The category was The American Revolution and the answer was: "On November 15, 1777 Congress adopted this constitution but it wasn't ratified by the states until March 1, 1781". The correct response, given by Steven Bevier, was "What were the Articles of Confederation?"^[2]

References

1. ^ http://www.j-archive.com/help.php#tiebreakerround
2. ^ http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=1473

External links

• The official website of Jeopardy!
• An archive of Jeopardy! games past and present, including some from the College Championship

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