College bowl

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College Bowl is a format of college-level quizbowl run and operated by College Bowl Company, Incorporated.

Originating in a USO activity created by Canadian Don Reid for World War II soldiers, the game was developed into a radio show by Reid and John Moses. Grant Tinker, later President of NBC and MTM Enterprises, got his start as an assistant on the show.

The first College Quiz Bowl match was played on NBC radio on October 10 1953, when Northwestern University defeated Columbia University 135-60. 26 episodes ran the first season. Winning teams received $500 grants for their school. Good Housekeeping magazine became the sponsor for the 1954-55 season, and a short third season in the autumn of 1955 finished the run. The most dominant team was the University of Minnesota, which had teams appear in 23 of the 68 broadcast matches. The 1953-55 series had a powerful appeal because it used remote broadcasts; each team was located at their own college where they were cheered on by their wildly enthusiastic classmates. The effect was akin to listening to a football game, but this type of excitement evaporated in later versions, in which both teams competed in the same room.

Though a pilot was shot in the spring of 1955, the game did not move to television until 1959. As G.E. College Bowl with General Electric as the primary sponsor, the show ran on CBS from 1959 to 1962, and moved back to NBC for 1962 through 1970. Allen Ludden was the original host, but left to do Password full time in 1962. Robert Earle was moderator for the rest of the run. The show licensed and spun-off three other academic competitions in the U.S.: Alumni Fun, which appeared on all three major TV networks in the 1960's; Bible Bowl, which has evolved into at least three separate national competitions; and High School Bowl, which is still broadcast in some local TV markets.

In 1970 modern invitational tournaments began with the Southeastern Invitational Tournament, and the circuit expanded through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. These tournaments increasingly made various modifications to the College Bowl format, and came to be known as quiz bowl. Earlier invitational tournaments, such as the "Syraquiz" at Syracuse University, had occurred in the 1950s and 1960s.

The game returned to radio from 1979 to 1982, hosted by Art Fleming, and has made two more television appearances: 1984 on NBC, hosted by Pat Sajak and 1987 on Disney Channel, hosted by Dick Cavett. The University of Minnesota won both iterations. In 1976, the program became affiliated with the Association of College Unions International (ACUI) [link], which continues to promote the competition as a non-broadcast event after the demise of the radio and television experiments.

College Bowl retains the ACUI contract, and administers the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge at historically black colleges and universities. While College Bowl has become almost a nonplayer in the mainstream collegiate quizbowl circuit, it continues as a viable company with its own, separate audience.

A British version of the televised College Bowl competition was launched as University Challenge in 1962. The program, presented by Bamber Gascoigne, produced by Granada Television and broadcast across the ITV network, was very popular and ran until it was taken off the air in 1987. In 1994 the show was resurrected by the BBC with Jeremy Paxman as the new quiz master. The programme remains very popular in Britain.

Criticism

The [Neutral point of view>neutrality] of this section is [NPOV disputedisputed]. Please see the discussion on the [This does not cite its . You can Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations. In the 1987 and 1988 regional tournaments, College Bowl was accused of recycling questions from previous tournaments, thereby corrupting the results (questions for tournaments need to be fresh, or certain teams will have an inherent advantage). The 1987 National Tournament, on the Disney Channel, saw additional controversy, as a number of protested matches proved to strain the television format. In addition, the company claimed a copyright on the idea of quizbowl competitions, and attempted to extract a licensing fee from invitational tournaments; threatening to blacklist schools which hosted invitationals and did not pay the licensing fee. If the intent was chilling the invitational circuit, it failed, as these developments and the growing Internet community of quiz bowl players led to an explosion of teams, tournaments, and formats. In the 1990s with the rise of the Academic Competition Federation and National Academic Quiz Tournaments, both with their own national championships, the leverage of College Bowl Incorporated withered, and several schools "de-affiliated" from College Bowl (which has a higher participation cost). Factors which contributed to this included restrictive eligibility rules from CBI, the expense of participation, disagreements regarding the quality and difficulty of the questions used, and other rules. Over 200 Colleges and Universities currently participate in College Bowl competitions at some level each year. Top Four Finishers of CBI National Championship Tournament (1977-2006) Year Host Champion 2nd place 3rd place 4th place 1978 University of Miami Stanford Yale Cornell Oberlin College 1979 University of Miami Davidson College Harvard Oberlin College Cornell 1980 Washington University in St. Louis Fresno St. Washington University in St. Louis MIT Washington St. 1981 Marshall University of Maryland Davidson Marshall Michigan St. 1982 New York City UNC-Chapel Hill Rice UW-Madison Vassar 1984 Ohio St. University of Minnesota Washington University in St. Louis Princeton Vassar 1986 Georgia Institute of Technology UW-Madison Princeton Georgia Institute of Technology Utah 1987 Orlando, Florida University of Minnesota Georgia Institute of Technology NC State Western Connecticut State University 1988 University of Illinois at Chicago NC State Emory Princeton Kent St. 1989 College of DuPage University of Minnesota Georgia Institute of Technology Kent St. George Washington University 1990 University of Minnesota University of Chicago MIT George Washington University Rice 1991 University of Illinois at Chicago Rice Cornell University of Minnesota University of Wisconsin 1992 George Washington University MIT Stanford University of Pennsylvania Cornell 1993 USC University of Virginia University of Michigan University of Chicago Harvard 1994 University of Florida University of Chicago University of Virginia Brigham Young University George Washington University 1995 University of Akron Harvard University of Chicago University of Michigan Brigham Young University 1996 Arizona St. University of Michigan University of Virginia Princeton Cornell 1997 Montclair St. University of Virginia Harvard University of Oklahoma University of Chicago 1998 University of Texas at Dallas University of Michigan Cornell Stanford Chicago 1999 University of Florida University of Chicago University of Michigan University of Minnesota Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 2000 Bentley College University of Michigan University of Arkansas University of Chicago Williams College 2001 Cal St. Los Angeles University of Michigan University of Chicago UT-Austin Cornell 2002 Kansas St. University of Michigan UCLA University of Florida University of Chicago 2003 University of Pennsylvania University of Chicago University of Florida University of Rochester UCLA 2004 Auburn University at Montgomery University of Minnesota University of Michigan University of Florida Georgetown 2005 University of Washington University of Minnesota University of Rochester Stanford Truman St. 2006 University of Hartford UCLA University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Washington University in St. Louis University of Minnesota Reference Nasr, Carol (1969) The College Bowl Quiz Book. Doubleday, New York. External links [College Bowl Company official web site] [College Bowl history through 1977] [IBM Case Study on automating College Bowl incorporated]   From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details. Search Titles 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ? E-mail this article to: Personal Message: