Buzz kill

How I defeated the seemingly unbeatable Ken Jennings

By James Quintong, SI.com

Ken Jennings wasn't laughing when I smoked him in quizbowl! AP

Like many people, I've watched in awe as Ken Jennings obliterated the competition on Jeopardy! for 38 consecutive games and holding (his record run resumes in September). While I've been amazed by the Summer of Ken, I can't help but think of one thing.

I have beaten Ken Jennings.

Unfortunately, that momentous event wasn't played out on a nationally televised game show with thousands of dollars on the line. It was in a classroom in Ann Arbor, Mich. It wasn't a one-on-one competition, it was my team of four against Jennings' team of four playing for pride and some used books. Oh yeah, it also happened four years ago.

But there were buzzers involved and questions that would make Alex Trebek's head spin. So yes, I've beaten Jennings in a trivia game. That game being quizbowl, an offshoot of the old GE College Bowl TV show that ran throughout the 1960s, which is played at hundreds of colleges and universities around the country.

Jennings and I were contemporaries on the college quizbowl circuit (he played at BYU, I played for Northwestern). Even though we've "retired" from official competition, we are both are still involved as question writers for different organizations that run quizbowl tournaments (Jennings does work for National Academic Quiz Tournaments; I'm with Testing Recall About Strange Happenings). There's also been a growing number of open competitions (i.e. not limited to just college students), which often draws former players still jonesing to get on the buzzer.

I never faced Jennings in college, and the only time I played him was in one of these open events. And that's where my brush with future greatness begins.

Our teams were among the top contenders at a tournament at the University of Michigan in 2000 with questions primarily on pop culture and sports, which are my strengths. And as Jennings has shown on Jeopardy!, he can run with the best of them on these topics, especially movies.

"Ken was lightning fast and deadly accurate, with a demeanor that was quiet and reserved, and we were destroying people for the most part," said Phil Castagna, a former quizbowl player at Georgetown and Villanova, who teamed with Jennings that weekend.

"He was as good as nearly every player I'd seen to that point. However, he didn't seem like he studied for the game, he just got good from reading books in which he was interested and having the memory and recall that all quizbowl players have."

Eventually we met in the semifinals, where my team ended up prevailing by a large margin -- we nearly doubled the Jennings team's score.

"We were never really in that game," said Castagna, currently a lawyer in Philadelphia.

I don't remember a whole lot else from that match other than I played against the now-famous Jennings, and that I wasn't even the one carrying my team. I know I wasn't intimidated going in, unlike many of Jennings' recent opponents, mainly because I didn't know him all that well. In fact, with the way our team had played during that tournament, we would've been surprised if we lost. The questions were going our way, and we had plenty of speed on the buzzer.

(Thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine, you can find some poorly formatted scores from the tournament here; naturally, Jennings' team is Ken Rulz.)

Of course, Jennings has gotten the last laugh. While our team came away with the best prizes you can dig up at Big Lots, Jennings has since gone on to win more than $1.3 million, including a record $75,000 in last Friday's season finale, and become the pop culture phenomenon of the summer -- merely for knowing a lot about everything.

Oddly enough, Jennings isn't even the only game-show millionaire from that tournament. Dave Goodman, who won $1 million on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in July 2000, played on a team that lost to mine as well. Kevin Olmstead (a colleague of Jennings in NAQT), who won a record $2.18 on Millionaire in April 2001, was a tournament official.

Similarly, two of the finalists from last year's Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions (Brian Weikle, who held the single-day record before Jennings, and Mark Dawson, the eventual champ) squared off in a match during my group's national championship -- after they had taped their show but before those episodes aired, which made for some awkward moments and secretive looks as they kept all of that information for themselves.

Not surprisingly, a number of my quizbowl friends and colleagues have had varying degrees of success on Millionaire and Jeopardy! over the years. We're often dealing with questions far tougher than anything you'll see on TV, which can be toned down to make it more palatable for a mass audience, and we're already playing with a buzzer, which further sharpens the reflexes. Many of us will travel around the country to play for pride and the camaraderie or just help out as question writers, coaches and game moderators. But if there's a chance to win big money on TV, we'd be stupid to pass it up.

Despite all the potential training from quizbowl, you still have to overcome the extra pressure of the lights, the audience and a different set of rules. That's what makes Jennings' run all the more impressive. He's mastered the timing of the buzzer (on Jeopardy!, you can ring in after Trebek finishes the question; in quizbowl, you can interrupt the question as it's read), he's kept cool under the lights, he's even excelled at the witty banter with the host. And he's often gotten questions right up his alley, although it appears he doesn't have a truly weak category anywhere.

"I don't think Ken is a 'feel' player in the purest sense of the word, but he's adaptable. If you've noticed, he's brilliant on anagrams and 12-letter words and the think-fast categories that I think rigid quizbowlers struggle with," Castagna said.

I can't help but feel at least a smidge jealous about Jennings' run, but I'm also very proud of him since he's considered by his teammates and friends as a very nice guy. I'm rooting for him to continue the streak for as long as possible since there's something to be said about watching a superstar, even one on a game show, in his prime destroying the competition, especially if it's someone you know.

I'd also love to face him again in a trivia competition, whether it be on Jeopardy! or another quizbowl contest, even if I'd be the Michael Spinks to his Mike Tyson, just to see how I'd do -- although some money would be nice as well. I've been feeling a lot sharper answering questions watching Jennings blister the competition these past two months, and who knows, maybe luck can be on my side.

To steal from an old Will Smith song, I think I can beat Ken Jennings ... again.

James Quintong is Fantasy Sports Producer for SI.com.