UW-Madison’s Kohl Center was transformed into an elaborate game show set this weekend, as Jeopardy! America’s Favorite Quiz Show taped the 2008 College Championship.
Fifteen college students, including UW-Madison senior Suchita Shah and Marquette University’s Danielle Zsenak, competed for the top prize of $100,000.
To honor its host university, the show’s set inside the Kohl Center depicted a backdrop of campus landmarks. UW-Madison is the ninth college campus to host the tournament.
The audience included many UW-Madison students dressed in red apparel, cheered loudly throughout the taping and held up hand-made signs to support their favorite contestants.
“This is great, it’s a lot of fun,” Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said. “I’ve been watching the show since I was a little kid.”
Cieslewicz reminded audience members that Gov. Jim Doyle officially declared April 11 “Jeopardy! Day” in the city.
Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek held entertaining question-answer sessions with the audience during commercial breaks.
Trebek called Madison “a pleasant little town with two lakes.”
“It’s marvelous,” he said.
Trebek said he finds the college tournament exciting because it brings together a crowd of people cheering for the contestants from their school. He said the college championship audience is more exciting than the audiences in Los Angeles, the traditional taping location.
“In Los Angeles we do our show in front of two or three hundred people,” Trebek said. “Here we are in front of two or three thousand people with a rooting interest in the outcome of some of the games because … they want their representative to do well.”
He said witnessing the enthusiasm that stems from intercollegiate rivalries makes hosting the show even more thrilling. With contestants from UW-Madison and the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, Harvard University and Yale University, school rivalries were apparent.
Media were asked not to report the outcome to uphold the integrity of the show. In order to find out who won the grand prize, tune into NBC15 May 5 through May 16 at 4:30 p.m.
