Why Jeopardy Sucks

I miss A-Team.

Not The A-Team, though I do think back fondly on the time they helped my uncle keep his farm by building a catapult out of a tractor. No, I mean, Academic Team, the Quiz Bowl-type competitive sport I lettered in way back in high school.

I recently read Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!, which is what brought all this to mind. I'll write up a better review just of the book later, but it really got me to reminiscing about my own trivia-champ career.

This was back in the days when I used to actually know things. A lot of things. We were three-time county champions, losing the fourth by a single sudden-death question. I made the All-County team twice, reaching the State Finals both times. John Quincy Adams. Bathosphere. Dulcimer. The Turn of the Screw. Schubert. The square root of seven.

God, it was such an adrenaline rush.

You sat there, fingertips just sitting on the corners of the square red buzzer, every piece of your mind concentrating on the question, on your opponents, on the point totals, on how many 10-pointers you could drop and still make it up in the 15-point round. I loved every minute of it.

But the thing that sticks in my mind now, more than the sheer exhilaration of it, was the teamwork. You sat with your finger on the buzzer, thinking about a million things, but you were also thinking about the other three people at your table.

By the time you reached the finals, you had a team of six people, with two alternates. You knew them all backwards and forwards. The ones who were great on the fast 5-pointers but who would drop the high-scoring ones. The ones who knew obscure facts but were too slow to win the trigger rounds. The ones who knew music, who knew science, who knew books. Who could do math in their head faster than a calculator.

We supported each other. We would give up the buzzer to one we knew could do the best, pulling our hands back. We would say, "you know this," if they did, "are you sure?" if they were overreaching. Sometimes we would buzz in for each other, to force an answer from a teammate who had less faith in himself than we did.

There was no blame. In one State semifinal, one of my teammates dropped 3 15-pointers in a row, dropping us from first to fourth in a close game. We just told him to "shake it off and get back in the game." Mistakes were more easily forgiven when other people made them, rather than ourselves. I still remember questions I dropped. I don't remember the ones my teammates did.

The State tournament was always held at Disney world. I remember spending three days at Disney, having a blast with friends -- some I'd known for years, some brand new -- and at some point, answering some questions. When we had to take team photos, we made an Abbey Road homage and pretended Matt was stuck under a truck. We planned our rock band, Sporadic Lemon, led by our Music & Arts guy. It was great fun. I don't even remember how well we did that year; I just remember going to Epcot China wearing my Mao hat and singing on the monorail.

I miss A-Team. I miss my team. I miss having a team at all.

And I miss getting questions right.

Read More...

Summary only...