The revival of “College Bowl” on NBC features three Morehouse College students and an Atlanta native who was accepted into 50 colleges and universities.
NFL quarterback Peyton Manning is host, with his brother Cooper providing comic relief.
The college students on the show are quite diverse, a deliberate move made by the NBC casting producers.
They cast three Morehouse College students: Tray Davis, Jalen Curry and Stephen Agyepong. The trio did not know each other, meeting at the airport for the first time on their way to the show taping in Los Angeles.
They will be competing Tuesday night, June 29, at 10 p.m. against Columbia University. The shows were taped in March.
All competitors will receive tuition assistance for participating in the series, but the winning team will take home an even bigger scholarship (NBC did not provide dollar amounts). Capital One is providing a total of $1 million in scholarships to participants.
Of the Morehouse students, I was able to interview Davis and Curry. (Agyepong was unavailable.) Davis, a Byron, Georgia, resident who just graduated with a psychology degree, was a big “Jeopardy!” fan growing up and had even applied for the show in the past. His strongest topics: sports, pop culture and politics.
Curry, a rising junior and political science and urban studies major from Rock Hill, South Carolina, admitted, “I had no formal trivia background. I do know a little about a lot. I had just never competed in these types of trivia competitions before.” His topics he felt most comfortable with were history and science.
They spent a couple of days doing virtual trivia training before the taping. (There was a fourth back-up person as well. The producers ultimately picked the best three to be on air.)
Nina Gidden, an Atlanta resident and Xavier University rising junior, will appear in a future episode. She made headlines two years ago when she purposely applied to dozens of colleges and universities and ended up getting accepted to more than 50, receiving nearly $4 million in scholarship money.
“In the community I grew up in, not many people went to college,” said Gidden, who was raised in the West Lake neighborhood of Atlanta. “I wanted to show to other young Black girls that college can be a reality.”
She ultimately chose an HBCU because “I felt at home and at peace as a Black woman.”
Gidden, who is majoring in public health, was recruited to be on the show. She hasn’t been on a trivia team since middle school. Her two teammates, she said, were already on college trivia teams and helped prepare her for this experience. She was also named team captain.
She prepped by playing trivia online and watching “Jeopardy!” She said her strength was in the arts while the other two on her team were better in science and math.
This experience, she said, “was a confirmation to me that a good education will get you into places you never thought you could, that I’m on the right path.”
Credit: NBC
Credit: NBC
ON TV
“Capitol One College Bowl,” 10 p.m. Tuesdays, NBC
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