Jeopardy College Championship at USC
I just got back from the JEOPARDY! 2007 College Championship here at the University of Southern California’s new Galen Center. Here’s an awesome little towel they gave us.. I taped my free admission ticket to it and hung it up in my dorm room in Marks Hall.
That towel is not in USC colors, but almost everything else at the show taping was. They set up the stage with cardinal and gold everywhere, including flowers behind the pseudo-windows. They also had a clone of Tommy Trojan– which I think was actual size– and a copy of the VKC globe. Alex Trebek, the famous Jeopardy host, initially came onto stage wearing Trojan garb: complete with helmet and cardinal cape with gold trimming. This was the first time the college championships were being filmed in Los Angeles, which is where Jeopardy started. These shows taped today will air April 30-May 2. They have another show later this afternoon, and two more tomorrow. The taping I went to was from 12:45 to 4 PM, and we filmed 3 days’ worth– three games. Unfortunately, the contestants representing USC, including Sarah Nothnagel, were not at the taping I attended. Still, it was a lot of fun, and there was very USC-themed.
Security at the Galen Center was very, very high: no water and no cameras allowed, no exceptions. No backpacks. Cell phones must be turned off; if they ring or you use them, they’ll be confiscated. I wasn’t expecting this: I had my backpack with me, so I had to go back to Marks Hall, which is fortunately near the Galen Center, to drop it off. We all had to walk through metal detectors in order to enter. It was all very reasonable, however, and I think they handled it very, very well. It was a good thing that they did this. I certainly felt perfectly safe.
So no cameras and no photography: they claimed that the flashes (required to get a good photo) would mess up their cameras. Well, when the show ended and we got up to leave, I quickly turned on my cell phone and shot one picture:
It’s not a great picture, but hopefully it gives you a general idea of what it looked like :)
Look for me on TV in the audience when the shows air at the end of the month!
Do you have any questions about the recording of Jeopardy? The experience cleared up a lot of my questions, but it’s so much that I don’t have time to write about it now. If you have questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.
Who won? Time to bet on the winners. Just kidding. I didn’t know they filmed so many games at once. It’s really cool that they filmed at the Galen Center. I don’t know why they don’t come more often.
They joked that we could make some money by knowing all the answers :) And we know the winners, too.. but I don’t want to spoil it for you. (No USC students were contestants in the three games of the filming I attended.) They haven’t come before because the Galen Center didn’t exist before.. but I hope they come back again– it was really a lot of fun.
I mean why don’t they come to Los Angeles, where the show first started.
You are incorrect. This is the second College Tournement filmed in Los Angeles. They filmed it at Pauley Pavlion on the campus of your superior rival, UCLA, about half a dozen years ago.
Hey Scott, the contestant from the “superior rival”, who stole the championship even though the other contestants were smarter, got both final Jeopardy questions WRONG. And on his last wrong question, he wrote “Go Bruins” so he showed that he is clueless and so are they! I doubt they’ll have Jeopardy at that old place (Pauley) ever again, now that the new Galen Center rocks!!