College Bowl is a format of college-level quizbowl run and operated by College Bowl Company, Incorporated.

Originating in a USO activity created by Canadian Don Reid for World War II soldiers, the game was developed into a radio show by Reid and John Moses. Grant Tinker, later President of NBC and MTM Enterprises, got his start as an assistant on the show.

The first College Quiz Bowl match was played on NBC radio on October 10 1953, when Northwestern University defeated Columbia University 135-60. 26 episodes ran the first season. Winning teams received $500 grants for their school. Good Housekeeping magazine became the sponsor for the 1954-55 season, and a short third season in the autumn of 1955 finished the run. The most dominant team was the University of Minnesota, which had teams appear in 23 of the 68 broadcast matches. The 1953-55 series had a powerful appeal because it used remote broadcasts; each team was located at their own college where they were cheered on by their wildly enthusiastic classmates. The effect was akin to listening to a football game, but this type of excitement evaporated in later versions, in which both teams competed in the same room.

Though a pilot was shot in the spring of 1955, the game did not move to television until 1959. As G.E. College Bowl with General Electric as the primary sponsor, the show ran on CBS from 1959 to 1962, and moved back to NBC for 1962 through 1970. Allen Ludden was the original host, but left to do Password full time in 1962. Robert Earle was moderator for the rest of the run. The show licensed and spun-off three other academic competitions in the U.S.: Alumni Fun, which appeared on all three major TV networks in the 1960's; Bible Bowl, which has evolved into at least three separate national competitions; and High School Bowl, which is still broadcast in some local TV markets.

In 1970 modern invitational tournaments began with the Southeastern Invitational Tournament, and the circuit expanded through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. These tournaments increasingly made various modifications to the College Bowl format, and came to be known as quiz bowl. Earlier invitational tournaments, such as the "Syraquiz" at Syracuse University, had occurred in the 1950s and 1960s.

The game returned to radio from 1979 to 1982, hosted by Art Fleming, and has made two more television appearances: 1984 on NBC, hosted by Pat Sajak and 1987 on Disney Channel, hosted by Dick Cavett. The University of Minnesota won both iterations. In 1976, the program became affiliated with the Association of College Unions International (ACUI) ^*, which continues to promote the competition as a non-broadcast event after the demise of the radio and television experiments.

College Bowl retains the ACUI contract, and administers the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge at historically black colleges and universities. While College Bowl has become almost a nonplayer in the mainstream collegiate quizbowl circuit, it continues as a viable company with its own, separate audience.

A British version of the televised College Bowl competition was launched as University Challenge in 1962. The program, presented by Bamber Gascoigne, produced by Granada Television and broadcast across the ITV network, was very popular and ran until it was taken off the air in 1987. In 1994 the show was resurrected by the BBC with Jeremy Paxman as the new quiz master. The programme remains very popular in Britain.

Criticism

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In the 1987 and 1988 regional tournaments, College Bowl was accused of recycling questions from previous tournaments, thereby corrupting the results (questions for tournaments need to be fresh, or certain teams will have an inherent advantage). The 1987 National Tournament, on the Disney Channel, saw additional controversy, as a number of protested matches proved to strain the television format. In addition, the company claimed a copyright on the idea of quizbowl competitions, and attempted to extract a licensing fee from invitational tournaments; threatening to blacklist schools which hosted invitationals and did not pay the licensing fee. If the intent was chilling the invitational circuit, it failed, as these developments and the growing Internet community of quiz bowl players led to an explosion of teams, tournaments, and formats.

In the 1990s with the rise of the Academic Competition Federation and National Academic Quiz Tournaments, both with their own national championships, the leverage of College Bowl Incorporated withered, and several schools "de-affiliated" from College Bowl (which has a higher participation cost). Factors which contributed to this included restrictive eligibility rules from CBI, the expense of participation, disagreements regarding the quality and difficulty of the questions used, and other rules. Over 200 Colleges and Universities currently participate in College Bowl competitions at some level each year.

Top Four Finishers of CBI National Championship Tournament (1977-2006)

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Year	Host	Champion	2nd place	3rd place	4th place
1978	University of Miami	Stanford	Yale	Cornell	Oberlin College
1979	University of Miami	Davidson College	Harvard	Oberlin College	Cornell
1980	Washington University in St. Louis	Fresno St.	Washington University in St. Louis	MIT	Washington St.
1981	Marshall	University of Maryland	Davidson	Marshall	Michigan St.
1982	New York City	UNC-Chapel Hill	Rice	UW-Madison	Vassar
1984	Ohio St.	University of Minnesota	Washington University in St. Louis	Princeton	Vassar
1986	Georgia Institute of Technology	UW-Madison	Princeton	Georgia Institute of Technology	Utah
1987	Orlando, Florida	University of Minnesota	Georgia Institute of Technology	NC State	Western Connecticut State University
1988	University of Illinois at Chicago	NC State	Emory	Princeton	Kent St.
1989	College of DuPage	University of Minnesota	Georgia Institute of Technology	Kent St.	George Washington University
1990	University of Minnesota	University of Chicago	MIT	George Washington University	Rice
1991	University of Illinois at Chicago	Rice	Cornell	University of Minnesota	University of Wisconsin
1992	George Washington University	MIT	Stanford	University of Pennsylvania	Cornell
1993	USC	University of Virginia	University of Michigan	University of Chicago	Harvard
1994	University of Florida	University of Chicago	University of Virginia	Brigham Young University	George Washington University
1995	University of Akron	Harvard	University of Chicago	University of Michigan	Brigham Young University
1996	Arizona St.	University of Michigan	University of Virginia	Princeton	Cornell
1997	Montclair St.	University of Virginia	Harvard	University of Oklahoma	University of Chicago
1998	University of Texas at Dallas	University of Michigan	Cornell	Stanford	Chicago
1999	University of Florida	University of Chicago	University of Michigan	University of Minnesota	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
2000	Bentley College	University of Michigan	University of Arkansas	University of Chicago	Williams College
2001	Cal St. Los Angeles	University of Michigan	University of Chicago	UT-Austin	Cornell
2002	Kansas St.	University of Michigan	UCLA	University of Florida	University of Chicago
2003	University of Pennsylvania	University of Chicago	University of Florida	University of Rochester	UCLA
2004	Auburn University at Montgomery	University of Minnesota	University of Michigan	University of Florida	Georgetown
2005	University of Washington	University of Minnesota	University of Rochester	Stanford	Truman St.
2006	University of Hartford	UCLA	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	Washington University in St. Louis	University of Minnesota

Reference

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Nasr, Carol (1969) The College Bowl Quiz Book. Doubleday, New York.

External links

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• College Bowl Company official web site
• College Bowl history through 1977
• IBM Case Study on automating College Bowl incorporated

Quizbowl | Game shows