Penn State professor to compete on first ‘Jeopardy!’ Professors Tournament
Penn State English professor Hester Blum has always been a fan of the game show “Jeopardy!” and recently had the chance to compete on it in its first ever professors tournament, set to air Monday and on consecutive weeknights until a champion is crowned on Dec. 17.
Instructors from 15 colleges and universities will face the “ultimate test in higher education,” on the “Jeopardy!” stage, a press release from the popular TV show stated. The educators will compete for a $100,000 grand prize and a spot in the upcoming Tournament of Champions. Centre County residents can tune in at WATM-DT ABC CENTRE on Monday to see how Blum does.
Blum said she tried out for “Jeopardy!” in high school when she sent in a postcard for its teen tournament.
“I was selected to test for it then, but made a very teenaged decision to go to AAU basketball practice instead of the tryout. I’m glad to have the chance over 30 years later to make up for that bad call. Every other professor in the tournament had tried out many times, so I feel wildly lucky to have been selected,” Blum wrote in an email.
She said a friend told her that “Jeopardy!” was seeking professors to audition for the show. She took the test online in July and was invited to take a second online test under “Jeopardy!” producer Zoom observation. There was an audition also held on Zoom with about 15 other candidates in August, she said.
“During the audition we played a mock game in groups of three and had a short interview similar to the contestant chats you see on the show. I received the call that I had been selected for the first-ever Professors Tournament in late September, four weeks before the taping,” Blum wrote.
With little time to prepare, she said she ran questions from J-Archive, an internet fan archive of every game and every question aired on “Jeopardy!” by herself and with the help of her family. She said she focused on her “weak areas,” like opera, classical music, physics and chemistry.
“The show repeats a lot of questions (not word-for-word, but it has its go-to answers in many categories), so the archive was of great help,” Blum wrote. “I also read a lot of contestant profiles. They all stressed that everyone selected for the show is roughly similar in their knowledge base, and the difference between winning and losing is almost entirely buzzer play and game strategy. This turned out to be right.”
The experience was “extremely adrenalizing and exhausting and thrilling,” Blum wrote. “Jeopardy!” tapes five shows a day. They were on set from 8 a.m. until 7 or 8 p.m. each day, “with lots of time for makeup, wardrobe, promotional taping, rehearsal and gameplay.”
In tournament play, she said the first day of taping is dedicated to the five first rounds or quarterfinal games, and the second day consists of three semifinal games and a two-day final. Nine players made it to the semifinals: the five winners of the quarterfinal games, plus 4 wildcards drawn from the top-four money makers among the losers, she wrote. The finalists are the three winners of the three semifinal games.
“I remember very little of gameplay and am excited to watch the tournament episodes to fill in my memory,” she wrote.
But she does have a favorite moment from the experience. She said tournaments require more promotional taping than usual and they had a full day just for promo and rehearsal.
“One of the promotional scripts we all have to read, repeatedly, with different intonations — excited, serious, dramatic — consisted of the following script: ‘I have read thousands of books, I have taught thousands of students, I have graded thousands of papers,’” she wrote.
“It took a few rounds before the producers realized that literally none of us could fake the kind of excitement/enthusiasm for grading that we felt for reading and teaching,” she wrote. So they told them, “OK, roll your eyes on thousands of papers,” she recalled.
In a Twitter thread, she wrote she hopes the professors tournament “can shift some perceptions about Higher Education in one significant way: the competing professors are from just about every kind of higher ed institution possible.”
“Those of us honored to be selected for the ‘Jeopardy!’ professors’ tournaments were acutely aware of how rare it was to be seen by a media/entertainment powerhouse: the J! producers saw that higher ed happens in marvelously diverse places, not just the Ivies, not just the TT,” she wrote.
