College Bowl

''College Bowl'' (which has carried a naming rights sponsor, initially General Electric and later Capital One) is a radio, television, and student quiz show. ''College Bowl'' first aired on the NBC Radio Network in 1953 as ''College Quiz Bowl''. It then moved to American television broadcast networks, airing from 1959 to 1963 on CBS and from 1963 to 1970 on NBC. In 1977, the president of College Bowl, Richard Reid, developed it into a non-televised national championship competition on campuses across America through an affiliation with the Association of College Unions International (ACUI), which lasted for 31 years. In 1989, College Bowl introduced a (sponsored) version of College Bowl for Historically Black Colleges (HBCUs) called Honda Campus All-Star Challenge (HCASC) which is ongoing. In 2007, College Bowl produced a new version and format of the game as an international championship in Africa, called Africa Challenge (Celtel Africa Challenge, Zain Africa Challenge). The College Bowl Campus Program and National Championship ran until 2008.

In November 2020, NBC announced a revival of the show, developed from the format of Honda Campus All-Star Challenge and Africa Challenge, with Peyton Manning as host and a ten-episode run ordered. The revival, ''Capital One College Bowl'', premiered on June 22, 2021.

History

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

Richard Reid has led the College Bowl since 1975. He has created, produced, and supervised all versions of College Bowl innovated since then (except for a 1984 NBC special)."About Richard Reid"
''collegebowl.com''. Retrieved 2021-02-04.

Two four-member teams representing various colleges and universities competed; one member of each team was its captain. The game began with a "toss-up" question for ten points. The first player to buzz in got the right to answer, but if the contestant was wrong, the other team could try to answer (if a player buzzed in before the host finished reading the question and was wrong, the team was penalized five points). Answering a "toss-up" correctly earned the team the right to answer a multi-part "bonus" question worth up to thirty points; the team members could collaborate, but only the captain was allowed to answer. The game continued in this manner and was played in halves. During halftime, the players were allowed to show a short promotional film of their school or they might talk about career plans or the like.

The first ''College Quiz Bowl'' match was played on NBC radio on October 10, 1953, when Northwestern University defeated Columbia University, 135–60. Twenty-six episodes ran in that first season, with winning teams receiving $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 college where they were cheered on by their wildly enthusiastic classmates. The effect was akin to listening to a football game.

Television

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 1963, and moved back to NBC from 1963 to 1970. Allen Ludden was the original host, but left to do ''Password'' full-time in 1962. Robert Earle was the moderator for the rest of the run. The norm developed in the Ludden-Earle era of undefeated teams retiring after winning five games. Each winning team earned $1,500 in scholarship grants from General Electric with runner-up teams receiving $500. A team's fifth victory awarded $3,000 from General Electric plus $1,500 from Gimbels department stores for a grand total of $10,500. On April 16, 1967, '' Seventeen'' magazine matched GE's payouts so that each victory won $3,000 and runners-up earned $1,000. The payouts from Gimbel's department stores remained the same so that five-time champions retired with a grand total of $19,500.

Colgate University was the first team to win five consecutive contests and become "retired undefeated champions," defeating New York University in Colgate's first appearance in April 1960 when NYU was going for its fifth win. Rutgers was the second college to win five contests and be retired. Colgate later defeated Rutgers in a special one-time playoff contest to become the only six-time winner in a "five-win-limit" competition. An upset occurred in 1961, when the small liberal arts colleges of Hobart and William Smith in Geneva, New York, defeated Baylor University to become the third college to retire undefeated. Pomona College began its five-game G.E. College Bowl winning streak on October 15, 1961, by first defeating Texas Christian University followed by the University of Washington, Hood College, Amherst College, and Washington and Lee University. In another surprise, Lafayette College retired undefeated in fall 1962 after beating the University of California, Berkeley for its fifth victory, a David and Goliath event. Ohio Wesleyan University retired undefeated easily beating Bard, Marymount, UCLA, Michigan Tech, and Alfred. Another upset occurred in 1966 when the all-female Agnes Scott College from Georgia defeated an all-male team from Princeton University.

The show licensed and spun off three other academic competitions in the U.S.:
*''Alumni Fun'', which appeared on ABC and CBS TV networks in the 1960s and featured former college students
*'' Bible Bowl'', which has evolved into at least three separate national competitions and used the Bible as a source
*''High School Bowl'', which was broadcast in some local TV markets and featured high school students

Honda Campus All-Star Challenge

In 1989, College Bowl introduced its academic team championship for Historically Black Colleges (HBCUs) called Honda Campus All-Star Challenge (HCASC) sponsored by American Honda Motor Company. From 1990 to 1995, Honda Campus All-Star Challenge was broadcast on BET, featuring the top 16 HBCUs, survivors of regional tournaments, competing in a single-elimination tournament. The game was played under the same rules as College Bowl. Starting in 1996 and until the present, HCASC has been played as a live-event national championship. Originally, sixty-four HBCUs traveled to and competed at the national championship. Now, forty-eight schools travel and compete. Due to the pandemic, in 2020 the national championship was suspended and the 2021 version is a virtual event.

In 2011, HCASC adopted the Africa Challenge format of the game created by Richard Reid: the highlights of the format were three rounds of Face-Off (Toss-up) and Bonus questions played in categories followed by a catch-up round called the Ultimate Challenge.

International versions

''University Challenge''

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
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