College Bowl - Television

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 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. These payouts doubled during the last few seasons. One upset occurred in 1961, when the small liberal arts colleges of Hobart and William Smith in Geneva, New York, defeated Baylor University to retire undefeated as the third college, along with Rutgers and Colgate, to do so. In another example, Lafayette College retired undefeated in fall 1962 after beating the University of California, Berkeley for its fifth victory, a David and Goliath event. 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 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

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.