Summer 2009: Of Note

Eric Betts

Courtesy Eric Betts

What Is a “Winner”?

By Tania Dowdy

Watching Jeopardy! with his family as a kid in Alabama, Eric Betts 09C never imagined he’d place second in the Jeopardy! College Championship, winning $50,000. “This is the single biggest thing that’s happened to me,” Betts says. “I feel lucky.”

Betts catapulted to the final round of the competition, which aired in mid-May, after he answered a Jeopardy! question on the origin of the word “deadline” in the semifinals round correctly: “Before its use in journalism, it meant a boundary beyond which straying prisoners would be shot.”

Betts enjoyed support from family and local trivia-playing friends. To prepare for the show, he studied content from state capitals to vice presidents. “Now,” he says, “I have all this trivia in my brain and nowhere to use it.”