I'll take the College Championship for $25,000, Alex

Foreshadowing?

The answer is "Jeopardy!." The question is, "What is the game show whose college tournament I tried out for last Friday?" The prize for winning the "Jeopardy!" College Championship happens to be a brand new Volvo, or Fjords as they're called after the merger with Ford. Cool prize, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The bus dropped me off at Pierpont Commons, filling in for Culver City, Calif. I walked through the door into a lobby of human entropy. To my right, people with laptops played "Jeopardy!" online. Another group stood single file awaiting the opportunity to play a mock game - board and buzzers included - hosted by a bubbly minor-league Alex Trebek.

I walked past these distractions. I was here for one reason - to take the test and see if I qualify for the show. That and to get a column.

The exam table wasn't hard to find. Students huddled around it as if Lloyd Carr called "time out" on fourth down. And it was fourth down; mess up here and your "Jeopardy!" experience was shorter than a flight from Detroit to Chicago.

It took me about a half hour to position myself at the front of the table, so I filled time watching students crease their foreheads over the pink, white, yellow and green exams. One by one, they handed in their best shots. Hopeful eyebrows and widened eyes asked the question more often than words: "How'd I do?" Too often the dreaded answer, "Thanks for playing," slipped from the proctors' lips, discarding the would-be contestant's dreams of "Jeopardy!" into the trash.

This, of course, did wonders for the confidence of those waiting their turn. When the chair in front of me finally opened up, I almost didn't take it. Perhaps this is why it took so long to get to the table.

The mind behaves awkwardly in times like these, looking for a little control. I glanced at the pile of pens in front of me, searching for one not infected with someone else's bad luck. I settled on a white one with "Jeopardy!" in blue letters that looked untouched. The proctor handed me a green exam. Money.

Not to brag, because it's not a big deal, but I went through the 10 questions like a box of Kleenex during cold season. Number 10, "Who is Agatha Christie?" and I was done.

I handed my test to one of the proctors. Ten quick hits with a red pen, and she smiled at me over her clipboard. "Excellent! Can you come back at 4?" It wasn't a good time, but I said "Yeah," without hesitation.

I went and got a Sprite at Little Caesar's to pass the time before the next test and write everything down. I took a window seat and spent a long time watching people miss the bus on Bonisteel Blvd. I hoped it wouldn't happen to me when I went back for the next phase.

Just to advance to the next round was an honor. I asked the proctor how many students were making it, and she told me the testing section accommodated 75 students. Being really busy, she figured maybe 2,000 people tried out for the section.

Those fortunate few of us waited to settle our "Jeopardy!" fates. Inside, two TVs loomed; knowing the questions would come from them, I took a seat in the front row. Once we were settled, Trebek himself appeared on screen explaining the procedure and apologizing for not being there in person, since he was installing solid gold bathroom fixtures in his house that week.

Anyway, this phase was a little trickier. The questions came in seven-second intervals, so we had to adjust quickly to reading off the TV. But again I was fine, and the questions fell like extras in a war movie.

Sometimes those of us with names at the end of the alphabet experience a unique horror. Not realizing the staff was reading the names of winners in alphabetical order, every name called pierced me with doubt. One left. Then the woman read "David M. Wallace," and doubt turned to joy. Only 13 of us made it past the second test.

The finale required the 13 of us to play a mock round of "Jeopardy!." We all tried to exude personality while the staff checked to make sure we could operate a buzzer. Everyone did well, and I don't know how they'll be able to select just one of us. I assume the same was true of the other two previous groups taking the 50-question test. The "Jeopardy!" staff's simple parting words were, "If you get a letter next week, congratulations. If not, you all should be on the show. Please try out again."

As we left, the "Jeopardy!" staffers tried to unload all of their freebies. I reached into a box and wrapped my fingers around as many of the uniformly white pens as I could grasp. "Good to have a lot of these when you're a writer," I joked. Looking down at my hand as I left the Commons, I noticed one blue pen among the handful of white.

That's how it's going to be, I thought. Those are the odds. I hope it's me.

- David Wallace can be reached over e-mail at davidmw@umich.edu.

David Wallace Exile on Maynard St.

03-18-99