A quizzical event took place Monday night at Roanoke College.
Curious spectators shuffled into a large campus building and milled about before settling in their seats.
A food and beverage station was assembled in a hallway just outside the main arena.
Media members took their stations on a makeshift press row overlooking the action.
A big screen was positioned so everyone in the crowd could view a replay.
The clock inexorably ticked down to the 7:30 p.m. start.
However, this was no Roanoke College basketball game at Cregger Center. There was plenty of cheering, but there was no ball, no court when when a small audience in Room 372 at Trexler Hall heard the announcer exclaim:
“From the Alex Trebek Stage at Sony Pictures Studios, This Is Jeopardy Champions Wildcard!”
Yes, this was “Jeopardy!”
Loyal television viewers know it simply as America’s game show.
The original version of the syndicated TV program ran from 1964-75 with venerable Art Fleming serving as the host.
The current edition of the trivia-based, answer-and-question show has been in living rooms since 1984, hosted by Alex Trebek for more than 36 years until his death in 2021. This latter edition has aired more than 8,000 episodes.
So what is left to know?
The answer: This returning hero was celebrated Monday night at Roanoke College.
The question: Who is Gary Hollis?
Well, just who is Gary Hollis?
He is a 62-year-old North Carolina native who has been a chemistry professor at Roanoke College since 1995. He earned undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of North Carolina and was on the faculty at the College of William and Mary before heading west.
Life is good for Hollis at the small college in Salem. Yes, teaching a senior seminar about issues within the pharmaceutical industry can be exciting, but since he was a little boy sitting a the floor watching the original “Jeopardy!” with his mother on a black-and-white TV in Bessemer City, there was one dream to fulfill.
His lifelong goal was to become a contestant on “Jeopardy!”
“I tried out of Jeopardy? all my life,” Hollis said. “I tried out every year, multiple times.”
And failed.
A “Jeopardy!” tryout is a multistep process.
Potential contestants must register and take an online test that is offered just once a year.
Anyone who passes the test is eligible for a two-part audition via video conference and placed in a pool for selection. However, there is no guarantee that those who pass the test will be invited to audition.
The first part of the audition is a 50-question test in the same format as the first “Jeopardy!” test. Prospective contestants must pass this test to be eligible to be randomly selected for a “game-play” audition, where players are matched in groups of three to play a mock version of the game. Applicants also are requested to divulge some brief biographical information.
“The main thing they want you to do is to be positive, to speak clearly, to move fast,” Hollis said. “They want you to move fast. Category, category amount, they want you to go. And they test you on whether you can use the buzzer to get in. After they’ve tested your knowledge, it’s more are you going to be able to articulate under pressure, use that button and move the game along.”
At the conclusion of the one-hour process, a potential contestant can only hope to be selected.
Hollis said he qualified for and attended at least eight in-person interviews when they actually were in person, in regional cities such as Washington, Raleigh and Charlotte prior to the outbreak of COVID-19. He was never called back.
“They quiz you fast, how many answers you could get, broad categories. … I could do that,” Hollis said. “When I got to the … interviews, I was just never selected out of the pool. I did the interviews. I did what they said. But apparently, I wasn’t what they were looking for.”
Until 2021 when “Jeopardy!” introduced a Professors Tournament.
Hollis got the call as one of 15 college instructors from across the country to compete in the brand new, all-expenses-paid event at the “Jeopardy!” studio in Culver City, California, hosted by Mayim Bialik.
The Roanoke College prof defeated Penn State English professor Hester Blum and Vanderbilt Law School professor Gautam Hans in the first round before falling in the semifinals to Ed Hashima, a history professor at American River College in Sacramento, partly because Hollis missed the Final Jeopardy! clue concerning former President Theodore Roosevelt.
While Hashima eventually placed second overall in the Professors Tournament behind champion Sam Buttrey, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, Hollis took home $10,000 and what he thought were final lasting memories of his 15 minutes of fame.
Thanks to the Writers Guild of America, Hollis got another chance.
The writers union strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers lasted 146 days and caused a major change in the “Jeopardy!” selection process.
With no new material coming from writers for nearly five months and filming scheduled, the show’s producers were forced to recycle old answers and questions. They also chose not to have first-time contestants compete without fresh material, so they have been inviting former players back to compete in “Wildcard” tournaments.
Hollis received a callback, so he returned to California for another chance at “Jeopardy!” glory and a shot at the $100,000 grand prize.
This time, he was ready.
Until Teddy Roosevelt carried a big stick again.
Hollis vanquished four opponents in first-round and semifinal episodes that aired Dec. 8 and Dec. 12. The sweep qualified him for the two-day championship final against Yungsheng Wang, a deputy public defender practicing in California; and Tyler Vandenburg, a Marine based in Stuttgart, Germany.
In the semifinal that aired Friday, Dec. 15, “I played my best game,” Hollis said.
The Roanoke College professor amassed $9,400 in the first round and had $14,600 at the end of Double Jeopardy!, trailing only Wang’s 16,800, with Vandenburg in third with $8,800.
Then host and game-show legend Ken Jennings read the Final Jeopardy! clue about a certain former U.S. president.
“In 1888’s ‘Ranch Life & The Hunting-Trail,’ Teddy Roosevelt Wrote His 2 Ranch Hands Were ‘Able To Travel’ Like This Animal.'”
What? Another Teddy Roosevelt clue?
Could this be a bad sign for Hollis?
Indeed.
Trailing by $8,000, Vandenburg risked everything and had the correct response: “What is a bull moose?”
With only 30 seconds to formulate and write a response in the form of a question, Hollis wrote “What is a buffalo?” and lost $8,600. Wang offered “What is mule?” and lost $8,800. That left the Marine with $17,600, well ahead of Wang’s $8,000 and Hollis’ $6,000 heading into the final day of competition.
Bully for Vandenburg. Not so much for Hollis.
“The only animal associated with Teddy Roosevelt was a bull moose,” Hollis said. “I thought about writing down bull moose, but it made no sense to me. Why would these people be riding a bull moose?”
The tournament was filmed well in advance of Hollis’ return to Salem, where Roanoke College sponsored watch parties on campus for students, faculty and other interested parties to celebrate his televised appearances and quiz the professor about his experiences on the show.
One topic Monday concerned the mechanics of using the signaling device each player holds. A contestant is required to ring in prior to giving a response, but only after Jennings is finished reading the question.
“Mostly what happens, you’re anxious to ring in because ringing in is the hardest thing to do,” Hollis said. “You’re trying to listen to the clue, look at the clue, and at a certain point somebody off camera pushes a button and light will go on around the board. Then the buzzers are activated. If you push the buzzer early, then you’re locked out for a quarter of a second.”
The entire competition is a whirlwind. Hollis said the 14 matches in this particular Wildcard tournament were filmed over just three days with the three semifinal matches and two championship rounds on the final day.
“It does take stamina,” Hollis said. “It’s concentration and focus. In addition, the more times you’re on and the more times you learn to use that buzzer, you get more and more and more of an advantage. They throw in Daily Doubles. They throw in Final Jeopardy. But working that buzzer is usually the difference.”
Hollis said there are other hurdles to overcome. The board that displays the clues is a good 20 feet from the contestants and there is no monitor at each podium. Once Jennings reads a clue, it is up to the contestants to remember it.
“My problem is I couldn’t see very well,” Hollis said. “Part of my challenge this time was seeing the [clues]. You’ve got to be able to see it or listen to it as it’s read.”
Hollis prefaced his taped appearance on Monday’s “Jeopardy!” episode by hinting at a costly mistake he made during Double Jeopardy!
“I do something in this game that is really boneheaded, totally boneheaded,” he told the gathering.
It was perhaps an easy mistake to commit. Hollis blurted out the correct answer to a $1,600 clue without having pressed his buzzer. Wang took the free gift en route to his victory.
Wang, clad in a bow tie that someone at the watch party joked must have come from former Roanoke College president Mike Maxey, earned $100,000 for winning the title. Vandenburg took home $50,000. Hollis won $25,000.
The California lawyer built an insurmountable lead heading into Final Jeopardy! where the category was “National Monuments.”
“Care to guess which national monument it was?” Hollis asked.
No, it was not about Mount Rushmore and Teddy Roosevelt.
The only Theodore involved in Monday’s event was homeschool student Theo Hartman, who was snapping photographs to record the campus event for posterity. Previous watch parties had larger attendance because students had left campus by Monday for Christmas vacation.
Hollis felt the campus support, even if he did take some ribbing from his colleagues in the Science Department when he missed a question in an earlier round about taxonomy.
“Obviously I know what taxonomy is, but the way they phrased it, I just didn’t know what they were asking,” he said.
Hollis, with the help of his son, Wilson, carved out a strategy to prepare for the second-chance tournament.
“I read over lists of literature, art, music, sculptures,” he said. “We went to the ‘Jeopardy!’ archive and ran questions from that, maybe an hour a night. My best subjects are those that are sort of classically academic subjects.”
During the championship episode, each contestant was given a moment to offer thanks to those who helped him reach the lofty “Jeopardy!” position. Hollis used the opportunity to give a shout-out to the young people he works with daily at Roanoke College.
“I do want to thank my students,” he said. “If you’re a teacher, what you can try to give to your students that makes a difference in your career is what gives you purpose and what makes your life meaningful. So I thank my former students, my current students and my future students.”
The professor did have one regret about his experience.
“The only negative is I won’t get to be on “Jeopardy!” again,” he lamented. “But that’s what I said the last time.”
