Stream It Or Skip It: ‘College Bowl’ On NBC, Where Peyton Manning Hosts A Revival Of The Classic College Quiz Show (2024)

Capital One College Bowl is a revival of the quiz show that has aired on TV in various periods starting in 1959 (Allen Ludden was the host of the first version, carrying over his gig from the radio version). It pits teams of 3 from various universities around the country in a tournament setting; at stake is the largest share of $1 million of scholarship money. The longer a team goes in the tournament, the more scholarship money they win.

CAPITAL ONE COLLEGE BOWL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes from some of the older versions of College Bowl; the voice of Al Michaels says, “It was a quiz show phenomenon that hit the airwaves 60 years ago.”

The Gist:Peyton Manning is the host, with his older brother Cooper serving as a “sideline reporter” of sorts; Peyton, Cooper and Eli Manning are all executive producers. In the first qualifier round, a team from the University of Alabama squares off against intrastate rival Auburn University, and a team from the University of Michigan faces a team from Big Ten rivals at the University of Minnesota. The teams with the top two scores automatically advance to the next round, with the other two hoping to make it as one of the top two wild card teams.

There are two rounds of trivia questions, where the students pick from among 4 categories. The first question in each category is a buzz in, and whoever gets that one right gets two bonus questions, which the other team can steal if it’s answered incorrectly. In the second round, one of the subjects has an “Extra Credit” marker, meaning that the points are doubled on each question.

In the final round, called the Two Minute Drill, each team picks from a pre-selected list of “majors”. They have two minutes to answer as many questions as they can in that topic; each correct answer is worth 25 points, with bonus points awarded for each set of 5 correct answers.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The older versions ofCollege Bowl, of course, but also a somewhat easier version of the college tournament onJeopardy!

Our Take: College Bowl(oh, sorry, theCapital One College Bowl) is a durable format for a reason; it’s a simple quiz show with smart students from various universities testing their knowledge. The game play itself is fun to watch; we really enjoyed playing along and seeing how well these students handled not only the pressure of being on camera, but also the speed of the game. It’s interesting that the teams worked so well together, given the fact that, at least in Michigan’s case, the team members didn’t know each other until they did the show.

That just speaks to how well-recruited the contestants are; they all have some sort of quiz bowl or trivia contest experience, and have a breadth of knowledge. What’s interesting is that, while they’re all whip-smart, there is a diversity of majors represented; it’s not all mathematicians, scientists and IT majors.

The questions are a bit easier than what gets asked on the college quiz bowl circuit and on the older iterations ofCollege Bowl, but that can just be our age bias working. “American History 2000-09”ishistory to those students, most of whom were born during that decade. The idea is to make the game fun and have the audience play along, and we did, also missing a few of the supposed “easy” questions along the way.

We were surprised at how stiff Peyton Manning was as host. He didn’t move a lot, was kind of a standoffish presence, and repeated phrases; all the questions were “coming your way,” for instance. He was more comfortable making jokes about his Hall of Fame friends — Charles Barkley, Joe Namath, Tony Dungy and Tom Brady — who made video messages of encouragement for the students from their alma maters, and he was absolutely at ease bantering with his brother. In fact, Peyton — so funny on various ads and hisSNL hosting stint in 2007 — more or less played straight man to Cooper, who had plenty of dad jokes at the ready. For instance, when Peyton asks Cooper what his favorite Cyndi Lauper song was, Cooper responded, “Oh, there are so many, I can’t even choose.”

Parting Shot: We’re shown the leaderboard, and Peyton and Cooper say good night.

Sleeper Star: All the Manning brothers are funny in their own way (yes, even Eli). But we were surprised at how funny Cooper was. We liked his presence so much, we may go back and watch hisSoup With Cooppodcast..

Most Pilot-y Line: The football theme was leaned on much more heavily here than in the older versions ofCollege Bowl. Also: Do those students have any idea who Joe Namath and Tony Dungy are?

Our Call: STREAM IT.Capital One College Bowl is well-paced with questions that aren’t super hard, but not super easy either. Here’s hoping that Peyton Manning loosens up a bit as the tournament goes along, and that he doesn’t need to force throwing things to Cooper in order to get some laughs.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

StreamCapital One College BowlOn NBC.com