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Originating in a USO activity created by Canadian Don Reid for World War II soldiers, the game was developed into a radio show by Reid and John Moses . Grant Tinker , later President of NBC and MTM Enterprises , got his start as an assistant on the show. The first ''College Quiz Bowl'' match was played on NBC radio on October 10 1953 , when Northwestern University defeated Columbia University 135-60. 26 episodes ran the first season. Winning teams received $500 grants for their school. '' Good Housekeeping '' magazine became the sponsor for the 1954-55 season, and a short third season in the autumn of 1955 finished the run. The most dominant team was the University Of Minnesota , which had teams appear in 23 of the 68 broadcast matches. The 1953-55 series had a powerful appeal because it used remote broadcasts; each team was located at their own college where they were cheered on by their wildly enthusiastic classmates. The effect was akin to listening to a Football game, but this type of excitement evaporated in later versions, in which both teams competed in the same room. 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 '', which appeared on all three major TV networks in the 1960's; '' Bible Bowl '', which has evolved into at least three separate national competitions; and '' High School Bowl '', which is still broadcast in some local TV markets. 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. The game returned to radio from 1979 to 1982, hosted by Art Fleming, and has made two more television appearances: 1984 on NBC , hosted by Pat Sajak and 1987 on Disney Channel , hosted by Dick Cavett . The University Of Minnesota won both iterations. In 1976, the program became affiliated with the Association Of College Unions International (ACUI) {Link without Title} , which continues to promote the competition as a non-broadcast event after the demise of the radio and television experiments. College Bowl retains the ACUI contract, and administers the Honda Campus All-Star Challenge at Historically Black Colleges And Universities . While College Bowl has become almost a nonplayer in the mainstream collegiate Quizbowl circuit, it continues as a viable company with its own, separate audience. A British version of the televised College Bowl competition was launched as University Challenge in 1962 . The program, presented by Bamber Gascoigne , produced by Granada Television and broadcast across the ITV network, was very popular and ran until it was taken off the air in 1987 . In 1994 the show was resurrected by the BBC with Jeremy Paxman as the new quiz master. The programme remains very popular in Britain. CRITICISM In the 1987 and 1988 regional tournaments, College Bowl was accused of recycling questions from previous tournaments, thereby corrupting the results (questions for tournaments need to be fresh, or certain teams will have an inherent advantage). The 1987 National Tournament, on the Disney Channel, saw additional controversy, as a number of protested matches proved to strain the television format. In addition, the company claimed a copyright on the idea of quizbowl competitions, and attempted to extract a licensing fee from invitational tournaments; threatening to blacklist schools which hosted invitationals and did not pay the licensing fee. If the intent was chilling the invitational circuit, it failed, as these developments and the growing Internet community of quiz bowl players led to an explosion of teams, tournaments, and formats. In the 1990s with the rise of the Academic Competition Federation and National Academic Quiz Tournaments , both with their own national championships, the leverage of College Bowl Incorporated withered, and several schools "de-affiliated" from College Bowl (which has a higher participation cost). Factors which contributed to this included restrictive eligibility rules from CBI, the expense of participation, disagreements regarding the quality and difficulty of the questions used, and other minor rules. Over 200 Colleges and Universities currently participate in College Bowl competitions at some level each year. TOP FOUR FINISHERS OF CBI NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT (1977-2006) REFERENCE Nasr, Carol (1969) The College Bowl Quiz Book. Doubleday, New York. EXTERNAL LINKS
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