Here's Looking at Trivia

This time last weekend, over 13,000 people were starting to feel intense fatigue. Instead of sleeping Friday night, they locked their ears to the nearest radio attempting to answer the seemingly impossible trivia questions that came out of it. For the past 40 years, the college town of Stevens Point, WI gets swamped one April weekend, as thousands of people gather into basements, hotels, and dorm rooms to play in the world's largest trivia contest. Known simply as Trivia.

90FM is unlike any other college station in the mid-west, dare I say even the nation. Not only do they play the best music you've never been given the chance to hear. They also are responsible for one of the most widespread media events in the world.

The DJ reads a question twice, plays a song, reads the question again, plays another song, and then the answer is given. The moment the question is read you start scrambling, searching every corner of Google, Yahoo, or Goodsearch. The first song nears it's end and the question is read once more. Pressure's on. Only one song to go before you have to call in an answer to one of 18 phone operators. Time is running out. You don't know if your answer is right, but is the best chance you have. You call it in just before the DJ tells everyone to put their phones down. After reading the question a final time, the answer is read. Most likely, you got it wrong. Now, imagine 54 hours of that.

As a staff member at UWSP's radio station, WWSP 90FM, I had the privilege of helping organize this monster of a contest. Every January the staff starts getting ready. From recruiting volunteers, to creating promotional announcements, to organizing a parade, I put more time and preparation into this contest than I did a lot of my studies. During the weekend itself, all of us at the station eat, sleep, and breath Trivia. The best part is interviewing teams and creating a two minute audio package we call a "trivia focus."

Here's a bit of the audio I've produced from Trivia's past:

As you can hear, these teams are just plain fun. Most of them use some amazing creativity in choosing their team name as well. Since the name is read over the air, they can't be too vulgar. But innuendos are almost encouraged. Such as "The Worst Acronym Team" or last year's "Obama's poll has Hillary on Top." Then there are the random names like "Never Trust a Baby with a Mustache" and "Lactation Nation" . The majority of players are just out there to have a good time.

I never really had the opportunity to see what this contest is like to a player since I was always a facilitator. This past weekend was my chance. I joined up with "Staff Infection," a team made up of past 90FM staff members.

Arriving in Stevens Point around 1am on Sunday, I could tell everyone on the team I was joining had been playing nonstop since Friday. They were running on fumes. But before long, we all got our second (or fourth) wind. We perked up and began pounding out correct answer after correct answer.

Personally though, I could not handle those questions. They are just too hard. You have to play to understand. They questions are written in such a way that you first have to figure out what exactly the question is about, what the question is referencing, then you can go about trying to answer it.

My favorite part is the scavenger hunt. Clues are read over the air every few hours and your goal is to drive around town and attempt to find a person handing out stamps. It's bizarre driving around at 4am and seeing a line of 40 cars all headed in the same direction.

In the end "90FM Staff Infection" took 219th place out of 415 teams. In honesty, we did more drinking than playing. It's a wild and crazy weekend that I will strive to never miss. Many in point use this weekend as an unofficial homecoming. For me and my friends, it's become the official coming home.