Team ‘Proximate Cause’ wins SMU College Bowl

On Tuesday, The Hughes-Trigg Student Center sponsored the AnnualCollege Bowl tournament, a national academic competition, at theHughes-Trigg Commons.

This year, five teams of four players competed by answeringtrivia questions ranging from science to religion to sports.

The winning team, Proximate Cause, earned an invitation toHouston for the Regional Tournament where they will compete against13 other university teams from Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Nancy Bernardino, moderator and coordinator of the SMU CollegeBowl, said there was a wide variety of students competing thisyear.

“We have from first-year non-majors … up tothird-year Law school students [and] theater students,”Bernardino said.

Jeff Todd, a first-year law school student and a member of teamProximate Cause, said he became interested in College Bowl throughprevious competitions.

“As an undergraduate at University of South Alabama theyhad a campus tournament, a lot like this one, and I participatedthere,” Todd said.

“I stayed with it and went to the regionallevel.”

According to College Bowl rules for SMU, each team is given atoss-up question worth 10 points where any player can buzz in toanswer.

If answered correctly, the team then receives a bonus questionworth anywhere from 10 to 30 points where the team can conferbefore giving an answer.

The game is played in two seven-minute halves. At the end of thesecond half, the team with the most points wins.

“We are playing round robin, so each team will play eachteam once, and the top two teams that win the most competitions goon to the final championship,” Bernardino said.

This year’s winning team was Proximate Cause.

The members of Proximate Cause include Todd and law studentsSteve Cumbie, Ben Braly and Jocelyn Loftus-Williams.

“A couple of the others hadn’t done it before, so Ihad to tell them it would be fun and not pressure.”