Students ‘bowl’-ed over for trivia contest (Photo by Austin Kilgore, The Daily Campus)

Students and faculty gathered in the Hughes-Trigg Promenade Wednesday night to participate in “The College Bowl,” a quiz competition that involved drilling contestants in various subjects ranging from ancient history to sports.

Team names included “Student Affairs,” “The Vagina Warriors,” “Team Chuck,” “The Egregious Ringers,” “Narf Squad,” “The Real American Heroes” and “The Four Horsemen.”

Contestants varied from freshman first-timers to seasoned professors, some of who have played in the Bowl for more than five years.

The game began with four teams playing against each other in pairs and gradually eliminated teams that lost two consecutive rounds.

Tensions ran high and emotions flared as team eliminations increased and the number of winning contestants grew fewer and fewer.

Questions grew in intensity and difficulty as the game continued, going from basic history and geography questions to intermediate chemistry and physics problems.

“The Bowl can get really intense,” one student contestant said. “One minute, your team’s ahead, and the next you’re being eliminated. The tables can turn at any time.”

“I feel so intimidated being here around all of these trivia experts,” confessed one contestant after being eliminated in the first round. “I thought I knew random facts, but these people are so smart!”

Eventually, the winning team was “The Four Horsemen,” comprised of Andrew Shaw, Josh Spencer, James Longhoter and Michael Evans.

“This was really a turning point in my college career,” Spencer, a freshman finance major, said.

“It feels kind of like a childhood dream come true,” Shaw, a freshman cinema-television major, said.

“The Four Horsemen” will carry the SMU pennant to the University of Houston for the regional tournament on Feb. 24-26, and all faculty and staff who participated in the College Bowl received one Wellpower Mind credit.