UCLA student Ryan Stoffers claims first runner-up prize on ‘Jeopardy!’
James Hill III from Santa Clara University, left, practices his buzzer skill with fellow contestants Ryan Stoffers from UCLA and Ashley Walker from Dartmouth College.
By Samantha Suchland
Feb. 21, 2010 9:38 p.m.
Watching yourself on television is an unusual experience. Watching yourself on television while hiding the fact that you’re $50,000 richer and a first place runner-up on one of the well-known game shows on television is downright once in a lifetime.
On Feb. 12, the final round of the Jeopardy! College Championship came to an end with Ryan Stoffers, a second-year math economics student, as the tournament’s first runner-up. Since filming in early January, Stoffers has had to keep his success, not to mention his prize money, a secret up until the last Final Jeopardy.
“I don’t think Ryan would have told me even if I tried to force it out of him,” said Stoffers’ childhood friend Pete Florence. “But I didn’t try to force it, because I knew it would be more exciting not knowing.”
Stoffers was joined by his floormates as they watched him progress throughout the tournament’s three rounds over the course of four episodes. Watching on a small television in his dorm building lounge, he watched himself correctly answer question after question.
“It was hard; I just tried to keep a poker face like I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Stoffers said. “But I think they understood. It’s more fun for it to be a surprise as it unfolds on TV.”
While friends and fans have recently found out the results of the championship, Stoffers competed weeks ago when he met his 14 fellow contestants, all wearing their respective school sweatshirts, as they met the bus that would take them to the Jeopardy! sound stage.
“Everyone was just excited to be there. Everyone was a huge fan of the show,” Stoffers said.
He went on to compete in the first of the quarterfinal games, winning it with a runaway, which happens when a contestant has twice the second contestant’s score. The outcome allowed him to wager $511, his room number, on the Final Jeopardy! round as a shout-out to his roommates ““ a point that Alex Trebek asked him about after the game.
“He dominated the first few rounds,” said Liz Friedman, a first-year undeclared physical sciences student who lives on Stoffers’ floor and participated in the viewing party. “It was nerve-wracking because we didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Over the course of two days of filming, Stoffers progressed to the championship’s final game, where he competed against Nick Yozamp, a third-year from Washington University in St. Louis, and Surya Sabhapathy, a fourth-year from the University of Michigan.
“(Yozamp) was really good at the buzzer,” Stoffers said. “When I watched it before, I had a ballpoint pen, but you don’t really know if you’re doing it right because if you’re a half second early you get locked out.”
Yozamp’s buzzer turned out to be too mighty, giving him the lead over both Stoffers and Sabhapathy. Stoffers finished with $50,000 at the conclusion of his run on the Jeopardy! College Championship.
“It was really exciting,” Friedman said. “The room cheered when it was over.”
His floormates weren’t alone in following his progress. Florence created a Facebook group called “Ryan kicks ass at Jeopardy” to inform people of Stoffers’ progress throughout the tournament. With 710 members to date, the group brought together fans from UCLA, his hometown of Saratoga and even people neither Stoffers nor Florence had ever met.
“Random people add me and send Facebook messages,” Stoffers said. “I had 14 friend requests after the first show aired on the East Coast. I changed my privacy settings after that.”
Aside from Stoffers’ success on the show and his following both online and off, participating in Jeopardy! has brought Stoffers even more opportunities. He and second runner-up Sabhapathy have been invited to New York to spar with IBM’s Jeopardy! playing computer. According to Stoffers, the computer is meant to be a type of artificial intelligence that can match a human contestant’s playing process.
“Hopefully I’ll beat it. … The main thing is that there are a lot of riddles or puns that the computer isn’t really good at. That’s where humans have the advantage,” Stoffers said. “They’re trying to make it so that the computer can recognize things like that.”
Unfortunately, the airing of the final episode meant the end of a lifelong dream. Jeopardy! College Championship contestants are not allowed to participate in any other Jeopardy! games, making this experience truly once in a lifetime.
“I can never go on it again. It’s like that’s my shot,” Stoffers said. “But I got to play four games, which is way more than most people. … So I look at it that way.”
As for advice for any future Jeopardy! contestants: “In terms of getting on just keep trying, keep trying out. Study a little, but mostly work on the buzzer,” Stoffers said.
