Box Office Quizzing

Sometimes there are University Challenge matches that sound like football matches - for example, Leeds vs Liverpool, or Birmingham vs Cardiff.

Rarer than this are matches which sound like American Football matches, specifically collegiate games. There are no University Challenge teams who sound like teams in the NFL unless there is a college I've never heard of called something like the Oxford Otters, or the Manchester Bees.

But there are a few which sound like American colleges.

For example last week UCLA played USC.

This week's University Challenge match is just about as close as you can get to something like that. UCL vs LSE.

The only way you could beat that, given that it's a local derby between two London teams, would be UWE (West of England) vs UEA (East Anglia). East vs West.

I don't know if there is any rivalry between these two universities, but for the purpose of this paragraph, I'm going to say it would be a grudge match of untold rage.

UCLA played USC at a stadium with a capacity of almost 90,000. This is the next step for University Challenge, I think. There is an audience in the studio for the live recordings, sure, but it's not quite as large as that. Perhaps we need to start with slightly lower ambitions, but what would you say to this?

Have the semi-finals and final as a live broadcast in, say, a theatre. 5,000 capacity.

Or maybe just the final, but on the same day and at the same location as the Only Connect and Mastermind finals.

If that goes well we can up the capacity. I wouldn't want a pay-per-view on something like Sky Sports, because that takes away from the purity of it. But the BBC would have to start bidding more for the rights, like they do for Wimbledon.

Think about it @BBC.

For now, the first of the second round matches, between UCL and LSE.

Here's your first starter for ten.

Nyang comes in early but his guess of Jane is wrong, and Holtermann Entwistle capitalises on the mistake. UCL take a hat-trick on composers and Jack continues their good start with My Neighbour Totoro. This good start continues a while longer, with two more starters from Jack and one from Prabhakar.

They are 115 points clear, but LSE finally manage to scramble back into positive figures after a neg from Holtermann Entwistle allowed Bramley to pick up the pieces with rococo.

We had an incredible comeback last week, so could this be the beginning of one from LSE? No, it could not.

They took two bonuses to close the gap to 90, but Mandel stopped them in their tracks with 1314 on the next starter. 1314 being of course the year of the battle of Bannockburn, which is one of those facts I think I've known since I was about ten.

This wins them a bonus set on the song The Elements, which Daniel Radcliffe famously sung on the Graham Norton Show. The song was written in 1959, which astonished me because it feels like such a meme. Then again, they were really into goofy shit like this back in the day, weren't they? The kind of thing that would pop up at Variety Shows.

Perhaps I thought it was more recent because Radcliffe's other party piece is Alphabet Aerobics by Blackalicious, which is a more recent song.

Nyang takes another starter for LSE, but they can't maintain momentum into the music round.

Mandel takes his second of the night with magenta, and this opens the floodgates - the second half of the match belongs to him. It's like he'd been hibernating and was awoken by the mention of Bannockburn because he took four more of the remaining starters. The rest of his team were similarly ruthless, allowing LSE only one more starter in what turned out to be a thrashing.

UCL 255 - 55 LSE

Tough on LSE there, who are a better team than the scoreline suggests, but UCL destroyed them on the buzzer and they couldn't get a foothold in the match.

UCL look very strong going into the quarter-finals, though they may have to speed up their conferring if they are in closer matches. They took quite a while to come up with their answers on some of the bonuses, which won't be tolerated in the later rounds.

Next week we have Durham vs Open (neither an American football or a regular football match). The week after we have Exeter vs Bristol (which could just about be a game in League 1 or 2).