Schools from around the country compete once a year in a four-on-four battle of wits known as College Bowl. Sacramento State will be sending a team of five students to represent it in the regional competition, which consists of 11 schools.

This year’s College Bowl is to be held Feb. 18 to 20 at California State University, Fullerton. College Bowl is a competition consisting of buzzing in answers to questions from a variety of subjects, such as math, history, pop culture and sports. The competition’s concept is spun-off of a 1960s game show entitled “College Bowl.”

Teams are allowed to have five students, but only four play at a time. Sac State representatives will be Adam Sweet, a senior in history, Kris Goldstein, a junior in government, Alaric Smith, a molecular biology graduate student, Richard Zeunges, a junior in history and team captain Steve Nixon, a physics senior.

The school has been participating in the competition for the last four years and each year has done increasingly better.

“Our goal is to improve upon our standings, last year we only lost to Stanford and USC by one question each,” said Smith, who ranked ninth last year in scoring at the regional competition.

The first year Sac State competed in College Bowl it were placed ninth overall; the second year, seventh; and the third year, fifth and this year it is aiming higher.

“We’re on a mission,” said Zeunges, who’s a first-year participant in the College Bowl.The individuals on the College Bowl team will receive free transportation, room and board for the competition.

“I hope my years of watching Jeopardy will pay off,” Goldstein said.

This week the University Union’s Program Department announced it contracted Ken Jennings, the record-setting Jeopardy contestant, who appeared on 75 shows and won $2,520,700, to come to Sac State on April 15.

He will compete in a Jeopardy-type competition where he will face off against a student and a faculty member.

“The student will be one of the people from (the College Bowl) team,” said Richard Schiffers, associate director of the Union.

The student who gains the highest amount of points in the regional College Bowl will gain the right to challenge Jennings.

“Beating Ken Jennings in Jeopardy would definitely be a great birthday present,” Smith said, whose birthday is around the recently-scheduled event.

The five students to represent Sac State at the regional tournament were chosen during a competition on campus composed of 72 students.

“Our school had 15 teams competing; most schools get five or six,” Schiffers said.Out of those teams, an all-star-type team was composed of the players who performed the best individually.

Each year that the school has run the preliminary competition at Sac State, the number of students participating has increased.

“I interacted with faculty to get their students to come participate,” said Schiffers, who has been in charge of helping Sac State run the College Bowl proceedings for all four years.

These five students have the opportunity to go to the national competition this April, held at the University of Washington in Seattle. The competition will consist of 16 teams who are the winners of their regional competitions.

“It’s all been a learning experience so far,” said Goldstein in regards to the College Bowl warm up matches.

The team had a scrimmage with UC Davis on Thursday. Sac State beat UC Davis last year in the regional competition and this year they plan on doing it again.

“They keep on beating us in footbal;, we’ve got to beat them in something,” Smith said.