Who will be the next ASU Academic Bowl champion? Check out the contestants
The final rounds of the 2012 ASU Academic Bowl are set to take place Thursday night, as four teams from four ASU colleges prepare to battle for championship glory.
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Fill out your Academic Bowl bracket (PDF)
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Looking for their sixth consecutive championship title, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (maroon team) will have some stiff competition Thursday night in the Eight, Arizona PBS studio, on the Downtown Phoenix campus, where they will face ready-to-go newcomer College of Technology and Innovation, three-time semi-finals competitor W. P. Carey School of Business, and one-time champion Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.
If you can't make it downtown for the final rounds, scheduled for 7 to 9 p.m., Oct. 4, then follow the action live on Twitter, ASUtv and the Academic Bowl website. (Details are below.)
Check out the game notes below to see how the teams stack up, and be sure to fill out a bracket (download the PDF here) and have it ready for tomorrow's finals. Take a photo of your bracket and tweet it to us with the hashtag #ASUacbowl.
There are prizes for winning brackets.
W. P. Carey School of Business
John Scanlan, finance
Jake Pruitt, economics
Kevin Risser, computer information systems
Stephen Bergauer, finance
Kenneth Qian, triple major in statistics, finance and economics
Mitch Andreas, finance
Backstory: Having competed the last three years in the final rounds of the Academic Bowl, this team is hungrier than ever for a championship title. With some veteran competitors comprising this year's squad, they may just have what it takes.
Strength is speed: They are lightning fast when it comes to buzzing in for toss-ups and information recall – a skill that handed them landslide victories with point margins of more than 250 in the opening rounds.
Speed may kill, but you can bet these business majors have done the risk assessment.
College of Technology and Innovation
Daniel Aukland, engineering
Mikel Robinson, technology entrepreneurship and management
Jonathan Isaiah, engineering
Brian Washburn, aerospace management technology
Alternates: Bryan Vandersommen, Nefertiti Galberth, Sam Jones, Philip Saint-Erne
Backstory: Fresh on the semi-finals scene, this newcomer team is ready to make some waves and prove their smarts.
Strength is innovation: These resourceful self-starters don't belong to a creative technology college for nothing. Like an eager young pup, they are quick to the draw and not easily intimidated – if there's a problem, they'll solve it.
Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering (Maroon)
Wesley Fullmer, electrical engineering
Albert Stanton, civil engineering
Pradyumna Kadambi, chemical engineering
John Ernzen, biomedical engineering
Katelyn Keberle (alternate), materials science engineering
Backstory: They won the first-ever ASU Academic Bowl back in 2006 and haven't kissed the trophy since, despite making it to the semi-finals every year.
Strength is diversity: The engineering team may be the only threat to the liberal arts and science majors – with their far-reaching general knowledge – in the diversity category. This team is equipped with an impressive range of information – everything from STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) to the humanities – and they have engineered the most efficient processes in which to tap it.
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Maroon)
Alex Theisen, economics
Aaron Johnson, geology
Brendan Fries, biology
Evan Tieslink, double major in history and political science
Brandon Vincent (alternate), chemistry
Backstory: They have won the ASU Academic Bowl consecutively since 2007. (Most of the players in this year's competition cannot even recall a time when CLAS was not on top.) These are the champions, my friends, and they'll keep on fighting 'til the end.
Strength is persistence: Even when they're down, this team finds a way to come back. They feel at home on the Academic Bowl stage and have a solid understanding of the ebb and flow of the game.
When the buzzer sounds, CLAS typically is right where they need to be.
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Twitter / @asunews_insider will be live tweeting / hashtag #ASUacbowl
Watch the competition live on ASUtv and ASUtv Ustream
Live web stream, Twitter updates, videos, photos and articles at asu.edu/academicbowl/stream
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Will the CLAS championship era finally come to a close this Thursday, or will the empire march onward? There's only one way to find out. See you at the semi-finals!