Did Being a Red Sox Fan Keep Me Off "Millionaire"?

Today began with the lousy news that it was raining very hard in Boston, and it looked like the Red Sox-Braves game would be postponed, and that was the game I had tickets to. And as it turned out, that is exactly what happened. (It was called a short time ago, so it saved me a trip up there in the rain.)

But the news got worse this afternoon when I received a card from the producers of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire" that I was NOT selected to be in the contestant pool for this upcoming season's shows.

That I was disappointed not to be selected is an understatement.

As many of you know, I took the exam here in NYC on May 1 and was one of the applicants who was told that he passed, and then I had a five-minute interview with one of the show's people. It was cordial enough, and I walked out of the ABC studios that day thinking I had aced it, and the next step was a cinch, being put into the contestant pool. Then from there the show's sponsors pick the actual people who will go on the show.

I didn't even make it to the contestant pool. The card I got from them in the mail today simply said,"thank you for your interest in being a contestant" and "you have not been selected to be a potential contestant."

I really thought I did well in the interview. On my application I talked about my job as Trivia Maven at Professor Thom's, about being a big Red Sox fan (as I knew that host Meredith Vieira is also one), my love of history and writing, and talked about the web sites I write for.

I don't want to come off sounding big-headed or anything, but I really wonder about something. Was I too good of a contestant for this show? Were they afraid that I might be the type of contestant who could possibly run the table and win the $1,000,000 prize? I walked into the interview trying to be the best I could possibly be. I am not an Ivy Leaguer or Rhodes Scholar or anything like that, but I really pulled out all the stops and tried my best.

I have noticed that the quality of contestants in the daytime version of Millionaire seems to be a bit inferior to the nighttime version that Regis Philbin hosted. I don't watch the daytime version of the show every day, but I rarely see any of the contestants come close to winning the big prize. The questions seem to be to be about the same degree of difficulty as the old show. But I have seen contestants during the day who really didn't seem to have any business being on that show.

I certainly don't regret anything I did in my exam or interview that may have kept me from being being a contestant. I'm proud of who I am, being a Red Sox fan, and running PT's Trivia Night. I tried to be as personable as I could be, and I talked about as many of interests as I could. If I were taking the exam again, I would do it exactly the same way.

I don't plan on taking the exam again. Why bother, as I don't seem to be the kind of contestant they are looking for.

And one last thing. The woman who interviewed me voluntarily told me that she was actually a Yankee fan. I told her about being in the 2004 World Series video and the great community of Red Sox fans at PT's and in NYC. We actually had a bit of a laugh about being on different sides of that baseball fence. But now that I think about it...

I guess I'll never know for sure why I wasn't picked to go on that show. They are very tight-lipped about things like that, and of course, I have no intention of contacting them about why I wasn't picked. But I have no plans of ever trying to go on that show again.

They had their chance to have The Omnipotent Q grace their program, and they blew it.